- [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- Tonight, a Carolina Impact special report Forever Changed: COVID and the New Normal.

We're living differently now because of COVID, but maybe different can also be better.

- And what are we looking at on the screen right there?

So that's just a thermal image of me.

- And now we're also changing to a new normal of fewer days at the office for some.

- How do you make sure that people who are not in the office every day remain connected and engaged?

- More space in the office.

- You immediately gravitate towards the views and the light so they have that open, airy feeling.

- And at the end of the work week maybe a bigger paycheck.

- Not only did we go back and give everybody a dollar an hour raise, we implemented a work anniversary bonus.

- With fewer restaurants surviving the pandemic, some out of work executive chefs turned entrepreneurs may have you enjoying more restaurant style meals at home.

- If I can do 10 meals a day for six days a week at $30 a pop, you know, that would be enough to pay the bills.

- Our Carolina Impact special report, Forever Changed: COVID and the New Normal starts now.

Good evening, thanks so much for joining us.

I'm Amy Burkett.

Tonight we look at getting back to health, getting back to life and getting back to business after COVID.

For online shopping websites like Amazon business has been good, really good.

Projections show Amazon will make more than 386 billion in U.S. E-commerce sales this year.

That's about 320 billion more than its biggest E-commerce rival Walmart.

When the pandemic was at its worst.

When stores were closed and shelves were empty and we were all stuck at home.

Well, that's when we all started shopping from home.

Carolina Impacts, Jeff Sonier takes us inside Amazon's big delivery hub in Concord with more on how the pandemic turned online buying and home delivery into the new normal for so many of us.

- Yeah, this is one of those items that a lot of us never used to order online until the pandemic came along and really didn't give us much of a choice.

You know, everyday items like a Bounty paper towels.

You couldn't find them anywhere else, but then a driver knocks at your door, drops a box, set your door and you got your paper towels home delivered by Amazon from one of their delivery hubs or fulfillment centers.

And after a lot of us tried it and liked it, well, ♪ I love shopping.

♪ Yeah, there's no stopping the at-home shopping.

♪ Shopping.

♪ That's all whopping increases during COVID.

♪ Let's go shopping.

♪ When the big box stores had big lines, ♪ Shopping ♪ We just went online.

♪ I love shopping.

♪ When the nearby mall wasn't open at all, ♪ Shopping ♪ Amazon was always open.

♪ Let's go shopping.

♪ And when our favorite grocery store ♪ Shopping ♪ had no more of the paper products or household cleaners, we were looking for these go anywhere grey trucks delivered them right to our door.

(upbeat music) - All right.

There're a lot of toilet tissues, ♪ I love shopping.

♪ Lot of hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies, things of that nature and we're doing a lot of, just a lot of household items in general.

This is something new for us.

Larry Plummer, is a dispatcher for Heroes Logistics, a locally-owned veteran-owned company that provides this fleet of Amazon delivery vans.

Rolling up and loading up every day at Amazon's delivery center in Concord.

- Who's route is ready?

I need somebody with a ready route.

We have about 40 in our fleet right now, so every morning we'll decide how many trucks we're gonna use.

We went from peak season and then COVID came and so we were back in peak season.

So it's kind of like, you know, the volume just pretty much stayed the same at peak.

Let me just see you wrap it, I'll pass them to you.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

- Uh, you do your last pack?

- Okay.

Okay.

I got you.

The routes we're a little heavier 'cause more people are ordering from home.

(upbeat music) You ready?

Hold on.

This one goes first.

Yeah.

They only give us 20 minutes to load out.

So we kind of have to get in and get loaded.

- [Jeff] And once Larry's fleet of fully loaded trucks heads out to the highway.

(vans beeping) - Our drivers, they love it.

I don't know what it is about it, but they blow those horns.

- [Jeff] Well, there's another line of empty trucks ready for their packages.

A different fleet, ready to repeat the process more than a dozen times a day.

(upbeat music) - So we were able to absorb a lot of that new volume over the course of 2020 and early 2021.

The whole company stepped up at the same time.

It kind of became the new normal for us, you know.

- [Jeff] Shannon Todd, Amazon's East Coast Director of Health and Safety, says the pandemic turned at home shopping from a convenience to a necessity.

It changed the way everybody shopped.

How did it change the way you operate as a company?

- I think the biggest difference was really in the types of products and services that we were providing.

So, you know, I think that that introduced a whole new level of convenience that maybe, maybe people weren't really, people didn't understand was available to them.

And so, you know, you try it once you can push a button and get something to your door the next day.

