Daily Clout: Restaurateur Paul D'Amore: Hospitality Industry Emergency in MA - "Army" Can't Hold On Much Longer

Paul D'Amore is owner of Massimino's, a beloved Italian restaurant in North Boston. It's a family business, now in several locations, that was founded by D'Amore's father, and it has a devoted following in the community. D'Amore employs 25 people -- many of them immigrants to our country. Most of them have families who depend on the income of the breadwinners who work at Massimino's. DAmore has been trying to hold on for the duration of the months that Massachusetts has enacted a health department mandate to close bars and restaurants. He has tried not avoid laying off his 25 person staff. But the stimulus funds are running out and there are no funds earmarked for Massachusetts bars and restaurants, in the new stimulus bill. State laws have not been been passed to allow restaurant owners and bar owners to survive the pandemic closures, either. Damore describes the plight of many owners in the hospitality industry: it's impossible to plan ahead, hire staff, order food, sensibly, because the seating has been cut from 100 per cent to fifty percent capacity and recently to 25 per cent. He, like other restaurant owners, have had to innovate with different business models such as zoom cooking classes and delivery, to have a hope of surviving. But 110,000 restaurants have closed nationwide, with thousands of staff laid off and their families facing poverty, eviction and even food insecurity . The same is true in nations around the works - restaurateurs in Mexico, Italy, Staten Island NY and Switzerland, are forming grassroots movements to reopen and even to sue local officials such as Andrew Cuomo in NYS, in the face of pandemic related restrictions.

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