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Even though retailers may be struggling through the coronavirus pandemic, few of their customers are defaulting on their credit card bills.

As the crisis unfolded, Alliance Data Systems Corp. managers looked back to the 2008 recession for credit management models to follow and what to avoid, CEO Ralph Andretta said.

"During the Great Recession, I’m not sure Alliance Data had a deep enough bench when it came to the forbearance programs they offered customers," he said. "That has changed."

The company has offered some credit forbearance, such as offering plans to skip a payment, but few shoppers are taking up the most extreme 12-month program.

“What we’ve also seen is people are paying not just their minimum due, but a bit better than their minimum due on their cards,” Andretta said. “They’re keeping up with their bills; they’re spending and they’re paying. That’s that that’s exactly the type of loyalty you want.”

Andretta started in February, joining a growing list of Central Ohio leaders who took the helm right before or in the midst of the pandemic.

The latest episode of our Crisis Management podcast series represents his first interview with Columbus Business First since taking the job.

The Columbus company branded credit cards for retailers, such as fashion, beauty and home improvement stores; and a division in Texas operates loyalty programs like airline miles.

Andretta is optimistic about the future of retail and the shopping mall – maybe they'll be more showroom than point of purchase, but physical gathering places will eventually return, he said.

We discuss how the company can emerge stronger due to renewed focus and reduced expenses, both temporary and ongoing, as well as how Andretta landed the job and what it was like to be "battle tested" right after taking the reins.

Andretta previously was managing director of the U.S. credit cards business at competitor Citigroup Inc. He was named last November to succeed Melissa Miller, who had moved the HQ to Columbus from Plano, Texas.

Watershed Distillery started 2020 hot — posting two of its best months of business ever.

But by mid-March the coronavirus pandemic scuttled all those aspirations for the year. And it was a high hopes year. Watershed marks 10 years of business this month and though it is celebrating, the plan is what it once would have been.

“If it was February 15 and you told me what we’d sell in August I would have been super disappointed,” owner Greg Lehman said. “Oh no, what are we doing wrong?”

Its popular restaurant Watershed Kitchen & Bar, which accounts for one-third of total company sales, closed in March and isn’t reopening until 2021. On the distillery side, 60% of sales historically are to other restaurants and bars, all of which have been challenged.

But here in September, bottle sales are within 5% of last year’s sales thanks to the return of some wholesale sales and strong retail business through state liquor stores.

“If you rewind to the middle of March I would take that any day,” Lehman said.

In this episode of Crisis Management Lehman not only goes through the ups-and-downs of 2020, but also shares the company’s history. It started in less than 2,000 square feet and now has more than 20,000. A restaurant and multi-state distribution weren’t part of the thinking a decade ago, but are the reality today.

To celebrate the occasion, the distillery is releasing Watershed Barrel Strength Bourbon, which has been aged six years and finished in spent apple brandy barrels. The tasting notes note aromas of baked apple with flavors of warm baking spices. Retail price will be $69.99.

It’ll be available at the distillery as well as select shops around town.

Central Ohio's hospitals have teamed up for years to try to reduce high rates of infant mortality, and the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare even more disparities in healthcare.

Statewide, hospitals are redoubling examination of how to reduce inequity, not only through public policy but their own care coordination and community outreach, said Mike Abrams, CEO of the Ohio Hospital Association.

"We do need to all get a lot more interested in what the solution is," Abrams said, in the latest episode of Columbus Business First's Crisis Management podcast.

"I think we’ve been quite perfect at defining the problem and providing data and statistics about the problem," he said. "And then we scratch our heads."

Abrams discussed other long-term results from the pandemic, including how it will affect hospital mergers or even survival of some institutions.

And he left no doubt that the trade group supports wearing facial coverings to protect people surrounding the wearer from possible transmission of Covid-19.

"We used to say in the old smoking debates that your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins," he said. "So you’re not allowed to contaminate the atmosphere that I’ve tried to function in and maintain my own health in. ... I don’t understand how things like that get politicized."

Origin Malt’s mission is more than bringing barley back to Midwest farms.

Co-founder Victor Thorne also wants to increase diversity in an industry of farming, malting and making beer and spirits where there aren’t many people of color.