- [Jeff] But the challenge for Amazon, isn't just keeping up with all that new business, but also keeping its own workers safe, healthy.

And what're we looking at on the screen right there?

- So that's just a thermal image of me.

- [Jeff] That's why Amazon and Concord has this high tech temperature check at the front door.

And then there's what Amazon calls the distance assistance.

If I step towards you, - Yep.

You are yellow and then you get red.

- [Jeff] These same screens inside all their buildings in places where employees are grouped together.

- And it analyzes when they are greater than six feet apart, they get close to six feet and when the circles overlap, it tells them that they're too close.

- How many of these changes become permanent changes I mean, even after the pandemic's over?

- Yeah.

I think that's gonna depend.

I mean, a lot of them make sense.

A lot of them we've adapted to, they're safer for the associates.

(upbeat music) - All the boxes you see in this building come in cars like this off of an 18 Wheeler.

It can be pretty intimidating.

It can be pretty heavy.

- [Jeff] But Sean Loris says he also feels pretty fortunate on the job here at Amazon.

When so many others were out of work because of COVID.

- A lot easier on your upper body A lot easier on your wrists.

- [Jeff] With Amazon actually hiring more workers during the pandemic, processing more packaging.

- An increase in volume as a good thing, because we could handle it.

We could process it well.

- [Jeff] Serving more customers buying on Amazon and relying on Amazon.

- They kind of need that because they're not leaving the home right now.

- Yeah, You were here when they really needed you to be here, I suppose.

- Exactly.

Because at the end of the day, you know, I mean, our job is quite simple.

We take a box off the truck, put it on the conveyor belt, take it off the belt, put in a bag and give it to the driver.

That's really ultimately what we do.

But if you really think about it, if we don't do that well, someone doesn't get their diapers or someone doesn't get their dog food or their medicine.

Before we were just moving boxes.

Now we're literally providing a service that people can't go without.

- Yeah.

Also when Amazon does well.

So do all the local companies that work with Amazon, those trucking fleets, for example, 13 different trucking fleets work from the Amazon delivery hub here in Concord, all owned by local companies, hiring local truck drivers, also local stores selling their goods during the pandemic on Amazon when they really weren't able to sell anywhere else.

So that new normal of online shopping also good for them too.

Amy.

- Thanks so much, Jeff.

Nationwide Amazon's numbers show how the pandemic is changing shopping for all of us.

The New York times reports overall Amazon sales up 44% in early 2021.

Here at home, Amazon has created 27,000 new jobs in North Carolina over the past 10 years.

Well, for a lot of us getting back to normal after COVID means getting back to work, especially after more than a year of working remotely or maybe not working at all.

A survey by the website Smart Asset shows more than 30% of Charlotte workers have occupations where working from home is possible.

And that possibility became reality during the pandemic.

Carolina Impact's Jeff Sonier joins us again this time from uptown with more on the new normal of how we work and where we work.

- Yeah.

So if you've already spent a year working from home instead of working from the office, well maybe you think this is the new norm, you know, no rush hour commute, no dress for success suit and forget meetings in the conference room.

Just log in to the conference zoom.

But as employers start bringing employees back to the office, well maybe the office itself is due for a new norm.

♪ Working for a living ♪ - We wanted to develop it, but we didn't want it to be too dense.

Steve McClure says dense doesn't make sense anymore.

Not in his new twin office towers here in south end and especially not after COVID.

- To work in a building that has eight foot ceilings, not a lot of glass, you immediately gravitate towards the view and the light.

And so they had that open, airy feeling.

- [Jeff] And that's why some of Charlotte's top companies are moving in and moving away from the old office space ideas they were used to.

- And this one has slightly larger floor place than that one, but they're both 11 stories.

And you know, we're really building what we sort of think of as a campus, right?

- [Jeff] McClure is the CEO of Spectrum Companies, the Charlotte based office and apartment developer that sees the new normal as a new opportunity.

♪ Working for a living ♪ - What we're really seeing is companies looking at their space, you know, where the cubes were getting smaller and tighter and trying to create more team rooms, more of an opportunity for people to come in and work together.

- [Jeff] Here at Spectrum's Vantage Project in South End, McClure shows us it's the team rooms that get the most space and the best views now.

Not the boss's office and not always inside either.

- What we've tried to do to the design is, you know, we tried to create different rooms out there, even though it's outside.

And so it was going to be a shaded area that individuals can go out there.

They can take the laptops.

You need different spaces for people ♪ Cus I'm working for a living ♪ Because you are going to have people coming and going.

- [Jeff] That new after the pandemic hybrid of working some from home and some from the office is why Duke Energy is pulling the plug on 60% of its current office space uptown.

