Good news first: We got our first financial assistance, and it was from the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce. We received a $1,000 grant, and while you might think that’s not a lot, we’re in one of those phases where every little bit is huge.
We’ve also launched local delivery, which you’ve probably seen if you’re reading this. And we’re all still healthy.
GLVCC
Thank you.
Okay, now the bad news:
As I mentioned in the last post, we didn’t get the PPP first round. That’s in part because of what I described, and part, we all learned, because some very not-small businesses got tens of millions so that they could not give it to anyone who works in a restaurant. The responses to this were… mixed. I would say that, personally, all of the commentary I got from friends fell into three categories:
Yep, that sucks. Those guys should not have abused the program like this.
What did you expect? The system is rigged, man! Don’t you see?! RIGGED!
I mean, they didn’t break the law, so… get your stuff in faster next time.
I will let you decide which of those you think was most helpful and supportive to us during a bad time. I will just make a comment that: if you’re a non-entrepreneur telling an entrepreneur about the imbalances in the system, please know that you sound like a fan telling a AA baseball player that hitting a curveball is hard.
Shake Shack got $10M, then announced they’d give it back. Plenty of people thought they were jerks for applying to begin with, and maybe they are just giving it back out of sheer self interest (they got way more value in positive press, just as I suspect Ruth’s Chris may look back on the $40M as not worth the beating they received, especially if they’re pressured into returning it). I saw Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti on CNN, and he sounded reasonable to me: People have already forgotten how little guidance we got on this program two weeks ago, and they had no understanding of how much their request would affect smaller businesses. Plenty of people disagree with me, though. Here’s a video if you want to try to judge the inner emotional state of a rich guy for yourself:
Plenty appear to have doubled down on the stupid first-come, first-serve way of administering aid. Programs are now announcing when their applications will be live, which has basically three effects:
It absolutely ensures that the site will crash
It puts businesses with owners who are doing anything at that time at a massive disadvantage.
It feeds panic and anxiety
We had one this week that went live at 3pm. I was teaching, so I asked Mike if he could be available. He rearranged his schedule to be available. By repeatedly reloading, he was able to log in and get a form submitted by 4. By 4:30, the application was closed. We received a confirmation email at 5am the next morning, so our application got in.
I’m not sure how we’ve done it, but we’ve managed to convert emergency financial aid into a release line during Tampa Beer Week.
A modest proposal: Open applications at 12:01am on a day, announce at 8am that it’s open and that applications will be accepted for a set amount of time (say, two weeks), after which all applications will be evaluated.
Today, Congress is supposed to approve another 400bn to the program, so either we’ll be re-evaluated or PF Chang’s will get some cash. Who can say?
Pennsylvania’s noble governor has released his “plan” to reopen, which consists of loose guidelines and no timelines. It’s clear that operations like ours will be the last to resume normal service, and it’s not clear at all what will come before that stage or when. Which, to be clear, is entirely correct; no one knows where we’re going next, or even vaguely when that might be, until we have testing for antibodies widely available. So we, like everyone else, are trying to be patient and compassionate as everyone hashes out contingency plans and options.
