Restaurant executives plead with Trump for more flexibility with PPP loans amid coronavirus pandemic

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Restaurant industry calls for $240B coronavirus relief plan

Sean Kennedy, the executive vice president of public affairs for the National Restaurant Association, discusses the industry’s struggle to survive amid coronavirus pandemic.

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Restaurant executives and industry leaders pushed President Trump on Monday to make fixes in the $660 billion small-business aid program that was enacted amid the coronavirus pandemic to allow them to get their businesses running again and rehire workers.

Executives from fast food eateries to Michelin-starred restaurants pressed Trump during a roundtable meeting to move to change the rules of the Paycheck Protection Plan so that they have more time to spend the money from their loans in rehiring employees.

Under the plan’s current rules, loans are forgiven as long as borrowers spent 75 percent on payroll within eight weeks of getting the money and only 25 percent of the loan can be spent on rent, mortgage interest, and utilities. Executives are asking the White House and Congress to extend the period to at least 24 weeks.

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“If those changes are made that will be the thing,” said Will Guidara, of the Independent Restaurant Coalition and restauranteur behind New York’s Eleven Madison Park. “We need to build the house first.”

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Trump has been calling for Congress to approve a tax deductibility for corporations spending money at restaurants and for a break in payroll taxes as ways to save the ailing restaurants, but executives jointly agreed on Monday that the fixes in the PPP were more important than deductibility and doing away with payroll taxes.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has promised that “we’ll look at a technical fix.”

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“One of the things we’re particularly sympathetic to are the restaurants,” Mnuchin said in an interview on CNBC earlier this month. “Many of the restaurants are just beginning to open up and have said that they’d really like to hold the money. They can’t do that; that’s not something we can do. But we’ll look at a technical fix.”

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Monday’s roundtable is not the first time members of the restaurant have aired their grievances about the need for more flexibility within the PPP.

“As currently structured, the PPP creates an unworkable structure for the vast majority of restaurants,” Sean Kennedy, the executive vice president of public affairs for the National Restaurant Association, told the Wall Street Journal. “As states begin lifting their stay-at-home orders, it will take some weeks—or months—for restaurants to ramp up operations and restock inventory, recruit and retrain staff, comply with new health codes, etc.”