PRLA Restaurant & Lodging Matters Summer 2020

6 •  PENNSYLVANIA RESTAURANT & LODGING matters  •  Summer 2020 CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE AS THIS ISSUE of Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Matters focuses on operating successfully despite current limitations, I suspect you are reading this now because you hope to learn some things of value to you and your business. Though I am certain that you will glean some great learnings from this issue, I want to point out that your most valuable asset, currently, is your own sense of hope. Hope is the fuel of the human engine, I believe. Hope will lead you to identify an opportunity, evaluate the challenges in achieving success, and push you past those challenges. Therefore, hope is very valuable to us all. It has also been in short supply, of late, due to unprecedented circumstances. Where I have seen hope shining brightly is in our staff here at the PRLA. Though a leaner team now, they have attacked every opportunity to help us as members and as an industry succeed. Their vigor and energy seem truly inspired. I thank them. At the helm, John Longstreet has faced withering setbacks on a near daily basis. In each situation I have observed him focusing on the ways we might achieve the positive outcomes we strive for while accepting the current disappointment as reality. That is how hope functions, as faith in the future. We believe that on our next turn we might advance our position. Let me conclude with William Faulkner’s great observation that “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” A new horizon is there for us, in which we hope for better circumstances. Stay strong in the swim. Sincerely, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. Bill Covaleski Founder, Victory Brewing Company Downingtown