Corby Kummer on the Restaurateurs Urging Congress to Replenish the Restaurant Revitalization Fund

Sen. Elizabeth Warren sat down with Mass Restaurants United and local restaurateurs in Cambridge for a roundtable discussion on Jan. 25 to hear the struggles they’ve faced throughout the pandemic. Chief among them is a call to replenish the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF) as restaurateurs enter a third year of uncertainty during the pandemic.

Award-winning food writer Corby Kummer joined Boston Public Radio to share his thoughts on the major takeaways from the roundtable, as well as replenishing the RRF.

“It was a lot of restaurant people saying, ‘Hey, what is it with this administration? They promised us something,’” Kummer told Boston Public Radio. “But more than just complaining, they're advocating for [an additional] $60 billion in federal aid to the depleted Restaurant Revitalization Fund.”

Some participants at the Jan. 25 roundtable shared that their restaurants would not have survived if it weren’t for money received from the RRF; others expressed frustration, either finding out that their restaurants were ineligible or that they had been approved for money and had yet to receive it. Kummer said that while the Small Business Administration had good intentions with the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, a messy rollout led to the fund operating more like a lottery.

“The Biden administration wanted to prioritize restaurants owned by women, people of color, [and] veterans. They were supposed to be at the head of the line, and then a bunch of white, non-minority, non-women, males, [had] affirmative action challenges and said, ‘How dare you, I'm a struggling business man too. Give me the money,’” Kummer said. “Unfortunately, the challenges were upheld, but it put the whole thing into disarray and chaos.”

“Many of the restaurants that were supposed to be at the end of the line, for some quirk, got put at the head of the line. Suddenly they were in, and the money went out, whereas a lot of restaurants that had been approved were held in limbo, and then the fund ran out of money.”

During the wide-ranging interview, Kummer also discussed the Aspen Institute’s Food Is Medicine Initiative, as well as the growing number of restaurants getting rid of their landline phones for orders.

Kummer is the executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.