BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — “We like to feed people,” said Jeff Mease, co-partner of One World Enterprises, a company in Bloomington that’s been feeding people for 38 years with a pizza shop, two restaurants, a brewery and a catering service.
“It’s all about food and hospitality,” said Mease, who’s stayed committed to that ideal even through shut downs and employee lay-offs because of COVID-19.
The pandemic hit them hard though.
“We have a catering business that’s decimated of-course and our restaurants, are, our restaurants are terrible," Mease said. "We’re off about 70-percent since from a year ago."
The pizza delivery business has kept the company going and Mease applied for Paycheck Protection Program loans during the last stimulus package.
“We got almost a million dollars,” he said.
That money was meant to pay workers, rent, mortgage interest and utilities.
Businesses could apply for up to $10 million, but the loans could be mostly forgiven if they were used to keep or quickly rehire workers and cover payroll.
The PPP was up and running just days after being approved by Congress in late March.
Once opened April 3, applications flooded in from small business owners.
The Small Business Administration approved more than 1.6 million loans worth $349 million dollars in less than two weeks.
Millions of other businesses had to wait nearly two more weeks for Congress to approve an additional $310 million dollars in help.
Now Mease is trying to pour over details of the new stimulus package which the SBA can’t comment on, until the president signs it into law.
If he does, the SBA has 10 days to execute a plan of how the money will be given out.
“It’s still unclear how much of this money is going to be forgivable,” Mease said. “If it’s not forgivable, then you’re basically, as we look into it, continuing to dig a hole. It keeps you alive, but you’re going to have to pay the piper."
And that leaves Mease and business owners like him, all facing the same question.
How long can they hang on?
“This is where you get into soothsaying, cause none of us know the future,” Mease said.