PORTLAND, Maine — Restaurants have been some of the Maine businesses hit hardest by the pandemic, and while the new COVID relief plan signed into law Sunday night doesn’t have a specific benefit for restaurants, many should still be able to get some significant help from the new law.
That comes from Steve Hewins, executive director of Hospitality Maine, which represents hotels and restaurants across the state.
Hewins said restaurants can now take advantage of the renewed Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was popular in the first relief plan last spring. The PPP has been funded at close to $300 billion and will provide loans, some of which become grants, to eligible small businesses that in turn use the money to pay employees.
Hewins said the program should allow many struggling restaurants and their workers to survive through the typically slow winter months.
“This will get people through the darkest days of winter,” Hewins said. “And then when springtime rolls around and the new federal government is in, they will look at it more strategically and more will be available.”
The need, he said, is clear: Maine’s hospitality industry has had 30,000 workers unemployed this year.
Hewins said many of those businesses are also getting an end-of-the-year boost from the state, which is using $53 million of federal funds from the original COVID relief plan to provide grants to hotels, restaurants and retail businesses hit hard by the pandemic. Businesses have to show sale tax receipts of least 25 percent less than last year to qualify.
Hewins said those checks are being issued this week because the federal CARES Act funds are supposed to be used before the end of the year.