Ed's (No Name) Bar officially doesn't have a name, but...there's a reason they call it Ed's. Founder Ed Hoffman needed a little time before he was ready to sell the Winona, Minnesota bar he founded in 2007.

"We had been regulars," Brian Knouft said on Instagram this morning. "We had heard through the grapevine that he was thinking of getting out of it, so we went over to his house and talked to him. It was a long, like six, seven month process of just hanging out and chatting about it before he felt that he was ready to pass it on."

Brian and his sister Cynthia took over in December 2018, and everything was going great guns until the COVID-19 pandemic hit this spring. The venue was closed for most of the summer, and now it's closed again as cases surge in Minnesota and across the Midwest.

"It's definitely been a struggle," said Cynthia. "We are a bar, but our primary business is a music venue. That's where most of our revenue comes from. We're open like a bar, seven days a week, but really the weekends and when we have shows and events — that's really when we have a lot of people come in."

Once the bar reopened, they did host a few live music events in the backyard — including a BYO open mic night. "We didn't want to have anyone sharing microphones," said Brian, "so we were like, if you want to come down and hang out in the backyard, sing a couple songs, we'll give you a couple drink chips."

Like othe bar owners, Cynthia and Brian describe a situation of great uncertainty. "A lot of people didn't feel comfortable working" during the early stretch, said Cynthia. The owners eventually installed plexiglass at the bar, as well as complying with masking and social distancing recommendations.

"I think everyone was focusing on a lot of outdoor activities" this summer, said Brian, "which is actually not bad. Out on the river, hiking." He expects that "even if we are allowed to reopen" this winter, "people are going to be hesitant about coming back."

"Our crowd tends to skew a little older than the college crowd," said Cynthia. "They have families and they tend to be a little more cautious." The owners haven't faced much customer resistance to safety mandates, she said. "People are pretty good at self-regulating."

The plexiglass isn't the only change to the bar's interior. "Since we took over," said Cynthia, "there were some improvements that we wanted to make. We wanted to do some painting and redo the floors and fix up the backyard. Having that downtime gave us the opportunity to do that."

"It would be really nice if there could be a relief package sent through Congress for independent venues," said Brian, echoing the National Independent Venue Association’s call to #SaveOurStages. As a touring musician, Brian's also seen how pandemic shutdowns have devastated artists and behind-the scenes music professionals.

"That trickles down to vendors," he pointed out. "Our [beverage] reps, the people that supply our product, it goes far beyond just the venue. It's deep."

For now, Brian and Cynthia are hunkering down and hoping. "I'm hoping that another COVID relief package passes," said Cynthia. "The longer that the shutdown goes on, the harder it's going to get. I absolutely believe that we need to have a shutdown, as unfortunate as that was for our business. This is just out of control."

"At this point it's about riding out the wave," added Brian, "and just trying to survive until things are back to where we want them to be."

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