WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — The shutdown of all non-life sustaining businesses in Pennsylvania has left sidewalks and stores in downtown Williamsport empty.
During the shutdown, many restaurants in Lycoming County have to rely on deliveries and to-go orders.
However, Spkye Krepshaw, a professor at Penn College who teaches web design, noticed several restaurants did not have their own website.
"I reached out to those restaurants via Facebook messenger and said hey my name is Spyke, I work at the college and this is what I do, I'd like to offer my services to you free of charge to hopefully get your business up and online if you need it," said Krepshaw.
Krepshaw says the responses were overwhelming, but then he came up with a solution.
"So, I thought okay, this is going to be too much for me to handle personally, what can I do? And that's when I had the idea that I have a bunch of students at my disposal, and this would be a great project for them with real-world experience."
This free online service won't apply to just restaurants, every business in Lycoming County is eligible.
"It will be a simple templated website with their logo and their color scheme, would love to have their business description obviously that says a little bit about them as a business with contact information and then the piece that matters the most is that e-commerce piece."
Krepshaw has been working with the Lycoming County Chamber of Commerce to help get this project started. So far, dozens of businesses have reached out.
"Not everybody thought they needed a website up until this point, you were able to do commerce as you normally did and now that's changed so, from that aspect of it, this is a way to be able to help a number of businesses," said Lycoming County Chamber of Commerce President Jason Fink.
Any business in Lycoming County that is in need of a website can send an email to Spyke Krepshaw. He can be reached at rmk3@pct.edu.