Not even just restaurants but most small businesses are struggling right now. My family owns a small business that has a small retail shop and does contracting work in peoples homes. We decided to shut down this week and next week as we are in a high corona zone and it’s very difficult having zero income coming in. We are going to pay our employees for this week and next week (even though we don’t have to) to cover the gap of them signing up for unemployment. That money is coming straight out of our personal savings account.

We have been open for over 25 years and I’m sure we’ll be fine but it’s definitely not going to be easy. We have been calling distributors putting a hold on our shipments, cancelling orders, calling customers to postpone/cancel jobs.

We pay about 50k a year in insurance, we have our mortgage on our store, we are still paying for our employees health insurance even though no one is working, still paying for our utilities, garbage pickup, taxes, the list goes on. Basically just trying to reduce our costs as much as possible right now.

We usually bring in over 100k a month to keep all our bills paid and employees paid. Being closed this month for at least two weeks so far will definitely be a struggle. We may not have any income for this whole month. (Or who knows how long until this corona virus is over) A lot of small businesses, while profitable, still rely on steady money coming in so it can be used for day to day business expenses. Of course we have savings to float us for a while but if this lasts longer than a few weeks then who knows what will happen.