EATER: What Restaurants Need Right Now to Actually Survive

As congressional leaders negotiate new measures to support businesses across virtually every industry during the Coronavirus crisis, EATER’s Caleb Pershan spoke to restaurant owners in cities across the country to learn what it would take to save their businesses in the wake of extended state-ordered closures that have all but shuttered much of the industry. 

Most insurers do not qualify the global pandemic as a “business interruption” event, and so business owners must look elsewhere for relief. 

“If a volcano miraculously appeared on the National Mall and the lava flowed up to Columbia Heights, the restaurant would be covered,” said Sarah Thompson, co-owner of Washington, D.C., restaurant the Queen’s English. “This pandemic is not covered.”

Restaurateurs are hoping for federal aid to cover fixed costs, including rent abatement or deferment, interest-free loans and tax deferrals, as well as financial support for employees, including paid sick leave and emergency universal income. 

Until such a robust federal package is introduced, if one ever is introduced, restaurant owners are counting on relief at the local level.

In response to a looming rent crisis, Los Angeles has declared a temporary moratorium on evictions which will cover businesses. The city of San Francisco has done the same. “One real estate executive said to me, ‘Andy, this kind of moratorium on evictions will have the unintended consequences of people not paying rent at all,” Peskoe says. “I asked him if he was sure it was really an ‘unintended’ consequence.”

Even if the industry’s full wishlist for local and federal support is fulfilled, the outlook for independent restaurants will remain dire. In the next three months, the industry is expected to decline by $225 billion. “Many, perhaps even most, restaurants in the country will never reopen,” Pershan concludes.

Read the full story at EATER.com

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