OUTLOOK Small businesses need permanent fix
My husband, Robert, and I are coowners of our family’s small business, Houston’s Three Brothers Bakery, but we are also known to many as the “King and Queen of Disasters.”
We wear those royal titles proudly, if a bit ruefully, as our business has survived four floods, a fire, a hurricane, “fluxuations” in the energy markets and the most recent winter storm. I’d like to say those make-it-or-break-it experiences prepared us well for the disaster that struck exactly one year ago and continues to rock our world. But that wouldn’t be 100 percent true.
The COVID-19 pandemic has and continues to threaten to bring small businesses to their knees. In our case, we faced the potential unraveling of the 71-year legacy of our Houston bakery, where my husband is the fifth generation to carry on his family’s tradition dating back two centuries to Poland.
And while small business owners like us are thankful for much-needed shortterm help provided by the COVID-19 rescue and relief plan passed by Congress, we need members of Congress and the Biden administration to join with us to enact a long-term recovery agenda that takes aim at deep-rooted issues confronting small businesses that the pandemic has only exacerbated.
We need access to long-term capital and affordable health care for our workers; help providing our employees access to affordable child care; and a reasonable, temporary liability shield protecting those reeling from the challenges of the pandemic from potential frivolous COVID-related litigation.
And, more specifically to Houstonarea businesses like ours, we are hoping that Congress will pass the LIFT UP Act
— bipartisan legislation introduced by our Texas members of Congress Lizzie Fletcher and Michael McCaul to provide additional debt relief for small businesses already carrying the burden of Small Business Administration disaster loans from previous calamities.
Unlike previous disasters, this COVIDfueled small business crisis has no end in sight — even with welcome progress our nation is making in battling the pandemic. And last month’s deadly, devastating winter storm here in Texas compounded the challenges so many were already facing. In our case, we lost roughly five days of revenue — including two of our peak holidays — and were hit with the additional costs of product spoilage and supply chain disruptions.
As a member of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Voices National Leadership Council, I recently had the honor to meet with members of the U.S. House bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. This group of committed leaders from across the country deserves credit for bringing both parties together to pass the first pandemic relief legislation last December, and while I thanked them, I also stressed it was a short-term fix for a long-term problem.
The past 12 months have upended small businesses’ success models, forcing owners to make difficult decisions including reducing staff, shelving plans to grow, taking on debt to cover expenses and forgoing pay as revenues evaporated. A recent 10,000 Small Businesses Voices survey found that half of small business owners have dipped into personal savings to stay afloat during the pandemic, and 43 percent don’t think their businesses will return to normal until next year.
My husband and I, though we may be disaster royalty, count ourselves lucky to be among small business owners who have managed to hang on through the pandemic, in large part thanks to Houstonians’ enduring appetite for pecan pies and enormous capacity for giving.
Our baking tradition, brought to Houston by brothers who didn’t speak a word of English when they arrived, survived the Holocaust, floods, fire and winter storm outages. And it will survive the pandemic because we stand on the strong shoulders of a legacy of survivorship.
Yet so many small businesses have a different story to tell. They remain in crisis — just one payroll, one expense, one flood or fire or windstorm away from going under. Today, I am calling on Congress to help us help our communities and our workers by investing in our long-term stability and the future of every small business here in Texas and across our nation.