Small Businesses See A Long Road To Recovery After The Hollywood Strikes End

Sarah Clifford runs Animal Savvy, a small business that provides animals for television and film productions. She reckons it will take her around five to 10 years to recover because of the recently concluded strikes by Hollywood actors and writers.

When one of her own dogs needed emergency surgery that she said cost close to $16,000, she had to max out her credit cards and use up all her savings. She said she took out a loan.

“The hardest thing for me, of course, is my obligation to take care of my animals because they didn't ask to be my animals,” Clifford said. “They have no idea the strike is going on. I always put them first. I've used all my unemployment checks to feed the animals and I come last.”

She has 16 dogs and three cats – all working animals – a potbelly pig, who has since retired from showbiz, around a dozen chickens and roosters, four birds and fish. She said she has been a “protective parent” making sure their needs are met and that they are getting exercise and training in her ranch in the Antelope Valley, between Acton and Palmdale.

But, she said, it hasn’t been easy. The high energy dogs, especially the Rottweilers, she said, are destructive and chew everything if she doesn’t meet their needs.

“If you don't give them a job and you don't give them enough stimulation, then they'll become destructive, but I don't get mad at them or upset,” she said.

Clifford had dogs acting in Hulu’s The Old Man, which had to stop production because of the strike. She is hoping to get on a call next week to figure out when shooting will resume.

“I can't speculate, but I'm hoping no later than January just because, now that the strike's over and the holidays are beginning, I don't know how that's going to impact the schedule,” she said.

Sarah Clifford at the movie premier for Hulu show The Old Man.

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Courtesy of Sarah Clifford

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LAist also reached out to two businesses we had spoken with back in July to see how the strikes have ultimately affected them .

Burbank-based event planner Peggy Phillip, who runs Dial M Productions, said business has been slow.

“People were not quite sure what they were supposed to be doing,” she said. “People are striking and trying to figure out where their next meal is coming from, the party business goes down.”

Events in the corporate world, Phillip said, stopped. The strikes affected everybody.

“When you're living in LA, and you're not working or you're affected by the strike, you're not going to have a big birthday party, for example,” she said. “You're going to do something a little bit smaller because you don't know how long your savings is going to hold out.”

Phillip thinks it will be the New Year before people begin returning to work.

And the type of events companies will host, Phillip predicts, will change too. When employees returned back to work after the COVID-19 pandemic, companies held team building events. She reckons there will be more of those instead of parties now that the strikes are over, where employees can “meet everybody and let's make this a fun time.”

Another “company town” business in Burbank is Sotta. Amber Dedman, the general manager of the Mediterranean restaurant located across the street from Disney, said the strikers would come in daily and that helped the restaurant stay afloat in an uncertain time.

“I know there's a lot of other businesses in the Burbank area and across L.A. that definitely suffered, but luckily we did have their support,” she said. “We just stayed by their side throughout this whole thing, and hopefully they continue to be returned customers and don't forget about us.”