A Letter to our Texas Restaurant Family

A Call For Unity

A few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to you and your customers. I asked your customers for grace. I asked for their understanding that as an industry we were running on skeleton crews with many restaurants transitioning their business models overnight. I asked for compassion for restaurant owners and your employees who were in desperate need of empathy. I shared that most of you were dealing with stress at a level that many could not comprehend, and if the ketchup was left off an order, right now might be a time to let that small sin go. While restaurants were named essential, in many cases, 80% or more of your ability to generate revenue was gone. That letter, that call for grace, was shared 3,300 times and I was very pleased to see the positive responses from the community that rallied in support of their restaurants.

Well tonight, unfortunately, I need to address the dangerous trend we’ve seen lately of the sector turning against each other - circling the wagons with weapons pointed in. I promise you, nothing good can come of this.

Throughout this week there has been a growing discord between independent restaurants and their chain counterparts, one cuisine versus another, and in the worst cases, one group of restaurants deciding they are superior and more deserving than another.

I want to be very clear that this energy does not help us as we fight for the relief we need. As you look at the national numbers for the PPP loans you can see that restaurants got less than 6% of $350B in aid. That is a fact. Fighting over who got how much of the $15B is wasted energy. The real issue is that arguably, the hardest hit sector, the lifeblood of America, the one that has seen a loss of 8 million jobs and closed 44% of businesses, at least 3% permanently, did not get the help it so desperately needs and deserves.

As you look across various industries, those sectors that were not severely impacted received huge amounts of PPP money, much more than all restaurants combined. You could argue that some people should not have taken the money and you could argue that you would personally have made a different choice. Whether we ethically disagree or agree; that is not the fight, nor is it where we should place our focus. The program as presented gave the opportunity for a broad set of companies to participate; period. What we need now is to advocate as hard as we can, as one restaurant community, to get the guidelines of the PPP program changed to fit the realities of the restaurant industry. That can be done and it must.

My job is to protect and grow all restaurants in the state of Texas. Every moment of my day is spent thinking about and working with independent restaurants, franchisee restaurants, and chain restaurants of every type of cuisine across every segment of the industry. As an Association, when you come to us in need, we don't care whether you are a chain or an independent - what we care about is that our sector has been absolutely gut punched by this pandemic and the government mandates that followed. We need to fix it and we need to do it together. When we start to argue and pit ourselves against each other, all we do is change the narrative, reflecting negativity upon ourselves rather than share the real story; that our entire industry is hurting.

I know how easy it is to look across the hall and point out what you don't like because it's what is most familiar to you. However, I really encourage all of you to take a giant step back and realize that without each other we will not return to the healthy vibrant restaurant industry we once were.

I humbly ask all of you to revisit the rhetoric and the noise that so many are making and turn that into positive energy to help us reopen this industry. If we are divisive, we will not have the needed strength or force in our collective voice. I know that things are stressful and while I’m not running a restaurant, I can certainly empathize and my heart hurts for all of you. The one thing I know, after decades of leading different businesses, is that when your team starts to fight amongst themselves, they lose sight of the true enemy and quickly lose focus of the challenges ahead. We must look forward. We must lock arms and we must remain one team focused on recovery.

You have our commitment, as you always have, that the Texas Restaurant Association represents just that - Texas restaurants. We were steadfast in our drive to secure more money into the PPP and by tomorrow evening, that is expected to be done. This means many who are waiting will have their loans come through. We will be relentless in our approach to correcting the PPP and are lobbying hard for the fixes I’ve outlined to all of you. And we are working with a task force made up of independent and chain restaurant experts to safely and successfully reopen Texas restaurants. We need you and we need your partnership… TOGETHER we will rebuild Texas restaurants.