‘Dropping like flies,’ Kentucky restaurants plead for help from Mitch McConnell
Top Kentucky chefs, bourbon makers and more on Friday called on Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell to rescue the hospitality industry, which is in dire straits after six months of pandemic restrictions.
“None of us can say with certainty that we have a month left,” said chef Ouita Michel, who owns eight restaurants in Central Kentucky and is a member of the Independent Restaurant Coalition.
The coalition wants the Senate Majority Leader to include a proposed $120 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund for independent bars and restaurants in McConnell’s latest stimulus plan.
Without direct immediate aid, the state’s 203,000 restaurant workers face massive layoffs, the chefs said.
If the country had been able to get the pandemic under control so that business could stay at 50 percent or greater, most restaurants would have been able to break even and survive, she said.
But that has not happened.
At the urging of White House health officials, Gov. Andy Beshear on Monday closed Kentucky bars and cut indoor restaurant seating to 25 percent for at least two weeks in an effort to stem the surge of COVID-19 cases that have made July the deadliest month so far in the state.
Other states including Ohio and Georgia have ordered bars to cut off sales of alcohol at 10 p.m.
McConnell’s office said in a response Friday that the latest pandemic aid package does include another round of Paycheck Protection Program funding to help restaurants and other small businesses.
“This is all about the workers because a huge percentage of Americans making $40,000 and less have been hit the hardest and they’re mainly in the hospitality industry - hotels, restaurants… We want those hotels and restaurants to survive and to thrive and the provisions in there related to them help them keep their doors open so these folks have a job to go back to,” McConnell said earlier this week.
However, the restaurateurs say more loans won’t help.
Chef Ed Lee, a James Beard award winning chef who owns 610 Magnolia and Whiskey Dry in Louisville, said that restaurants and bars need direct aid, not more debt.
“They already are dropping like flies. We’ve seen restaurants closing in Louisville everyday, and around the country at alarming rates,” Lee said. “If there is another complete shutdown or the 25 percent holds, we probably have another month before to declare bankruptcy.”
Michel and Lee, along with bourbon maker Preston Van Winkle of Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery and Patrick Hallahan of the rock band My Morning Jacket spoke on a conference call with journalists on Friday.
The restaurants also support a network of Kentucky tourism, including the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and other distilleries, as well as the state’s racing industry and small farms, Michel pointed out.
Van Winkle said that the bourbon industry relies on restaurants and bars. Carryout cocktails and selling bottles won’t keep those places afloat, he said.
“If they can’t stay open selling the products that drive so much of the bourbon tourism, there’s just no coming back from that, unfortunately,” Van Winkle said.
Hallahan, of the Louisville-based band My Morning Jacket, is also a restaurateur.
“One of my greatest fears if we don’t act now we will be silencing a massive piece of community culture in our country and in Kentucky,” Hallahan said. “We take it for granted what these special places mean to our communities … losing them forever will be devastating.”
Michel said that her business is operating at about 28 percent of normal revenue; together with PPP loans, she said that she hopes they can stay open through the end of the year.
But the uncertainty of reopening and then facing another shutdown will make that “damned hard” without direct aid, Michel said.
They said that the hospitality industry received only about 8 percent of previous rounds of PPP loans, and many small operators were either shut out or could not navigate the complexities of the program.
While many restaurants have pivoted to takeout, that isn’t generating anything close to the revenue that normal business would.
“In April we had close to $1 million in events planned ... Then the Keeneland meet canceled,” Michel said. “And the entirety of our second quarter was shut down. ... If we don’t get people back to the races, to the bourbon trail and out in Kentucky, in terms of the tourism it’s not just 2020, it’s 2021, it’s 2022 (that will be impacted.) That’s why we need a CARES Act specific for this industry. We are asking we also be considered part of the infrastructure of this country.”
This story was originally published July 31, 2020 at 12:45 PM.
