Opinion: I Almost Lost My Business In March. More Stimulus Will Prevent Me From Losing It For Good

On March 19th, I wrote the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write: a letter terminating 182 dedicated team members from our ranks. That left four of us — me, my business partner, our controller and our bookkeeper — to sift through the debris as we shut down three outstanding Mississippi restaurants and prepared for what seemed to be an inevitable end to our 26-year history of serving the public. It was devastating. The forced lockdowns meant we no longer had an income to support our restaurants, and we still had long-term leases and loans to worry about. It was impossible to reconcile the fact that a business we had built over decades had come to a screeching halt within a period of just a few days, due to no fault of our own. This was the mid-March reality as the pandemic gripped the nation and we went into stay-at-home lockdown. Eight months later, as the pandemic rages on, we see small business after small business once again shuttering operations with no lifeline to hold on to until the vaccine arrives and the economy recovers. Read more at CNN Business.