The federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has been (fairly) criticized this year. For many, reality didn’t align with the program’s intent: to keep smaller companies in business, and to keep people employed. Nowhere has that been truer than in the hospitality industry, where food and drink businesses—including small breweries with taprooms—have suffered from the pandemic, inconsistent government policies, and the fact that much relief money ended up going to large corporations.
But even within that troubling context, the relief that the PPP legislation, and its potential renewal, provided those breweries who received it this year was a small miracle. [Disclosure: Good Beer Hunting received a PPP loan.] For the Brewers Association, that turned out to be an astounding 85% of its members. And that’s largely because of Katie Marisic, the federal affairs director at the Brewers Association.
Based in D.C. and part of the BA’s lobbying team, Marisic works with legislators on everything from excise tax reform to federal health guidelines to small-business financing. “Within a week we had an idea of how bad things could get, and had a large list of requests for help,” Marisic says of the impending national shutdown. And then the race was on to influence pending legislation and gather as much information as possible for brewers. “Our marketing and web teams created resources for our members that provided the information we were gathering about the coronavirus and best practices. We learned that breweries with relationships with their banks and credit unions were likely to have the best chance of getting loans but we wanted to make sure that the info we shared could help any brewery who wanted a loan to qualify for one.”
The BA even followed that up with a town hall for members to discuss options with an attorney to help navigate the many mixed messages coming from news outlets, legislators, and banks. The PPP process was unprecedented in its size, speed, but also its confusion. And that created real risk that continues to this day. “There is still a lot of uncertainty with the PPP,” says Marisic. “Many businesses are still applying for forgiveness, the tax liability issue hasn’t been fixed by Congress, businesses that got the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) emergency grants and PPP loans are still on the hook for up to $10,000.”
Before those funds became available, the Brewers Association survey, shared by the organization’s Chief Economist Bart Watson, estimated that over 40% of its members would be closed permanently after the first few months of the pandemic. That would have amounted to thousands of breweries nationwide. Instead, there have only been a few hundred closures—many of which were businesses already in a poor economic situation prior to the pandemic—and the industry has so far dodged the worst of it. But the work isn’t even close to done, and despite all these efforts, many breweries indeed will close permanently alongside bars, restaurants, and other small businesses.
“The BA is actively advocating for a list of issues that range from fixing the tax issue with existing PPP loans to advocating for more funding for both loans and grants through additional PPP funding and legislation like the RESTAURANTS Act, which has specific language for our industry,” Marisic says. Meanwhile, the organization is lobbying Congress on everything from forgiveness of EIDL emergency grants to tax credits for breweries that had to dump their beer.
“My hope is that Congress will be able to put together a package that addresses a lot of these issues, and that is what we are pushing for them to do,” Marisic says. “If some of these matters aren’t accomplished this Congress, we are ready to hit the ground running in 2021.”
Words,Michael Kiser