COVID-19: San Mateo restaurants and breweries could get grant of up to $10K, establishments have closed their doors.
Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P].
The economic impact generated by the COVID-19 pandemic that prompted the closures in the local food and beverage industry has been significant, to the extent that many of these establishments have closed their doors permanently.
Currently, there is a one-of-a-kind grant program in San Mateo County that focuses on restaurants, breweries and wineries, with funding of more than $2 million to help businesses that have not qualified for previous grants.
Thus, the San Mateo County Emergency Fund's Restaurant, Brewery, and Winery Assistance Grant Program will provide these establishments with grants of up to $10,000 each for eligible establishments to ensure continued operation and help cover the businesses' ongoing operating expenses.
Operating expenses to be covered include, for example: rent, payroll, and modifications needed to the facility to provide indoor and outdoor food services on site.
San Mateo County said it is keeping the grant application process as simple as possible by eliminating the first-come, first-served system and instead giving businesses two weeks to apply.
The application portal began this Monday, February 22 and will remain open until Monday, March 8, 2021 at 12 noon, for more information and to apply you can access to the website www.smcstrong.org.
After applicants answer about 20 questions to determine program eligibility, a lottery system will choose about 200 businesses for grants of up to $10,000.
Businesses will be able to use the money to pay rent, buy equipment, and pay employees. They will not need to show proof of how they spent the grant funds or return it at any time. The application will be available in English, Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog.
It should be noted that the applicant does not need to be a U.S. citizen or legal resident to submit an application, they just need to provide evidence of eligibility and the required documentation, the county notes.
And that is, despite San Mateo County returning to purple at the end of January 2021, the economic impact of the closures, according to the National Restaurant Association's fifth national membership survey, completed in early December 2020, 87 percent of full-service restaurants - independents, chains and franchises - report an average 36 percent drop in sales revenue.
In that sense, for an industry with an average profit margin of 5.0 to 6.0 percent, the situation is simply unsustainable.
The vast majority of the restaurants that closed their doors permanently were well-established businesses that were part of the landscape of their communities. On average, these restaurants had been in business for 16 years, and 16 percent had been open for at least 30 years.
In December 2020, the San Mateo County Economic Development Partnership, the San Mateo County Chamber, the San Mateo Credit Union Community Fund, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative began discussions around the establishment of a "Restaurant Assistance Grant Program" for independently owned restaurants in South San Mateo and Palo Alto County that have been negatively impacted by the public health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
