Last winter-season of the fabled Polar Vortex, Chiberia and countless Instagram videos of people tossing boiling water into subzero air-was brutal. This upcoming winter could be nearly as bad, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac.
People survive by piling on the blankets and stuffing themselves into extra pairs of socks. But how do small businesses survive in a city where the mercury falls to the 30s or lower five months out of the year?
Well, some of them don't. Colleen Schmidt closed her Lincoln Park boutique, Thread Lounge, in the spring-and said it was the difficult winter that did her in.
"That's the winter that led to me leaving Chicago for good," she said by phone from California, saying no business could survive "when you have a freestanding store that's 4,400 square feet and nobody walks into it for three months because it's too cold to leave the apartment."
"Literally nobody would walk into the store for a week at a time. How do you run a business like that?" she said. "Our summers are busy, but they're not so busy that we can [only] be open 50 percent of the year. It's not feasible. That's ridiculous."
Other business owners said they were crossing their fingers that this winter wouldn't put too much of a dent in their bottom lines. Here are some of their survival strategies.
Spend money to make money
Venetia Edakkunnathu, owner of Roots Smoke & Vapor Shop in Uptown, said she nearly doubled her spending on Yelp advertisements this past winter-Roots' first winter in business.
"You need to do things to bring people in in the winter," Edakkunnathu said. "Sales, Facebook advertising. We spent a lot more money."
As a result, she said, Roots did pretty well during its first Chicago winter, despite closing for a few days in January.
"I don't know if it was just so cold people wanted to smoke more," she said.
Think local-VERY local
Lots of customers at Paperish Mess, a gift store and gallery in West Town, live within a few blocks of the store, said co-owner Lisa Muscato.
"We discovered over the first couple months of us opening, it really was people who lived within a few blocks [who] would stop in all the time and we'd get to know their names and their faces," she said.
Bottom line: When customers feel loyal to their neighborhoods, they will feel loyal to their neighborhood businesses-even when it's 20 below.
Budget for the winter
It might be inevitable that the success of the summer months has to carry the harsher winter months.
"You know certain times of the year are going to be totally great," said Sean Murty of Paperish Mess. "Then you just have to budget for the part of the year that's not so great. It's pretty obvious, like, February and March are never great months."
Focus on a specialty product
"People need their tobacco no matter what the weather is," Edakkunnathu said. And as word got out that Roots sells e-cigarette products, the shop built a loyal following-now, people come from as far as the northern suburbs to buy e-cig products from Edakkunnathu.
Location is key
Roots is right near the Sheridan Red Line station, and gets plenty of foot traffic from commuters. Paperish Mess opened in late 2012, just as Ukrainian Village started getting hot.
"When we first were opening up, there wasn't even much going on in this neighborhood yet," Murty said. "And the timing was great, because it seems like a lot of people had the same idea."