Contributing Editor at the @FT, evidently also the part-time boat correspondent at @ftalphaville. Writing a 500-year history of the 
, @randomhouse 2022.
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The Small Business Administration is already using Seattle as a test case to figure out how to keep shops and restaurants afloat. To start with, @opentable shows a 58 per cent decline in restaurant bookings. Some anecdotes go as high as 70 per cent /1https://www.ft.com/content/16544868-660b-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3 …
The "economic injury" SBA disaster loans already have supplemental funding from Congress, but aren't the best response. Underwritten by SBA, they take three weeks to approve, and they only work for businesses with no other funding /2
The regional SBA in Seattle says the "7a" working capital loans are a better fit for this crisis, but those are underwritten by commercial banks, which means banks will have to scale up their small-business underwriting to cover the entire hospitality industry overnight /3
But: it's possible for restaurants to survive. First, it helps to have been cautious before the crisis. Tom Douglas had 13 restaurants in Seattle, and has had to close 12 of them. Second, to hold on to revenue, some restaurants have completely changed what they do /4
Olga Sagan at @piroshkybakery in Seattle keeps THREE MONTHS of cash on hand, a habit she picked up growing up in Russia, where crises happen and you have to be prepared. Now she has some breathing room. Here's what she did with it. /5
On Wednesday, Olga gathered staff at @piroshkybakery and told them: fewer pastries, more staples. “Guys, we are a bakery. We’ll do what we do well, but we’re also doing bread. Because people eat bread. We’re launching it today.” /6
Her catering service collapsed, so her catering team became a bread delivery service. Grocery stores were overwhelmed supplying staples, so she got in touch to provide bread. Piroshky will start taking orders directly on its own site, so all the revenue goes to the bakery /7
It's the people who run firms with a hundred, two hundred employees that scrap the hardest to keep everyone working. “I’m so proud of business owners who aren’t giving up,” said Olga. “We are powerful. We have food. This is America. You don’t give up.” /8
Mark Canlis of @canlis, a family-owned upper-end restaurant in Seattle, similarly declined to expand before the crisis, so he had room to make a new plan. He looked outside, realized what the freeway exit next to the restaurant was worth, and re-oriented the entire business /9
Canlis will offer drive-through service under its portico, and is converting its parking lot to drive-in dining. Servers deliver paper bags to cars, handled with contactless payments. What was an on-site dinner bakery is now a drive-through bagel shop /10
Just like Olga, Mark of @canlis is scrapping to keep his servers and cooks working. "Our job is to create 115 jobs in this new environment where social distancing is a real need," he says. "The game's not up. The game's not over at all. Everyone's still gotta eat." /end
The SBA loan program is actually more fiscally agressive than most countries are doinghttps://twitter.com/mrcaranta/status/1238970098431524869 …
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