When the federal government opened up applications for Restaurant Revitalization Fund grants earlier this year, Ian’s Pizza jumped at the opportunity for COVID-19 assistance.
But of Ian’s seven locations in Madison and Milwaukee, only three were ultimately approved for funding.
The popular pizza chain fared only slightly better than Wisconsin applicants as a whole. Of the 5,871 Wisconsin businesses that requested more than $994 million in federal funding, only 2,095 businesses were approved for about $379 million, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, which administers the federal grant program.
Nick Martin, managing partner with Ian’s Pizza in Madison, said he’s grateful for the funding, but added that for every Wisconsin business that received grants, there’s almost two state applicants that were not approved for the limited funds.
“While three of these (Ian’s Pizza) restaurants got some extra funds, four of them didn’t so now what do we do? How do we spread out this good, how do we actually use this to dig out of the hole that we’re in?” Martin said. “The four that didn’t get it are going to struggle for a while to try to figure out how to make that work, but I think we’ll be OK.”
All told, the Small Business Administration received more than 278,000 eligible applications for an available $28.5 billion in grant funds. With about 101,000 applications approved, there remains another roughly 177,000 businesses nationwide that did not receive funds.