Wow...a company with some integrity and doing the right thing!
Shake Shack returns $10 million small business loan granted as part of CARES Act Shake Shack Inc. SHAK, +7.44% will return the $10 million loan the burger chain received as part of the CARES Act relief for small businesses, the company said early Monday. The announcement was made by Chief Executive Randy Garutti and Danny Meyer, chief executive of Union Square Hospitality Group and founder of Shake Shack, in a joint letter posted to LinkedIn. The loan was granted under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that was part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act. PPP is meant to provide a lifeline to small businesses, including restaurants, that have seen sales sink or come to a halt amid the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The program is open to all companies with 500 or fewer employees. "The 'PPP' came with no user manual and it was extremely confusing," the executives said. "Both Shake Shack (a company with 189 restaurants in the U.S., employing nearly 8,000 team members) and Union Square Hospitality Group (with over 2,000 employees) arrived at a similar conclusion. The best chance of keeping our teams working, off the unemployment line and hiring back our furloughed and laid off employees, would be to apply now and hope things would be clarified in time." Garutti and Meyer say Shake Shake has about 45 workers per location and faced $1.5 million in weekly operating losses. All of Union Square Hospitality Group's restaurants closed on March 13 and 2,000 workers were laid off, but were rehired once the company applied for loans. .............
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/shake-shack-returns-10-million-small-business-loan-granted-as-part-of-cares-act-2020-04-20?mod=home-page
