It's Thursday, March eleven. I'm Oscar Mrrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. Many businesses thrived because of the shifts and spending during lockdowns now looking forward to an economy that will hopefully be getting back to normal soon. These companies are phasing questions about if they can keep up. Will people continue to order from door dash or go back to restaurants, Will the home improvement sector continue to grow, or are
people going on vacations. Paul Zobro, reporter at the Wall Street Journal, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Paul. You know we're all looking forward to getting back to normal as these vaccines can continue to roll out. We've gotten some good instructions from the CDC. Fully vaccinated people can start hanging out without masks and without having a social distance. So so we're on our way back and checking in on the business world. The pandemic the big
disruptor that it has been. There was a lot of businesses that were thriving throughout the pandemic, food delivery apps, door dash, things like that, home improvement stores because everybody was at home, and what else did you have to do, but to fix up your house, things like that. But moving into this next phase, you know, some of these businesses now are confronting a lot of questions. Can they
keep up the growth that they've done. Can they keep their businesses going as people's attentions are going to be split, you know, more restaurant dining, a lot of other things that pent up spending demand. Basically, So Paul tell us a little bit about what these businesses are looking at. So I think the start off, I just want to be clear that I think every business and every person wants the world to return to some sense of normalcy
from what we had before the pandemic. That being said, some businesses will confront some challenges to their financials as the world returns to their sense of normalcy. I mean, these are the companies just had really big games during
the pandemic. You mentioned door Dash home depots. While there was a lot of stores closed, there were a lot of winners that came out of the retail space, home improvement space, electronics companies like Best Guy who just people bought up laptops for their home offices or homeschooling, bigger TVs to watch their Netflix people cooked at home a lot. So there was this huge sudden shift in spending and
habits that happened when the world locked down. I guess, you know, just about a year ago, and there's probably gonna be just just as big of an unprecedented and unknown sort of shift. How much we get back to normalcy or is there some accelerated shift into into new habits once things kind of look a little bit normal in this world, And none of that's happening anytime soon.
But like you said, there does seem to be light at the end of the tunnel with what vaccine is rolling out, some capacity restrictions being lifted, more schools and sessions. So companies are going to have to confront that new reality sooner as in later. Yeah, and it's not all bad news. It's not like the business for these companies that is going to just drop off out of nowhere. But the growth might not be as big as they
experienced this past year. But that's important, you know, matters into the structure of their business and how they move forward. Do they need to cut back on employees, do they need to get more employees? These are all kind of the questions that they're going to have to grapple with as growth might not be as fast as as they experienced already. That's true. I mean some companies at astronomical growth.
I mean DoorDash just you know, their order levels nearly you know, I think tripled in the in the fourth quarter last year. So they're one of the clear beneficiaries. And it kind of looks like they're they're gonna be one of the clear I don't want to say losers, but it's hard to see them benefiting as more people go out restaurants and you know, order in less often.
But I think one kind of still relying to this sort of quote unquote problem, is that these companies did have big growth and as a result that they had a lot of customers who made them may not have been familiar with their platform. So one of the challenges to see if there's anything they can do to hold onto that business that they had. At Sea filled a lot of face masks and home decor over the during
the pandemic. And while you might not buy as many face masks more, you might you know, now you haven't at the account and you you may know a little bit better and you kind of know what what you can get from it, and that's the company that hopes that they can grow fast in the broader e commerce space. Is kind of helped by the fact that a lot more new people started shopping on etc. Over the past here.
Same thing with you know, home people modes. They have a lot of initiatives to make sure that people know of new ways that they can upgrade their homes and work with their contractors to do all that. So it's just another thing that these companies are are going to have to work on as we get into this phase, the phase of the recovery. And one of the interesting companies and all of this is Zoom. Obviously people were holding meetings, family gatherings over Zoom. I mean, they really
took off throughout the pandemic. And as things open up people start going back to work, what is their place going to be in this space now? You know, they had a huge rise and growth and obviously they want to continue that. So they're definitely going to have to adapt. There's gonna be a lot of people still working from home and remotely. A lot of that might stick around, but for them, maybe the usage for people just and be as great. So they really have an interesting place
in all this they do. But even if you think about what the office will look like over the next couple of years, we hear very few companies talking about everybody back in the office at the same time anytime soon. And I can't even imagine that even within an office that they'll be crowding into conference rooms for the big meetings. People very well, well they said at their desks or just had a couple of people in the office and a couple of people at home, you know, meeting together
like that. So one thing I think that these companies have working in their advantage is that they know that this is coming. Whereas when the pandemic happened, nobody really knew that that was that was on the horizon, so everybody was really rushing to make sure they know to figure out, you know, what we're gonna do here, Whereas with the pandemic, you know, they at least have some time to prepare to say, we don't think it's gonna
be around forever. Let's figure out and brain stormways to find out what our life is going to be like in our company, is going to be like um in this you know, new normal, And they can find a way to integrate into that. I mean, Zoom is talking about like totally other events and and other other services. So so I think're gonna go away, but you may do viewers and calls. Well, we already had to do
one big transition. We're looking ahead to this other transition point and it's you know, for these businesses to adapt and kind of get in on that. So we'll see how all of that plays out. Paul Zo bro reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Thank you very much for joining us, no problem, thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out
on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday to Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast