NBC 7’s Priya Sridhar heard from small business owners rolling with the punches as they wait for stimulus relief.
It's been a long road for San Diego business owners who had their operations halted in March and have since have gone on a rollercoaster of openings and closures. And while a federal loan program helped some in the early months, they say Congress needs to pass another stimulus bill in order for them to survive.
Keri Davis-Duffy has been running a business for 29 years but nothing could have prepared her for the coronavirus pandemic. Since March, she's had to close one of her three hair salons indefinitely.
"I am happy to say that all of our staff that was in our third one has been relocated to our other two locations, so I feel very happy about that," Davis-Duffy said.
She received a Payroll Protection Program loan that helped her business stay afloat, but her salons closed completely for almost four months and she's lost about 50% of her profits compared to an average year.
"It helped us to get over the hump, it helped us to renegotiate our leases with our landlords," she said.
She says she's watching Washington D.C. anxiously hoping that more help might come.
"We all need help -- and some more dire and some more immediate than others --but there needs to be something passed so that these businesses can stay afloat through whatever is this next phase of the pandemic," she said.
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The Bay Park Fish Company has also made modifications once again. The restaurant also received a PPP loan that helped keep their staff employed but now, with San Diego in the most restrictive purple tier, owner Karen Adams has had to shut down indoor dining once again.
"It's been challenging to say the least. We’ve had to literally turn our parking lot into a back patio, like pivot on demand so that we could continue to have customers," she said.
She's spent thousands of dollars on plexiglass partitions to accommodate indoor dining and now tents so that the customers can dine outdoors now.
"We had to lay down some cash and we’re willing to do that and we’ll continue to do that, whatever we have to do to continue to stay open in order to give our staff employment," Adams said.