Downsizing and relocating 21 floors from the Duke Energy Center to a new, more modern office tower, right across the street.

Same story for Grant Thornton after decades in its signature uptown building.

Here's this sneak peek at the accounting firms, newer, smaller, spacier South End offices, still under construction.

- You know, there was this paradigm that you had to be there if you were a certain type of company and it had to be as high up in the building as you could.

But what you're seeing is that's not going to be the case anymore.

- And while developers focused on the new normal for office space, that's been empty for so long and for growth that's been stalled for so long.

Well, employers are focused on the new normal for their workers, who've been gone for so long.

- [Jeff] How many times have you been in the office?

Since the beginning?

- I pop in probably about once a month, you know it's still kinda mind blowing to me that it's, you know, it hasn't been used in a year.

It's a great space.

- At Red Ventures, huge headquarters in Fort Mill, Chief Operating Officer Tim Kullick, Isn't the only one who misses the old norm.

- Having meetings, having their one-on-ones here.

This is a hugely popular spot for everybody to connect and get together.

- But Kullick also remembers the day red ventures told 2000 employees, they had to leave right now.

- Due to the pandemic.

We want everybody to go home and people were literally, there was almost a panic, a frenzy of people throwing stuff in boxes and heading out the door.

And you know, that was it.

It's taken a lot of getting used to, to having meetings, you know, virtually over a screen, as opposed to in person where we were very much, an in-person culture.

- [Jeff] For now in person at Red Ventures is voluntary with plexiglass for protection.

- We used to have glass partitions that were about this high.

- [Jeff] But the offices here are still mostly empty with no plans to bring everybody back until 2022.

- So, you know, we're lucky that we have our own campus here with a lot of outdoor space and we have set up locations where teams can meet outside.

We know that there are folks that would come back tomorrow.

They're ready to come back.

They feel comfortable.

Their tolerance for risk is higher than others, and they want to come back.

And at the same time, there's still a lot of unknowns.

It has been jarring.

And it is one of the things that we hear from our employees now that they miss the most is those casual hallway conversations.

Having a coffee, kicking around a business problem, or just talking about personal stuff with their friends and colleagues.

They really miss that.

- Yeah, I guess a lot of us really miss that also, even during the pandemic Red Ventures was still hiring, still acquiring other companies, which means there's a lot of employees who work for Red Ventures who have still never actually worked here at Red Ventures.

So pretty soon a lot of those new employees will get a chance to meet their on-screen coworkers in person for the first time.

Amy.

- Thank you, Jeff.

On pbscharlotte.org, you'll find the survey we mentioned earlier from the website Smart Asset, putting Charlotte on this year's list of top 10 cities in the country to work from home.

Well, when the pandemic hit North Carolina restaurant customers saw some big changes too.

Limited seating, contactless menus and more outdoor dining, carry out and delivery service increased, and people were ordering cocktails to go.

Over 30 Charlotte restaurants closed as a result of COVID.

Now that restrictions have been removed, we wanted to explore the impact on the food industry.

Carolina Impact's Sheila Saints has more on how it has been forever changed.

- With it being a new business.

And in the middle of a pandemic, I have to say I've been very blessed.

- [Sheila] In 2020, Chef Chenelle Bragg opened a vegan comfort food, carry out service Best of Both Souls.

She rents a suite at a ghost kitchen called The City Kitch where chefs either share commercial kitchens or rent private spaces to prepare food for pickup and delivery.

- You have the luxury of having a restaurant concept without all of the extra overhead that comes with it.

- [Sheila] Bragg's business has been booming with the increased demand for takeout.

- The sit-down restaurants were taking a hit.

Some of the carry out restaurants weren't.

It just opened the door for a whole nother avenue of different concepts for people, Especially like with the ghost kitchens.

- [Sheila] Here's how it works - Order online.

And they can call in their orders.

And if they walk up, they can actually place their orders with me as well.

I get the ticket, make the food.

Once the order is done, I can hit a little fulfill button that sends an email to the customer, letting them know, you know, your food is ready.

So once they get here, there is a kiosk in the front where they can check in and it'll send me a text notification letting me know so-and-so is here for their order.

- Have a good one.

- I always think of it as like a foodie heaven, because you can get whatever you want in the facility.

So you can satisfy any craving.

We're almost kind of solving that argument.

That age-old argument of what do you want to eat for dinner?

Let's say dad wants tacos.

Mom wants ramen.

And the kids want burgers.

You can accomplish that here at The City Kitch - Now ghost kitchens existed before the pandemic, but after 2020 everyone started embracing take out and delivery service, which means that this concept is here to stay.

