September 22, 2020

Saraid Gonzalez:
Hi, I’m Saraid Gonzalez, and welcome to “Sullivan 180 Presents…. Take Five!” Our guest today is Randy Resnick from the Liberty Group. Hi, Randy. Welcome! Great to have you here. Can you introduce yourself, Randy, and introduce your business?

Randy Resnick:
Sure! My name is Randy Resnick. I’m a born and raised Sullivan County native and I own and operate a bunch of businesses around Sullivan County. This one in particular that I’m speaking to you from is the Liberty Market, which is our next to newest business, which we opened in January. We took over a supermarket on North Main Street in Liberty, renovated it, reopened it, and are working on rebuilding it.

Saraid Gonzalez:
How are you doing? How are you guys managing?

Randy Resnick:
Doing okay. The supply issues have been pretty tough on us. There’s maybe about 60% of what we order still coming through the door from our distributors. A lot of the manufacturers have not recovered from the situation with the pandemic. We still can’t get anything that says ‘antibacterial’ on it. We’re still having issues getting like full supply of toilet paper and paper towels. But we don’t have any problem with getting all the fresh stuff: the meat, the produce, the seafood, the deli, the dairy. That stuff is coming through. But a lot of the box stuff that’s processed is just not coming through.

Saraid Gonzalez:
Can you talk a little bit about some of the other businesses you manage?

Randy Resnik:
Well, while we’re here at the Liberty Market, we were having some issues getting PPE, which is personal protective equipment for our staff. And we decided that it was a great idea to come up with a reusable mask because people were going through them, and we knew… we kind of read into the future, thought that people were going to be tired of throwing masks away. And then we created RezWear: ( this is one of our masks here). We have a tie dye mask that we produce. We produced about 25 different masks. We manufacture them, we actually cut and process them in Jersey. And then we sew them in two places in Queens and one in Brooklyn. So it’s a long process, the mask business: how we start with a design and how we end up with a package product. It actually goes to Jersey, goes to Queens, back to Jersey then to Bernie’s where we package it, then deliberately where we ship it. So there’s a lot of hands-on this stuff, but we’ve sold a lot of masks! We were getting a lot of custom orders. We’re bringing kids masks in, and it was just kind of like a really cool pivot for us from what we were doing, because we have also the restaurants in Rock Hill, Bernie’s, Crust and Brew. We have the hotel, The Sullivan Event Center. So some businesses have benefited from the pandemic. Some businesses weren’t really affected by the pandemic and then some businesses were affected tremendously by the pandemic. But the balance, you know, the diversity that we have, and all the businesses that we own, you know, supermarket equipment manufacturing…we have 11 businesses, my brother and I and the balance has been “okay”. It’s certainly not where we were prior to it, but it could have been a lot worse. I mean, some businesses got hit very hard, other businesses benefited. And then we had the businesses that kind of floated in the middle.

Saraid Gonzalez:
Some of the challenges you have faced?

Randy Resnick:
Well, first and foremost was the health challenge, which we still face on a daily basis. The biggest challenge that I’m finding right now is we’ve always been good at buying a business or starting a business, and digging in, and trying to understand it and how to make it efficient and training people to operate it. But the pandemic has kind of forced us to do that with every business all at the same time now. So where we were only having to rethink one business at a time as we chug into a new business, and then we get that going and we chug into another new business. Now what’s happening is: we’re having to rethink all of these things…. at one time! And that’s been a real challenge because they’re all changing.

Saraid Gonzalez:
Do you have any positive experience that have developed that you would like to share?

Randy Resnick:
Yes! I think everything, you know, the fact that we’re still here, and we’re still employing 170 people is positive.

Saraid Gonzalez:
How can folks stay up on the news with your businesses. What’s the best way that they can keep up on what you’re doing?

Randy Resnick:
The daily stuff is on Facebook. You know what I mean? Really, our social media is a way to keep in touch with what was going on on a regular basis. We are getting more aggressive with posting, and we just came up with like new ‘meat bundles’ and packages that are a butcher shop that we’re promoting. And, obviously, we’re rolling into the heating oil season and the propane season. So we’ve been doing some promotions with that. Some Facebook marketing… Trying to get people to sign up or pre-buy right now because Sullivan County is getting a 4% increase in propane and oil heating tax, basically a temporary tax for like a year and a half to help try to balance the budget. So I’m trying to advertise that people can get in on that, but we’re doing some tie-ins of all of our businesses as well. So if you are a Resnick energy customer, you’re entitled to a 5% discount to Liberty Market, 10% off at the restaurants, and a discount for propane. So we’re trying to kind of get people under the umbrella, to kind of ‘try us’, to do business with us, but give them incentives to stay and do other business with us.

Saraid Gonzalez:
Please tell us what your Facebook pages are.

Randy Resnick:
(Please see all websites listed on the right column of this webpage)

Saraid Gonzalez:
Well, thank you so much, Randy. Thanks again for joining us today and thank you so much for all of your efforts and best of luck with all of your businesses.

Randy Resnick:
Thank you. Take care.