Episode 216: NRA Policy Head Breaks Down SBA Logjam

The SBA has rejected yet another pool of Restaurant Revitalization Fund grant applicants because of pending litigation against the agency over their racial and gender preferences in distributing initial grants. As a result, thousands of restaurant owners still find themselves in limbo. We sit down with Sean Kennedy, EVP of Public Affairs for the National Restaurant Association to get the latest on the state of play of the situation and what the road ahead looks like. And the larger legacy players in the industry seemed to have stabilized financially in the wake of the pandemic. We sit down with Michael Halen, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Senior Restaurant Analyst and take a look at the financial landscape, the impact of both stimulus checks on sales and unemployment checks on labor, and what the overall economic health of the industry is right now. And we saw a slew of local elections across the country this week, most notably in New York City and in Buffalo where the country will now have its first socialist mayor in nearly 60 years. We’ll discuss what happened and as always what it means moving ahead. We’ll discuss those issues and wrap it up with the legislative scorecard.