Purpose: This study aims to measure whether market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, and marketing capabilities affected the business performance of salted fish distribution in Kapuk warehouse, West Jakarta at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This prolonged and difficult pandemic has had an impact on the business of selling salted fish, challenging organisations’ ability to maintain business performance. Research design, data and methodology: This study uses a PLS-SEM model approach using Smart PLS 3.0 and a questionnaire as the instruments. The conditions during the observation include 77 distributors who chose to keep doing business, and the research sample were measured by the number of distributors (business actors or people in charge). In this study, the variables of marketing capabilities, market orientation, and entrepreneurial orientation were used to analyse business performance. Results: Interestingly, the results of the study succeeded in explaining that during a pandemic market, both entrepreneurial orientation and marketing ability affected current business performance, although marketing ability remains an inconsistent mediator. Conclusions: This result serves as a reminder that surviving is the priority which must be focused on now, rather than crafting strategies to excel in competition that consume valuable effort and resources. © 2021. The Author(s) This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://Creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.