Subscribe to How To Reopen, our weekly newsletter on what it takes to reboot business in the midst of a pandemic.
I rang the doorbell, and there was no answer. I looked in the window, and the lights were on. It was the middle of the day, during open hours, and I had an appointment. Still, no answer. Then I tried the door handle again. Sure enough, though a little stubborn, the door was, in fact, unlocked. After four months of isolation, I had socially contracted so far inward I couldn’t even open a door anymore. (Or maybe the door was just stuck.)
Earlier this week, I ventured out for the first time since going into self-isolation/quarantine, however you want to call it, in March. (Not counting walking the dog or going to the pharmacy and grocery store.) But this trip was with purpose—and by appointment only. I had a midweek appointment at Medi Pedi NYC, a medical spa for aesthetic and therapeutic foot care, which was now open again as New York City entered phase 3 of its economic reopening in July. Many people have been lamenting for months the need to get a haircut or a massage. As a regular long-distance runner, I was in need of both aesthetic and therapeutic care. (I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say I have the most common ailments for runners’ feet and then some.)
Specifically, I booked an appointment for a medical pedicure, a noninvasive, dry procedure targeting calluses, dry and cracked heels, ingrown and overgrown nails, discoloration, and more. Even before the pandemic, hygiene protocols for certified technicians were far stricter than what you might have seen at a nail or hair salon, and walking into the facility, it resembles a doctor’s or dentist’s office more than a salon. (In fact, there is a podiatrist office next door, and the two businesses have established a complementary rapport over the past seven years since Medi Pedi opened.)
After finally making my way through the front door, I walked into the waiting room, now devoid of chairs, replaced by a few circular blue stickers designating spots six feet apart to maintain social distancing between clients and employees at the front desk. Sitting behind the front desk was Medi Pedi NYC’s owner, Marcela Correa, a licensed professional medical pedicurist with over 15 years of experience.
Correa grew up helping out in her father’s podiatry clinic in Uruguay, where (among other countries, including in the European Union) services like those at Medi Pedi are actually covered by health insurance. She opened the first location of Medi Pedi NYC on the West Side of Manhattan in 2013 but moved the business to the current Park Avenue location six years ago.
Correa says she was in no hurry to reopen, as she was most concerned with protecting both her employees and her clients. But since reopening, the medical spa has been booked up consistently with regular customers—all of whom, she says, have been completely compliant with new protocols, such as wearing a face mask at all times.
Correa notes that the clinic already offered face masks (and hair nets) to clients upon request before the pandemic, and there were hand sanitizer stations installed on walls in each room before too. The major differences involve appointment times and the waiting room. Although there are three procedure rooms within the medical spa, only two are in operation at any time, and appointments are staggered—none are simultaneous—so there is never more than one client in the waiting room at one time. Medi Pedi is also waiving cancellation fees for the near future so if a client is feeling ill, the person will have no issue with staying home.
Medi Pedi is also offering free services to frontline and essential workers on Mondays as a small way to say thank-you. “There are a lot of people we don’t see, but they’re doing their jobs for us,” Correa says. In the future, Correa hopes to take the business mobile with a roaming facility, as many customers are still reluctant to leave their homes or can’t make the trip. Correa notes many athletes, dancers, and Broadway performers also frequent the medical spa for its restorative services given the pressure and duress their jobs impress upon their feet.
Correa shared all of this while restoring my own feet, which haven’t seen much care since a regular pedicure at the beginning of the year despite running hundreds of miles in the six months since. (Running has been my primary method of dispelling anxiety, well before the arrival of the novel coronavirus.) I’ll admit that before the visit, I didn’t know what to expect—both about what it was like to be outside going to a regular appointment again as well as getting this advanced treatment. At first glance, the tools resemble what a dentist might use, but then in that case, there are local anesthetics. I asked Correa if it would hurt, and she just laughed: “It’s like a facial for your feet.”
After an hour, my feet felt better than ever, even knowing I’d go back to destroying them the following morning on my daily run. But even the sheer fact of being outside and doing something “normal” again felt mentally therapeutic. It’s not unlike the initial days and months of the Great Recession, when expensive luxuries and trips might have suddenly seemed out of reach, but the small things like an ice cream cone suddenly tasted better than ever.
More recently, there has been a reexamination of the “lipstick index,” a term coined by Leonard Lauder, chairman of the board of Estée Lauder, used to describe increased sales of cosmetics during economic downturns. The idea is similar to the uptick in ice cream sales, in that consumers will turn to smaller and cheaper forms of retail therapy in the bad times. But with everyone wearing a face mask and so few events to attend right now, lipstick doesn’t have the appeal it once did. Instead, economists are suggesting an alternative—the “nail polish effect“—as nail care products spiked by more than 200% over the past four months.
There is no nail polish application at Medi Pedi, and the price points are different, but the essential concept is the same. Cheaper, but useful, retail products and basic restorative services are therapeutic—both mentally and physically—in this current period of economic and political uncertainty coupled with greatest public health crisis in a century. While the pandemic is still very much ongoing and truly nowhere is safe from the virus, there are some activities that are lower risk, and so if you take precautions seriously, even simple activities go a long away.
