To Save Restaurants, Chefs and Former Financiers Ask for Tax Relief, New Rules
The consensus is that for the food service industry, Covid-19 will be worse than the 2007 financial crisis.
Former hedge fund manager and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader Sean Feeney knows it's important to have skin in the game during a crisis. That's why he is offering a share of profits to employees at Misi and Lilia, the restaurants he co-owns with chef Missy Robbins. While staff members are being temporarily let go so they can seek unemployment benefits, those who return when the restaurants are allowed to reopen are eligible for a percentage of the profits, he said on Instagram. Feeney also made a plea that government support businesses hurt by the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, just as banks were helped during the financial crisis.
“We can demand that relief comes to our industry the same way it did to the financial industry in 2008 in the form of TARP when I was trading high-yield bonds for a living,'' said Feeney in his post, referring to the Troubled Asset Relief Program. “I saw what that did to save our country, its people and companies on Wall Street. These same mechanisms should be used for all industries at this time again.''