A11
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 2021
q
DOW
32,825.95 -127.51
BRIEFING
Home foreclosures
rare amid COVID-19
Lender moratoriums
are keeping home fore-
closures at unheard-of
low levels.
In February, only
11,281 nationwide home
foreclosure notices were
recorded — down 77%
from a year earlier, ac-
cording to the latest re-
port from Attom Data
Solutions.
“Extensions to the
federal government’s
foreclosure moratorium
and CARES Act mortgage
forbearance program con-
tinue to keep foreclosure
activity historically low,”
Rick Sharga, executive vice
president of RealtyTrac,
an Attom Data Solutions
company, said in the re-
port. “These government
actions, and the efforts
of lenders and mortgage
servicing companies, have
helped millions of home-
owners avoid foreclosure
during a year-long global
pandemic and a recession
that resulted in 22 million
lost jobs.”
About 2.6 million U.S.
homeowners are still re-
ceiving payment forbear-
ance from lenders be-
cause of the pandemic.
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More infusion for Bend pot platform
Dutchie gets $200M, called the largest venture capital
investment for a local software company ‘by far’
BY SUZANNE ROIG
The Bulletin
Dutchie, an online cannabis sales
platform created in Bend, has received
yet another round of venture capital,
this time it’s $200 million .
The latest funding, which typically
is used to prepare a company to be ac-
quired, go public or undergo serious
expansion, is led by Tiger Global, an in-
vestment firm that focuses on internet
companies. Other investors include San
Francisco-based Dragoneer and Cali-
fornia-based DFJ Growth.
“These are all tier 1 investors,” said
Ross Lipson, co-founder of Dutchie.
“These are world-renowned investors
that have continually invested in dis-
ruptive tech leaders.”
This recent round of funding brings
the total investment to $253 million
over the past four years, Lipson said. In-
vestors for previous rounds were Snoop
Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital, Thrive Cap-
ital, Gron Ventures, former Starbucks
Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz,
the Brooklyn Nets basketball star Kevin
Durant and tech companies like Shut-
terstock and DoorDash.
Securing this kind of venture capital is
big news for Central Oregon, said Roger
Lee, Economic Development for Central
Oregon CEO. As the region’s business
development nonprofit, it signifies to
others that Central Oregon can support
a growing firm with this kind of market
valuation and investor capital, Lee said.
See Dutchie / A12
Submitted photo
Ross Lipson, left, and Zach Lipson are the co-founders of Dutchie, a Bend cannabis sales
software firm.
Opioid bankruptcy
plan gets pushback
Some state attorneys
general and opioid addic-
tion activists pushed back
Tuesday against a settle-
ment offer from OxyCon-
tin maker Purdue Pharma,
saying it didn’t include
enough money and goes
too far in protecting the
company and family
members who own it
from future liability.
A group of nearly half
the state attorneys general
said it was disappointed
in the plan Purdue filed
late Monday night in fed-
eral bankruptcy court and
some said they would
seek changes.
The $10 billion plan
calls for turning the phar-
maceutical giant into a
new company, with its
profits going toward ef-
forts to combat the opi-
oid crisis. Members of the
family who own Purdue
would contribute about
$4.3 billion.
A new arm of the
transformed company
would produce addiction
treatment and overdose
antidote drugs .
Most of the money
would go to trusts that
would distribute it to
state and local govern-
ments. They would be
allowed to use it only on
initiatives that address
the opioid crisis, which
has contributed to more
than 470,000 deaths in
the U.S. since 2000.
Retail sales drop
3% after soaring
Americans spent less
last month, partly due
to bad weather in parts
of the country that kept
shoppers away from
stores.
Retail sales fell a sea-
sonally adjusted 3% in
February from the month
before, the U.S. Commerce
Department said Tuesday.
The decline comes after
retail sales soared in Janu-
ary as people spent $600
stimulus checks sent at
the end of last year. In fact,
the Commerce Depart-
ment revised its January
number upwards to 7.6%
from its previously re-
ported rise of 5.3%.
Retail sales are ex-
pected to rise again in
March as many Amer-
icans get $1,400 direct
payments, part of a $1.9
trillion COVID-19 relief
package that was signed
into law last week.
— Bulletin wire reports
AP photos
LEFT: San Bars owner Chris Marshall prepares an alcohol-free cocktail in Austin, Texas, earlier this month. RIGHT: A customer drinks a cocktail, also sans booze, at San Francisco’s zero-proof bar
Ocean Beach Cafe. According to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, global consumption of zero-proof beer, wine and spirits is growing two to three times faster than overall alcohol consumption.
