President Biden has signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law, creating the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund, which will allow restaurant owners with 20 or fewer locations to apply for tax-free grants of up to $5 million per location, or up to $10 million for multi-location operations.
Funds from the grants can be spent on a wider range of expenses than previous relief programs, including mortgages or rent, utilities, supplies, food and beverage inventory, payroll, and operational expenses. Five billion dollars of the fund will be set aside for restaurants with gross receipts under $500,000 and, for the first three weeks of the application period, the Small Business Administration will prioritize awarding grants for women-, veteran-, or socially and economically disadvantaged-owned businesses.
"These grants will inject a much-needed stimulus along the supply chain to begin to balance the economic damage done while restaurants have been struggling," National Restaurant Association president and CEO Tom Bené said in a statement. "We are still a long way from full recovery and it's likely more grant money will be needed to get us there, but today the industry has hope for the future."
“From the beginning, we knew that the pandemic would be the worst disaster to ever hit to the restaurant industry,” said Sean Kennedy, executive vice president of public affairs for the National Restaurant Association, in a statement. “We created a roadmap for Congress and the Administration to tools that already existed but could work better for restaurants, and the plan for creating crucial new support programs like the RRF. These tools created a framework for restaurants of all types and sizes to survive, and now with the RRF in place, they will be the foundation on which we begin to rebuild.”
Related: Congress Gives Final Approval on Relief Package; House Small Business Committee Agrees on PPP Extension.