Success Story: Kings Mill Cider gets creative on mitigating COVID impacts, keeping staff employed

If there are any traits that all successful business owners tend to possess, it’s creativity and flexibility, two characteristics made even more valuable since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. At Kings Mill Cider, business owners Kees Morsink and Margaret Van Helvoort have both of these in spades.

The couple opened Kings Mill Cider in 2018 and have been slowly establishing themselves in the cider industry, relying on their excellent, high-quality products as their key selling feature. Before the pandemic the cidery sold cider at local farmers’ markets and offered on-site tastings and sales, but when both those markets dried up in 2020, Kees and Margaret knew they needed to find other sources of revenue.

“We really had to expand because of COVID,”...