With large corporate restaurant chains receiving emergency small business loans, the national restaurant community is in an uproar. Ruth’s Chris Steak House, subsidiary of Ruth’s Hospitality Group, Inc. received $20 million in SBA loans for COVID-19 crisis-relief and now Shake Shack, which received a $10 million bailout last week, is returning the money after outrage in the industry.
The program was originally designed for companies with less than 500 employees, but a loophole exempted restaurants and hotels from that limit if they had less than 500 employees per location. Many small restaurants didn’t receive a dime of assistance and now the fund is out of money.
