The owners of Gino’s Classic Barber Shoppe picked its location in Atlanta's Monarch Tower because it offered them ready access to a white-collar workforce from the likes of JPMorgan Chase, apartment developer Cortland and other businesses.

The strategy worked well for about two years before the pandemic turned the advantage — a great location in a 26-story office building in the bustling Buckhead financial district — into a liability.

As the coronavirus health crisis heated up, shop owners Gino Teyf, his son Alex Teyf and nephew Greg Teyf found themselves, like many small-business owners, scrambling to pay the rent after their customers suddenly disappeared, sent home to work remotely.

The wake-up call came early. Gino’s decided to close the tower's barber shop on March 13, about three weeks before Georgia’s governor issued a stay-home order in early April. Even before the order was issued, their clientele had mostly vanished.

“Business was pretty great until March,” said Greg Teyf, managing barber and proprietor of Gino’s, which typically charges about $35 for a men's haircut.

The owners had to be resourceful to make ends meet. Gino's Buckhead business received nearly $50,000 under the federal Paycheck Protection Program and $5,000 from the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, according to records from the Small Business Administration.

“That’s what kind of made it work while we were waiting to reopen,” Greg Teyf said during an interview at Monarch Tower. “We got approved during the first round but got money in the second round because they ran out of money with the first.”

Figuring out when and how to reopen wasn't easy. On April 24, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp decided certain businesses, including barbershops, hair salons, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys could reopen earlier than other nonessential businesses. However, Greg Teyf said they chose to wait until June 1, in part because they could not access all the equipment recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and therefore required by the state to reopen.

“It just didn’t feel like it made sense to operate without new information,” he said. “Plus, we didn’t have access to the masks, hand sanitizer and thermometers we needed.”

This is one of several stories on how people did business during the pandemic. Find the full special report here  »

Although the delay in opening meant more time with no cash flow, Greg Teyf said it allowed extra time with his family. “We weathered the storm for an extra month,” he said. “I watched my [4-year-old] daughter for 10 weeks for 10 hours a day. I’m glad I got that little bit of extra time with her.”

The owners know something about resilience. Gino Teyf's family moved from Minsk, now part of Belarus, when it was part of the Soviet Union after decades of being oppressed because of their Jewish faith. When nephew Greg Teyf's family left Minsk, he was 17 months old. They chose to settle in Atlanta after considering Baltimore, New York City and Israel, wooed by the South’s warm weather.

During the closure, the owners got a break from their landlord. Highwoods Properties, an office real estate investment trust based in Raleigh, North Carolina, owns the tower and several nearby properties on or near Atlanta’s Peachtree Road. It agreed to allow Gino's to defer its rent while the shop was closed, Greg Teyf said.

Highwoods said working with its retail tenants during the pandemic is in everybody’s best interest because of the important role they play in an office tower’s ecosystem.

“It was a fairly easy decision for us to take folks like Gino’s into consideration because they are supporting the customers in the building,” Highwoods Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Brian Leary said in an interview. “We need to do everything we can to support businesses like Gino’s to bridge them through the pandemic.”

Amenities such as barber shops, dry cleaners and cafes are essential to creating an office environment where tenants can quickly and conveniently get they need in one property during the workday, Leary said. “We’re in the workplace-making business,” Leary said. “If we create the best workplaces for organizations and talented individuals to be at their best, it will drive value to them and to Highwoods.”

Leary said Highwoods believes commercial real estate is a relationship business and that it works to develop connections to and ties with its tenants. During tough times such as the pandemic, the strength of those relationships often become more visible than during eras of robust economic growth, he said “When the wind’s at everyone’s sails, it’s hard to know how strong a relationship is,” Leary said.

In a third-quarter investors presentation it said it had reached agreements to defer rent for tenants adding up to 1.2% of its annualized rent.

After it reopened its doors at Monarch Tower in June, Gino Teyf and Greg Teyf quickly realized business would not immediately bounce back, especially with Monarch Tower and most of the surrounding offices still devoid of occupants.

“Customers started to come in very slowly, but not from the building,” Greg Teyf said. “They came because of external advertising on places including Facebook and Yelp.”

Worried business was not picking up fast enough, Greg Teyf reached out to a broker the family knew who recommended they contact Highwoods to see if the REIT would be willing to work with Gino’s on a new rent structure.

Highwoods agreed to change the way rent was calculated and base it on a percentage of revenue as opposed to a set rate per square foot per year, Greg Teyf said. “It’s huge for us. It’s a game-changer because surviving during these crazy times on your own is almost impossible.”

Highwoods’ decision to work with Gino’s and help it remain solvent “is really the only way” the shop would have been able to remain open, he said.

As the year wound on, regular customers began to return, including Brett Hunsaker, one of Atlanta’s well-known brokers, who has run the local office of several national firms in the past three-plus decades. On the first days after reopening, Greg Teyf felt mixed emotions.

Customers who came back right away often had lots of extra hair because barbers had been closed and most people decided not to venture out when they initially opened. In addition to being a little shaggy-headed, several customers showed signs of bad haircuts given by loved ones or themselves, Greg Teyf said.

“It was gratifying and nerve-wracking at the same time,” he said. “I did a lot of catch-up haircuts and a lot of repair work for at-home jobs done while we were closed.”

As the number of coronavirus cases reaches new highs again in states across the country and some municipalities issue new stay-at-home orders, Greg Teyf said small businesses are still not in the clear. “A lot of these companies are open, but they’re not actually making money.”

More challenges undoubtedly lie ahead.

Even as revenue at Gino’s returns to about 70% of a typical month, “our debt is still growing with interest,” Greg Teyf said.