Thorne is multiracial. His father’s family is from Barbados while his mother’s side is from rural Clermont County here in Ohio. In this episode of Newsmakers, he talks about that experience ­— both its privileges and its problems.

He’s been detained by police and questioned about his “nationality” and he’s had his credentials questioned because of the color of his skin.

“Even though three of my siblings went there, I was told the only reason I got into Harvard was because I was Black,” he said.

It hasn’t deterred him.

Thorne’s professional roots are in technology and startups but his latest venture with Origin Malt, aims to make barley a big crop in the Midwest again. He talks about the need for diverse hiring throughout the beer and spirits supply chain and how that can be better accomplished.

More than half of Origin Malt’s staff is female, while two of its six board members are Black — so it is practicing what it preaches.

But how can these industries improve? Thorne has thoughts.

Walter Carpenter is a first-time restaurant owner, but he’s doing so with decades of experience.

The owner of The Royce, which is now open at Polaris Fashion Place, has more than 30 years in the industry starting as a cook at historic Columbus brand G.D. Ritzy’s and more than 20 years with Cameron Mitchell Restaurants where he worked in and helped open many of that company’s sites.

Carpenter spoke to Columbus Business First for Crisis Management, a podcast about doing business amid the coronavirus pandemic. He talked about what he learned in his various stops over the years and how that applies to his own space. He also talked about how the pandemic shaped his plans and the impact that the Black Lives Matter movement has had on his business.

Sales are up at Ron Jordan’s Hen Quarter restaurant.

But will that gain sustain?

The owner of the Bridge Park dining spot said the combination of a new menu and a surge in support related to the Black Lives Matter movement are driving that increase.

“I do think that some of it, unfortunately, is going to become a blip,” he said.

Attention moves fast and customers compelled to spend money at Black-owned businesses last month may not feel that urge next month.

But he has faith in the power of the African-American dollar.

“If they truly understood all of us together what that means and we banded together and made this a mainstay, it could be a definitely a long lasting impact sort of thing,” he said.

Jordan sat down for Columbus Business First’s Crisis Mangement podcast where he talked about his restaurant roots, growing up in a family that owned successful Popeye’s franchises, how he’s helped to shape the Hen Quarter brand and the difficulties of starting a business as a Black entrepreneur, even when you have a track record.

When Dr. Hal Paz stepped into a newly created role at Ohio State University last June, he told Columbus Business First, “I want to be at the place that defines the next century of what healthcare looks like.”

No one could have imagined this century.

"What has happened in the past year is incredible, unbelievable, remarkable," Paz said, in the latest episode of Columbus Business First's Crisis Management podcast. "In part we got there because of this (coronavirus) pandemic, but a lot of it already was going through a process of change and, and the key ingredient in all this is innovation."

For 13 months Paz has been the university's executive vice president and chancellor for health affairs, as well as CEO of its Wexner Medical Center. In that role, he has oversight of the $4 billion hospital system and faculty physician practice, plus the university health plan and all seven colleges in the health sciences – not just the medical school but nursing, pharmacy and other professions.

The university's vision is to better integrate the training of those professionals, and the research by those disciplines, Paz said.

"We have this new framework, this new vision for the future that I really am passionate about," he said. "This becomes the defining characteristic of what an academic health center is in the future.

"How do you train a nurse and a doctor and a pharmacist and a public health worker and everyone involved in this process together at the same time – teaching them the same language, teaching them the same process of care from day one – as opposed to dropping them into a healthcare are setting and then retraining them or trying to understand why things are not lining up the way they should?"

A physician and engineer, Paz came to Columbus after five years as chief medical officer for Aetna Inc. Before that he’d led a fellow Big Ten academic medical center and med school, Penn State.

Our wide-ranging interview covers the response to the pandemic, the future of telemedicine, OSU’s reinvigorated anti-racism agenda and much more.

When Lorraine Lutton started as CEO of Mount Carmel Health System in early April, Ohio had just passed 100 deaths and 1,000 hospitalizations from Covid-19, and the region's hospitals were almost finished building a field hospital in the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

A lot had changed in the world in the month since she'd accepted the job.

But Mount Carmel proved it was up to the task, Lutton said, in the latest episode of Columbus Business First's Crisis Management podcast.

