ADAMS COUNTY, Pa. — Many businesses that are deemed essential have shifted their focus from what they usually do to what is in demand right now.
Morgan Miller and her husband are co-owners of a local plastic fabrication business. She says, “We used to make sneeze guards, but on a very small scale. Typically they were a bent piece of plastic with some holes and they were permanently installed either in some sort of food situation like buffet lines. It might’ve been a guard in a machine just so that a person’s face isn’t at the machine while it’s working”.
Upon realizing the demand for some sort of protection whether it be for customers picking up food, or cashiers in grocery stores – Morgan Miller and her husband’s plastic fabrication business switched gears.
Morgan explains, “Within a day or so of putting this contact email out and calling a couple of our current customers, we got a call from a franchise pizza chain and they said, 'Can you make us some of these? We want the opening to be large enough for a large pizza box.' So I redid the design and we delivered them the next day”.
The company has also been in touch with medical offices that may still be open as well as grocery stores, but they haven’t heard much from local farmers.
Morgan says, “We are definitely open to working with local small businesses, farmers markets, farmers, produce markets. And that’s the nice thing about what we do – we’re able to go and talk with someone about what they want and design something to their needs."
The business is also creating intubation boxes for hospitals, although the design is not something many doctors are used to. Morgan goes on to explain, “They’re used to being right there with their patients. The idea behind it is that where these holes are, you put your hands in the holes and then the doctor is able to actually do the intubation tube on the patient without any sort of aerosol spray".
As a small business, AAR Plastic and Glass is ready and willing to make a design suited to the clients’ wants and needs.
Morgan says, “We’re open to anything! People will sometimes call us and say we have this idea what do you think. And we try to come up with ways to make whatever it is they’re trying to make”.
Morgan thinks this new normal may be here for some time, maybe even a little longer than what most expect. She explains, “When people open, I don’t think things will stay the same, or be as they were for a period of time. I think people are going to be cautious and limit their exposure to people they don’t know. Even when the closures are lifted”.