News — Economy

The lockdowns last March nearly spelled doom for Joe Squared, a pizzeria and music venue in Baltimore’s arts district. The popular eatery already had some outstanding debts from a recent expansion; all of a sudden it had to curtail its hours and shut its dining room. General Manager Okan Arabacioğlu recalls frantically trying to make the numbers work with owner Joe Edwardsen, but they decided they couldn’t sacrifice the quality of the coal-fired pizza or the living wage they paid employees. “So at that point,” Arabacioğlu says, “we were like, let’s wrap it up.” Joe’s closed its doors for the...