Small business owners need cash now. But they don’t know when it will come

Small business owners feelthey’re in a race for their livelihoods.When they learned $349 billion in forgivable loans would be paid out on a first-come,first-served basis, they made a mad dash to apply the day the program opened. He has spent days trying to apply for separate PPP loans for each restaurant at Chase Bank.On Tuesday afternoon,Chase sent him an email telling him to act quickly and submit his application online, noting that “the digital application may require you to enter information similar to what you’ve already submitted.” The site kept crashing, he said. The whole process, he said, “feels a bit like throwing a rock out into the night.” ‘Do I bring my employees back on payroll and then let them go again?’ Andrew and Briana Volk, owners of the Portland Hunt & Alpine Club, a cocktail bar in Portland, Maine, said without any financial assistance they have enough cash left to last another month. But since the loan only covers eight weeks of payroll expenses and some overhead, the question is “Then what?” “Do I bring my employees back on payroll and then let them go again?,” Andrew asked, noting that it’s very possible his bar won’t be able to reopen by then. e need to stop making everything we do in this crisis a reaction – too late, too poorly designed, too sloppily executed, too small and too complicated.” Kelly Conklin, owner, Foley-Waite Like most business owners, he doesn’t know what will happen to his business after the loan is used up.