- During a pandemic, The food industry itself saw an influx of takeout and delivery, which has really become the norm of how consumers are interacting with food businesses.

- [Sheila] Like digitally ordering authentic cheese steaks from Philly to Charlotte or a chicken sandwich from Maddash.

- Concepts like myself and other ghost kitchens, they are starting to embrace it more because they're like, this is a small business and people are really, especially in Charlotte, they're really big on small business and promoting small business.

- With Covid, more people, they were scared.

So they just decided, you know what, I'm going to get this food, but I'm just gonna stay at home and eat it.

And I do believe that this is the new normal.

- [Sheila] Chef Sam Diminich operates his business, Your Farms Your Table out of The City Kitch.

He's the former executive chef of the seafood restaurant Upstream is one of more than 30 restaurants in Charlotte that closed during the pandemic.

- Nationally, nearly 17% of us restaurants or 110,000 closed permanently, or long-term in 2020.

- I'm not the type of person to wait around for opportunities, right?

There's gotta be something I can do.

Maybe a meal delivery service would work.

You know, if I could do 10 meals a day for six days a week at $30 a pop, you know, that would be enough to pay the bills.

I was laid off from the 17th and we served our first meal, or I served my first meal, out of my apartment on the 23rd.

- Using food source from local farmers, He prepares three course gourmet meals delivered right to your door.

He's a private chef and caters events.

In March of 2020, he started with only 10 customers.

- [Sheila] How many customers are in your database now?

- North of 3000?

- [Sheila] I mean, do you ever pinch yourself - Every day.

- Diminich employs up to 12 people.

He hopes the restaurant culture improves post pandemic, including a deeper appreciation for restaurant workers and higher wages.

- For many, many years.

I mean, it was, it was just next man up, right?

Yeah.

So quality of life took a back seat investment, you know, and employees took a back seat.

It wasn't a priority.

And what we want to do now moving forward is turn what we would all consider some major liabilities to some major assets, right?

And giving them opportunities to work in an environment that supports them.

- [Sheila] COVID-19 brought a fundamental shift in the restaurant industry, which found creative ways to better serve customers.

For Carolina Impact, I'm Sheila saints reporting.

- Thanks, Sheila.

City Kitch continues to evolve.

Officials are working on a consolidated ordering system to make it easier for customers.

Plus a small dining area onsite has been added for folks who just can't wait to eat.

Well, Americans are leaving their jobs at a record pace.

According to the bureau of labor, nearly 4 million Americans left their jobs in the month of April alone.

But why, some are looking for better pay and others want to keep working from home.

But as industries ease their way back from the pandemic, a labor shortage has been created.

In many cases, companies are raising minimum wages and offering signing and retention bonuses.

Carolina Impact's Jason Terzis takes a closer look to explore why this is happening and will those increased wages and extra benefits also be forever changed.

- [Jason] It's a day Charlottians never thought they'd see or ever wanted to see.

- This is a landmark.

♪ Closing time.

♪ - [Jason] The final day of Price's Chicken Coop, after nearly 60 years, the iconic Southern fried chicken take-out restaurant closing its doors.

♪ Closing time.

♪ - Really sad to see it go.

- [Jason] Within hours of the announcement a long line formed extending up the street and around the corner.

Many people bringing lawn chairs to ride out the hours while waiting.

- This is a part of history and an opportunity to at least see what it's all about before it's gone forever.

- [Jason] In the fall, owner Steve price said business was good with the exception of some COVID related hiccups.

- Our biggest challenge has been getting the supplies we need and getting the products we need when we need them.

- [Jason] But in the Facebook post announcing its closing, Price has listed several reasons, topping that list, the labor shortage.

- As so many industries across the nation are seeing there's a labor shortage now as a result of the pandemic.

- [Jason] So just how did we go from millions of people losing their jobs last year to a labor shortage this year with now hiring signs popping up just about everywhere.

- The first reason is COVID is still out there.

It's still in existence.

It's still real.

People will have some apprehensions about returning to the workforce.

Secondly, there's individuals who have found different employment.

Some have worked as a gig economy on their own and found new ways to make income.

They're not returning to those typical nine to five type jobs.

They found jobs that work remotely, for jobs that are in California and across the country that they can now work from their house.

And lastly, again, there's some extra stipends and benefits out there that have helped people stay afloat during this time period.

And some of those extra benefits are now outweighing some of the actual wages that are out there and folks are really determining what makes most sense for them for a fiscal perspective, return to the workforce or maintain those benefits until they run out?

- [Jason] The labor shortage is forcing companies nationwide to adjust their business models in the form of higher hourly wages.