BUZZ WITHOUT THE BOOZE
Alcohol-free bars are opening around the world as more people go sober
operating officer for the Americas at
here’s something missing from
IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.
a new wave of bars opening
Last year, alcohol consumption in
around the world: Alcohol.
10 key markets — including the U.S.,
Aimed at the growing
Germany, Japan and Brazil — fell 5%,
number of people exploring
IWSR said. Consumption of low- and
sobriety, the bars pour adult drinks like
no-alcohol drinks rose 1% in that same
craft cocktails without the booze. At 0%
time period.
Non-Alcohol Experience, a futuristic
Alcohol still far outsells low- and
bar in Tokyo, patrons can sip a mix of
no-alcohol drinks. Drinkers in those
nonalcoholic white wine, sake and cran-
key markets consumed 9.7 billion 9-liter
berries from a sugar-rimmed glass. On
cases of alcohol in 2020, compared to 292
a recent evening at Sans Bar in Austin,
million 9-liter cases of low- and no-al-
Texas, customers gathered at outdoor
cohol beverages. But Rand notes that
tables, enjoying live music, bottles of al-
global consumption of low- and no-alco-
cohol-free IPA and drinks like the water-
hol beer, wine and spirits is growing two
melon mockarita, which is made with a
to three times faster than overall alcohol
tequila alternative.
consumption.
Sober bars aren’t a new phenomenon.
An explosion of new products is also
They first appeared in the 19th century
fueling sales. There are drinks from
as part of the temperance movement. But
smaller makers like Chicago’s Ritual
while previous iterations were geared to- These alcohol-free spirits are for sale at Spirited Away, New York’s first “booze-free bottle shop.” Zero Proof — which opened in 2019
ward nondrinkers or people in recovery,
and makes no-alcohol whiskey, gin and
“It’s just easier,” said Sondra Prineaux, a regular cus- tequila — and big companies like Anheuser-Busch,
the newer venues welcome the sober as well as the curious.
“A lot of people just want to drink less,” said Chris tomer at Sans Bar. “I don’t have to worry about leaving which introduced alcohol-free Budweiser Zero last year.
Marshall, Sans Bar’s founder.
my car here and getting an Uber home. I’ll wake up
“I have the wonderful problem of too many great op-
Marshall, who has been sober for 14 years, opened without a headache.”
tions,” said Douglas Watters, who opened Spirited Away,
the bar after serving as an addiction counselor. But he
Abstinence challenges like Dry January — which a New York shop that sells nonalcoholic beer, wine and
estimates 75% of his customers also drink alcohol out- began in 2013 — and a growing interest in health and spirits, in November.
side of his bar.
wellness are behind the trend, said Brandy Rand, chief
See Booze / A12
BY DEE-ANN DURBIN • Associated Press
T
Unemployment
Oregon rate still high: 6.1%
BY MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
Oregon added 13,900 jobs
last month, nearly twice as
many as it gained in January,
but the jobless rate remains
stubbornly high.
Unemployment was 6.1%
in February, according to new
data out Tuesday from the
Oregon Employment Depart-
ment. That’s on par with the
national rate and down just
a tenth of a percentage point
from January.
While the jobless rate has
fallen for 10 straight months,
the rate of decline has slowed to
a crawl. Oregon remains down
more than 150,000 jobs from
February 2020. Oregon has re-
gained a little less than half of
the jobs it lost in the early days
of the coronavirus pandemic.
Last month’s job gains were
almost entirely in the leisure
and hospitality sector. Restau-
rants and bars began reopen-
ing to indoor service last
month in many of Oregon’s
largest counties after a three-
month shutdown triggered by
a steep rise in coronavirus in-
fections and deaths.
Oregon relaxed those rules in
February as the outbreak faded.
The reopenings in Oregon’s
largest county didn’t get under-
way until midway through the
month, though, and their re-
bound may have been hindered
somewhat by a snow and ice
storm that hit the Portland area
around Valentine’s Day.
See Jobless / A12
Wyden: Make benefits created
during COVID-19 permanent
BY MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden
wants to see some of the pro-
grams created to help jobless
Americans during the pan-
demic made permanent, and
wants to see national stan-
dards put in place that set a
minimum threshold for un-
employment benefits and a
nationwide technology plat-
form to pay them out.
“Senators are going to have
a problem going back to yes-
teryear,” the Oregon Demo-
crat said in a call with report-
ers Friday.
In March 2020, Congress
extended the duration of
jobless benefits that usu-
ally expire after as few as 26
weeks. It also made millions
of self-employed workers el-
igible for benefits through a
new program, Pandemic Un-
employment Assistance.
See Wyden / A12