"We were quick to respond and put in place appropriate safety measures," Lutton said. "I think actually it helped us pull together as a team to understand that we can do remarkable things in remarkable times."

Mount Carmel was starting recovery from a devastating series of events in 2019 before the global pandemic piled on more financial damage to the entire healthcare industry.

Lutton was most recently head of a health system in South Carolina, where she'd led a financial turnaround.

Mount Carmel's challenges were what attracted her to the job, she said, and leadership within the system and parent Trinity Health already had made the necessary changes before she arrived. Her job now is rebuilding trust in the community.

"My career path has all been about quality," she said. "My first job in healthcare was as a quality service analyst.

"I think of quality as working with a team of people to change processes to improve the patient experience, clinical outcomes and cost effectiveness. So I think that I’ve always been that, ... with progressively more responsibility."

One Columbus entered this decade with a sense of accomplishment and a revised mission to do better: Instead of "growth for growth's sake," the organization wants to build equity in every economic development project.

Then a worldwide pandemic opened wealth gaps into chasms – making the work of job creation and retention more urgent than it's ever been, while scattering the economic development watchworks to videoconference chat rooms.

"As we studied our region at the end of the decade, we saw incredible gaps in job creation, in wealth creation, in the ability to participate in the economy in our workforce, because of the inequities," One Columbus CEO Kenny McDonald said. "This crisis has put a magnifying glass on that for the entire world to see.

"They aren’t looking at charts, and don’t need consultants to show it to them. We can see it every day as we drive through our communities. And we’re living through it."

McDonald talks about how the pandemic increased urgency of the job creation mission in Columbus Business First's latest episode of the Crisis Management podcast, about seeing businesses through the pandemic.

One Columbus adopted a prosperity-for-all agenda as it rebranded at the turn of the decade from its past 10 years as Columbus 2020. The nonprofit was formed out of the last recession to revive the economy of 11 Central Ohio counties, and met or surpassed its goals for private investment and job creation. At the same time, inequities persisted.

A full-time job has the power to change lives for entire families for generations, McDonald said.

Racism had already inequitably distributed access to education, jobs, housing and thus better health. Then the Covid-19 pandemic disproportionately threw members of minority groups out of work and exacerbated underlying health conditions.

The crisis also accelerated by years the shift to a digital economy: Consumers are shopping and getting medical examinations online in numbers that hadn't been expected for five years or more. And companies furloughing staff are seeking artificial intelligence to automate essential tasks.

Again, while the need to create jobs is greater than ever, forces in the very same market are decreasing need for headcount while demanding increased skills from those applying for jobs.

"And right now we need people working, earning wages, having health benefits and things like that," McDonald said. "So we’re going to have to be better than ever in economic development."

The interview outlines One Columbus' response, the path forward and more. However, it was recorded before nationwide protests erupted over racial injustice, so that topic is not discussed.

The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on small businesses from across the Columbus community – but Columbus Urban League CEO Stephanie Hightower says that “We may be in the same storm, but we’re not in the same boat.”

Minority-owned businesses have been disproportionately impacted, Hightower said in Columbus Business First’s latest episode of our new Crisis Management podcast.

“We all know that this pandemic particularly is disproportionately going to impact minorities and communities of color,” Hightower said.

That’s apparent looking at data from those who are being laid off and furloughed, to the access by business owners to needed capital to keep their businesses afloat, Hightower said.

A May report from the U.S. Department of Labor found that while the white unemployment rate was 14.2% in April, but it was 18.9% for Latinos and 16.7% for African Americans.

In addition, a report from the Center for Responsible Lending estimated that more than 90% of African American-owned businesses did not receive Paycheck Protection Program loans.

Part of the reason, Hightower said, is that many don’t have deep relationships with traditional financial institutions that were working on loan applications.

“When it was time to apply for those PPP dollars they didn’t really have anybody to call, and weren’t comfortable calling anybody,” Hightower said.

That is why the Columbus Urban League recently launched a Minority Small Business Resiliency Initiative. This initiative “provides technical, financial, and strategic advice to minority and women-owned businesses,” according to the Urban League.

So far, about 325 inquiries have come in for assistance, Hightower said, and about 50 companies have been approved for more than $3.7 million in loans.

“What’s really great is that we’ve been able to save 895 jobs ... because of our efforts,” Hightower said.