Shake Shack returns $10 million PPP loan to government
The executives also shared their frustrations with the PPP, arguing that many restaurants had been left out unfairly because the program “came with no user manual and it was extremely confusing.”
Garutti and Meyer are now calling on the SBA to increase funding to the program. They also want the US agency to assign a local bank to work with each applicant and ease the process, and to make the forgiveness policy more flexible.
Union Square Hospitality Group, another food and beverage business that is run independently by Meyer, has received “some” of the loans it’s applied for, the executives said. They said all of those restaurants closed last month and the company was forced to lay off more than 2,000 workers. They did not specify whether that company would be returning any funds as well.
A deal for additional PPP funding, meanwhile, could be announced soon.
“I think we are getting close to a deal. It could happen. It could happen,” Trump said. “A lot of good work has been going on and we could have an answer tomorrow and we are going to see what exactly does take place.”
— CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi, Manu Raju and Alicia Wallace contributed to this report.