South Florida Businesses Hopeful That Second Round Off PPP Funding Will Flow Their Way
PLANTATION (CBSMiami) – Randall Fernandes is happy to be back doing what he loves — making ice cream at his Plantation store — Nice Cream.
But it's been a rough couple of weeks.
"The virus came along and shut down all of our event heading into summer," Fernandes said.
At his store, which opened 15 months ago, Fernandes uses liquid nitrogen to freeze the cream and turn it into ice cream. And for a new business he's been successful. He got his product at Shaquille O'Neal's and Rob Gronkowski's South Florida Super Bowl parties. Then, COVID-19 put a freeze on his business. He shut down for several weeks and laid off nearly all of his workers.
"They took it pretty rough because they sill have their bills," he said.
Fernandes immediately applied for the Paycheck Protection Program when it opened up offering potentially forgivable loans to small business owners. The loans would be forgiven if they spent 75 percent of the money they received on payroll. Fernandes says his bank initially told him he was approved.
"We kind of gave people an update, like, 'Hey, we were approved by the bank,'" he recalled. "Everyone's excited. And then we had to go back and tell them, 'Even though we were approved, we're not funded.'"
The PPP ran out of money and it dashed Fernandes' hopes and those of his workers. Fernandes is hopeful that with a new deal on Capitol Hill on Tuesday he might get the money after all and be able to pay his workers for the time they've missed.
"I'll be happy to tell my staff that we'll be able to pay them," he said.
Many South Florida businesses are hopeful to receive the PPP funding. David Blyer is President and CEO of Arreva, a tech company that provides software to non-profit organizations around the world. They have an office in Fort Lauderdale.
Blyer estimates that their business is down 12% since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
"We have been impacted greatly," he said.
Blyer said they're still providing crucial fundraising services to their clients and are working to transform the way they do business to adapt to a now-virtual world. But he said Arreva has faced double whammy – many of their non-profit clients are struggling to pay their bills while Arreva's strong base of new clients has softened considerably since the pandemic hit.
"We're in desperate times to help these nonprofits that are helping so many in our community today," he said.
Still, Blyer said Arreva has not laid anyone off or furloughed any employees; in fact, they actually recently hired a new employee to handle their excess workload. They applied for PPP funding but haven't heard whether they've been approved. Blyer is hopeful some of that money will eventually come through.
"It gives hope that you can continue running your company," he said. "It gives hope that you don't have to let anybody go during a crisis like this."
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted on Tuesday evening that he expects the new PPP bill including $310 billion for small businesses to pass the House this week and be signed by President Trump, allowing loans to start being approved by the end of this week.
Randall Fernandes is checking his email, awaiting information about his PPP loan. But a potentially bigger question for him is this — what will the recovery look like when it inevitably begins.
"We don't know what to expect," he said. "People just aren't going out like they used to."
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