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Patty Tully, co-owner of Baby Bar and Neato Burrito, was in the same boat as Whim’s owners last week, waiting for the state’s Tuesday decision on a potential phase rollback before reopening the two businesses last Wednesday. While the downtown burrito counter and pocket-sized bar received some state and local funding last year — about $25,000 total — to help cover losses, Tully says the calculations on their RRF application came out to $400,000. “Honestly, we’ve applied for everything we could,” Tully says. “Of course we would be happy with anything, and we would be happy if all the funds went to other places. We got some grants and a low-interest loan to keep up the lease and insurance in the meantime.” Tully is hopeful that the worst impacts of the pandemic are behind us. Being closed for so long was difficult for her and partner Tim Lannigan and their staff (all but one of their employees have returned to work), but Tully says the sacrifice was necessary. “Our struggle has been if we could all just follow the rules, it’ll be over that much faster,” she says. “Our main concern is that the hospitals have been working like crazy these last 15 months and why would you not want to be a part of giving them some reprieve from that?” As two of the few local restaurants and bars that had, as of last week, yet to reopen since the pandemic’s onset, Whim and Baby Bar/ Neato Burrito’s owners found support, understanding and friendship among themselves over the past year. “It was really isolating to be one of the few bars/ restaurants to be completely closed the entire time,” Henderson says. “It definitely felt like some people thought we were being lazy, even though no one said that.” n Find information about the Restaurant Revitalization Fund at sba.gov/restaurants. For assistance, applicants can call 844-279-8898.
