IRC demands that Congress create a $120B restaurant stabilization fund
Today was a BIG day for our movement.
In case you missed it, we sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to establish a restaurant stabilization fund and hosted a Zoom town hall with over 2,600 people from across the country. You can access the call recording here.
During the town hall, José Andrés, Nina Compton, Rosa Garcia, Naomi Pomeroy, and Andrew Zimmern outlined our call on Congress to create a $120 billion stabilization fund to provide structured relief to the 500,000 independent restaurants across the country struggling to survive the COVID-19 crisis. This fund would ensure restaurants will receive the necessary capital to reopen and stay open, and should include the following principles:
No publicly-traded restaurant should be allowed to access the fund.
No large restaurant chain or franchise should be allowed to access the fund.
Prioritize marginalized communities.
The fund should last through 2020.
Bars and wine bars should be allowed to participate.
You can help make sure Congress gets the message. Email your reps here on our website — it only takes a moment and can make a difference.
Finally, we also wanted to share that the Small Business Administration (SBA) issued additional guidance for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) borrowers late last night. The full guidance is linked here, but to summarize:
The SBA confirms that the origination date is when the loan is disbursed, and that the lender is required to disburse the entirety of the loan at once.
It goes on to say that if the borrower has not submitted the final paperwork, such as a signed promissory note, the borrower has 20 days to complete the paperwork before the lender is required to cancel the loan. We read this to mean that a borrower might be able to delay disbursement.
We are not recommending borrowers intentionally delay disbursement because if the program runs out of money again, borrowers may not be able to finalize your loan, but we wanted to make you aware of this new guidance. As more is released we will pass it on to you directly.
As José Andrés said on our national video conference today, we’re fighting to give our millions of workers a fighting chance. Thank you for fighting with us.
