Published: 8/3/2020 6:00:51 AM
I take great pride in being part of a vast food service distribution network industry that totals more than $300 billion in annual sales and keeps America fed.
Our industry employs 350,000 Americans who are responsible for ensuring that the food produced by America’s farmers and manufacturers is delivered safely to the kitchens, shelves and pantries of our nation’s restaurants, schools, hotels, hospitals, entertainment venues, military bases, and other public service institutions.
We are bigger than the airline industry, but with thinner operating margins.
Congress must act now to help preserve this essential industry in the next round of stimulus.
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on food service distributors has been devastating. Industry analysts expect the industry to lose $110 billion in sales by the end of 2020, and that figure doesn’t take into account the recent re-closures of indoor dining in states with rising COVID cases.
We need to make sure our small, independently owned restaurants survive this crisis. Restaurants rely on the credit provided by food service distributors – many of which are small- to mid-sized businesses – to buy the food and products necessary to serve their customers.
In short, restaurants cannot recover without us.
As restaurants work to reopen, they are facing reduced capacity and other restrictions. Even in good times, restaurants operate on a thin margin and struggle to stay open. Those that will be able to survive the current pandemic situation will need a strong food service distribution industry to help them. But with our budgets pinched by the losses experienced during the shutdown, it’s going to be a tough road – one we can’t navigate without a boost from Congress.
We need Congress and the administration to ensure distributors and their customers have the necessary liquidity to recover successfully. Specifically, we need a revised Paycheck Protection Program to provide businesses with access to new sources of funding along with greater flexibility regarding how they use these funds. The new program should include payments to suppliers as an allowable and forgivable use of funds. This way, restaurants can purchase the food and products they need to reopen.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was instrumental in getting the first round of PPP through Congress; we need her help again to ensure that businesses get the resources they need to weather the storm.
At Prime Source Foods, we believe that now, more than ever, partnership matters. The partnership between us and our customers, the partnership between our customers and the people they feed, and the partnership between Congress and the small- to mid-sized businesses impacted by the coronavirus crisis that is crucial to America’s economic recovery.
(Bill Conrad is the president and CEO of Prime Source Foods in Hooksett.)