NEWS & CITY LIFE
Re co r d Y e a r | By Joe Tasca, Weekend Host for The Public’s Radio
In Partnership with The Public’s Radio • ThePublicsRadio.org
2020 was a record year for new businesses in Rhode Island Rhode Island saw an unprecedented number of business closures in 2020, but it was also a record year for new business filings in the state.
Erin Trumpetto of Westerly loves to cook. After working as a waitress for six years, Trumpetto decided last summer it was time to pursue her dream. “I’ve always wanted to own a restaurant,” she says. Trumpetto said her husband Jayson came home one day and asked her if she was interested in opening a restaurant in town. A 4,400 square-foot building along Route 1 had caught his eye. The building was for lease after a seafood restaurant that had been operating there closed in March. “You know, with COVID, it probably wasn’t the best time to be investing in a restaurant just because of (reduced) capacities, but we were just like, ‘You know, let’s go for it!” says Trumpetto. And with that, the No Bull Steak House and Pub was born. Its doors opened back in October. Trumpetto says the capacity restrictions have been challenging so far, along with the fact that some people aren’t yet 16
ProvidenceOnline.com • April 2021
comfortable with the idea of dining in public. “I guess the toughest part is every week, there’s no set number of people that are going to come in the building and you’re hoping people are going to go out,” says Trumpetto. “That’s one thing for us. Obviously, we are doing quite a bit of takeout, but the toughest thing is the anticipation of ‘Are people actually going to come out this week?’” Trumpetto says she’s been operating with a limited menu and a small staff this winter, which is helping to reduce expenses. Her husband is also a carpenter, so that saves money on labor. Despite all the uncertainty, Trumpetto says opening during the pandemic has been beneficial in some ways. “For us, it was kind of like, with less people being able to come in, we can get all the kinks out and figure out how to run this business so when COVID, you know, goes away and gets better and we have more people in the building, we’re going to learn from having less capacity that we’ll be ready
for when we actually get up and running.” Trumpetto’s restaurant is one of over 10,500 new businesses that began operating in Rhode Island in 2020. It’s the first time the state has surpassed 10,000 new business filings in a single year. One person who is not surprised is Ed Mazze, a distinguished university professor of business administration at URI. “It’s very, very easy to start a business because, frankly, the information that you need to do it is so readily available on the internet,” says Mazze. That may be so. But it doesn’t explain why so many people are starting businesses in a time of economic uncertainty. The fact is new business filings fell in Rhode Island following the financial crisis of 2008. But Mazze says the pandemic has completely changed the paradigm. He says so many people have lost their jobs, and many of them are worried about the stability of industries they’ve worked in for years. As a result, more people are pursuing self-employment. “In this type of pandemic situation, because
Photos courtesy of Joe Tasca
The No Bull Steak House and Pub in Westerly opened in October
