MANCHESTER, Conn. — Thousands of restaurants across Connecticut are still struggling to recover from the pandemic. Many of them were not able to receive help from the Restaurant Revitalization Program because funds ran out.
"It's absolutely helped us to stay afloat," said Erin Emmons, owner of Lucky Taco.
Thirteen hundred restaurants across Connecticut received their portion of the fund and Lucky Taco in Downtown Manchester was one of them.
Senator Blumenthal is now pushing for additional relief in the amount of 40-billion dollars for the 2,000 restaurants in Connecticut that never received any funds.
"The federal government through the restaurant revitalization program provided 301 million dollars to restaurants across Connecticut," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
For a year, just like everyone else, Lucky Taco had to put its business on pause.
"We actually closed our main restaurant for the winter of 2020 to 2021 and concentrated on takeout," added Emmons.
It is not just the pandemic causing this strain - it is labor shortage and supply chain issues.
"Labor shortages are definitely the number one supply chain issues absolutely. The increase of pricing obviously, has gas gone up and a lot of our items - meat as protein and cheese and dairy products - everything's gone up," said Emmons.
According to the National Restaurant Association, the initial rounds of the funds made possible by the American Rescue Plan saved over 900,000 jobs in the restaurant industry.
A second replenishment would save more than $1.6 million in additional jobs for wait staff, bartenders, chefs, and other service workers.
"It's still really really tough even though you may see restaurants busy - it's still really tough, there's still a lot of restaurants struggling every day to get by," said Yvette Tavares of the Connecticut Restaurant Association.
"You come down Manchester - it's the restaurants that are staples that keep us together," said Manchester Mayor Jay Moran.
Carmen Chau is an anchor and reporter at FOX61 News. She can be reached at cchau@fox61.com. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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