And in many cases, signing and retention bonuses.

- Very, very strange that there is such a thing as far as any company having to rethink their plan because of a labor shortage.

I find that very interesting.

- Formed in 2013, Viva Chicken is a locally-owned fast casual Peruvian rotisserie restaurant with a dozen locations, mostly in the Charlotte area.

- Pre-COVID, we had right about 500 employees.

We lost half of our people and yeah, and 70% of our sales.

- [Jason] But as COVID restrictions ease, and more people started eating out again, Viva Chicken needed to get those employees back.

They increased hourly wages, gave new hire signing bonuses of $400 and retention bonuses for employees who stuck around.

- Not only did we go back and give everybody a dollar an hour raise, we implemented a work anniversary bonus.

So that when we do bring people in at a higher rate or under this recruitment bonus initiative that we developed, then everybody's happy.

- [{Jason] And it's not just restaurants offering higher wages to attract new employees.

Carowinds went from not knowing if it was going to be closed for a second straight season to not having enough employees to open the park.

- Once we saw that nationwide, there was a labor shortage.

We knew we had to kick it into high gear and make sure that we could get those quality employees in to serve our guests.

- [Jason] Anyone hired by Carowinds before the end of May received a $500 signing bonus and most seasonal positions went from paying 10 to $13 an hour pp to 15.

- We are so thrilled with the response that we're getting.

We're making great progress and getting everybody staffed.

We've got many, many lifeguards who've just come through to get trained, to get our water park opened.

And so we're really excited about that.

- [Jason] The increase was certainly welcome news for college student Savannah Burroughs.

- So I was still in training when they let me know that we had a pay raise to 15 and yeah, I was shocked.

Yeah, shocked.

- [Reporter] Even though, the national minimum wage remains 7.25 an hour, the job market is changing that.

Experts now predict wages will grow 3% this year, The largest increase in 13 years, but will those increased wages stay in place or eventually go back down?

- I think we are on a journey to a minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour.

- [Jason] And as for the labor shortage, as COVID federal and state benefits expire, and kids go back to school in the fall, experts say more people should be rejoining the workforce.

- I think as these benefits do start to wean off, folks will be even more hungry or seeing that there's actual extra benefits to return to the workforce.

And I think there'll be, and maybe in another three to six months, a surge of folks that are reentering the workforce.

- [Jason] And maybe then we can officially say, things are back to normal only then with higher hourly wages.

For Carolina Impact, I'm Jason Terzis reporting.

- Thank you, Jason.

It's a little ironic that during a health crisis, like the pandemic, one of the hardest things to do was to see a doctor.

Walk-in clinics were closed.

Treatments were canceled and in the early days of the vaccine an appointment could take months, if you could get one at all.

But over time, hospitals figured out on the fly, how to bring health care to you without you actually coming to the hospital.

At Atrium Health, Chief Physician, Dr. Scott Rissmiller talks with us about the new normal of healthcare at home.

- We are really looking to take and do a quantum leap in regards to the care we provide.

Sort of that proactive 24/7 access in the home and deliver very high quality high touch care in the home.

[Doctor] The virtual hospital for us was a natural transition or transformation.

- [Doctor] Okay, so all of our patients receive a monitoring kit.

And in that monitoring kit, they have a thermometer, they have a blood pressure cuff, and they have a pulse oximeter that also gives them heart rate.

So we're actually putting the technology in our patient's hands so that they can do that monitoring on their own.

- And then if we needed to send someone into their home a couple of times a day, we would do it into their home to give IV fluids, IV antibiotics, IV medications.

That tells you sort of how sick some of these patients were.

And they did great and they loved it.

- It's really leveraging a skill set that the paramedics have with technology.

- You know, again, the ability to be at home with your loved ones, in familiar surroundings, but knowing that you have the care you need, when you need it.

And it's about the patient's needs.

And we have to design our delivery system to meet those needs.

And for many access is a serious challenge for them.

To serve our underserved, whether it be urban or rural, giving them access, going to them in their homes, in their communities and breaking down some of those barriers to care that they unfortunately have to deal with.

I think is the best of both worlds.

- That's Dr. Scott Rissmiller from Atrium Health.

For more on Atrium's virtual hospital and other health care at home services, there's a link on our website at pbscharlotte.org.

Well, we hope you've learned and enjoyed a lot from our look at getting back to health, getting back to life, and getting back to business.

Thank you so much for joining us for our Carolina Impact special report Forever Changed: COVID and the New Normal.

Good night, my friends.

(upbeat music) - A production of PBS Charlotte.