As last weekend's winter storm put down more than a foot of snow in Charleston, Deno Stanley climbed in his plow truck and made his way around Charleston, picking up his employees for work.
The snow may have been piling up outside his Capitol Street restaurant, but the owner of Adelphia Sports Bar & Grille was determined not to turn away the customers brave enough to face the snow on Friday and Saturday.
"A lot of them stayed in here and kind of rode the storm out," Stanley said.
His small crew of workers who got shuttled to the restaurant may have been fewer than usually staff the restaurant, but Stanley said they made sure every customer had somewhere to go for a beer and a plate of food.
"They were just walking in and knocking the snow off," he said. "It was a pretty interesting evening."
Stanley is just one of the numerous business owners and managers who were forced to adapt to the first major snow storm of 2016 and the continued cleanup that has followed.
Lynne Fruth, the owner of Fruth Pharmacy, said Monday that she expected to see sales at her stores increase dramatically because of pent-up demand caused by the severe weather and related store closures.
When the storm started to move through the region Friday, Fruth said they made the decision to close down their stores at 6 p.m. She said workers at the pharmacies did a great job making sure that people with open prescriptions were reminded to pick up their orders and they did an even better job carpooling to make sure everyone made it home.
But on Saturday, Fruth said only half of the company's stores were able to open, and the ones that were open operated on skeleton crews. Both Charleston stores were unable to open their doors, she said.
Fruth said Saturday represented the largest number of stores in company history that remained closed as part of a weather event.
"As a health care provider, it is fine line between being mindful of the safety of your employees and realizing that people have medicine that needs to be picked up," Fruth said. "I always say that we are not selling shoes. We have a product that people desperately need."
On Monday, Fruth was drafting a thank-you letter to all of her employees who manned pharmacy counters and checkout lines during the storm. She said the biggest problem currently was having enough room in their parking lots that were consumed by piles of snow.
Jeffrey Joseph, the general manager at the Foodland on Spring Street, said the grocery store was able to stay open all weekend, but there were a limited number of employees who could make it to work Saturday. They could work the registers, he said, but they didn't have the numbers to restock the shelves.
"We told people, 'If it's on the shelf you can have it. If not, there is nobody to go look for it," he said.
Many of the customers rushing to the store as the snow began to fall were searching for the necessities - bread, milk and eggs. But there were a few who were looking for their favorite snacks to hold them over, he said.
"Some people bought stuff because they were worried about being stuck," Joseph said. "Other people bought stuff to enjoy during the storm."
The same was true for Kroger stores in West Virginia and surrounding states.
"Our stores had strong sales in the days prior to the snow storm, but then they leveled off during the actual storm and for a few days afterward," said Allison McGee, a spokeswoman for the company. "This is a normal pattern with a storm."
All of the Kroger stores in the Charleston area kept the checkout lines running for people who were able to drive or walk to the locations.
McGee said the company was able to plan ahead and increase deliveries to the stores they knew would be hit by the storm.
Frank Gonzales, the owner of Mi Cocina de Amor restaurant on Charleston's West Side, continues to feel the effects of the relentless snowfall that hit Charleston, leaving city streets clogged with snow and some parking lots impassible.
On Monday, Gonzales had to cancel the reservations and menu items he had planned for the first day of Charleston's Restaurant Week.
With piles of snow blocking almost all of the parking spaces around his West Side restaurant, Gonzales said it was impractical for him to prep meals when parking conditions on Bigley Avenue still aren't that great.
"Obviously, there is nowhere for the snow to go," he said. "We can't prepare a bunch of food for people we aren't sure will be able to make it to us."
On a normal week, Gonzales would open and serve tacos and other food, but with the fallout from the storm coinciding with Restaurant Week, he didn't want to compromise the food by starting late. He hopes his business returns to normal Tuesday.
"We will be back in the kitchen tomorrow bright and early," he said.
Reach Andrew Brown at andrew.brown@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4814 or follow @Andy_Ed_Brown on Twitter.