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'It Almost Feels Cruel': Restaurant Owner Denied Federal Restaurant Revitalization Grant

Empty tables stand at a restaurant in Manhattan. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Empty tables stand at a restaurant in Manhattan. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Restaurant owners across the country have been carefully reading the lists of restaurants that received federal grants through the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund, a COVID-19 relief program administered by the Small Business Administration.

The grants ranged from several thousand to $10 million and were handed out to about a third of the restaurants that applied, leaving others scratching their heads as to why they weren’t accepted while similar neighboring restaurants might have been.

The program has now run dry, as a bipartisan group of lawmakers pushes for another $60 billion to add to the till.

Here & Now‘s Robin Young gets an overview of the program from Amanda Kludt, editor-in-chief at Eater.com, and a personal account from Steve Postal, chef and owner of Commonwealth in Cambridge in Massachusetts.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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