A total of 11 Baker City restaurant and bar owners who sustained financial losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic could receive nearly $3 million in federal grants.

The Small Business Administration announced this summer that it had approved more than half a billion dollars in Restaurant Revitalization Fund grants to about 2,300 Oregon food and drink businesses.

The fund ran out of its allocation in early July, but industry groups and others, including a member of Oregon’s congressional delegation, are lobbying for Congress to restart the program with $60 billion.

According to the Small Business Administration, there were far more applications during the initial round than there was money available. Oregon had almost 5,000 businesses apply for grants, totaling $1.2 billion, more than twice the amount businesses in the state have been approved for.

The Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF) was part of the American Rescue Plan Act that Congress approved, and President Biden signed, in March.

The program is designed to help businesses continue operating by compensating them for revenue losses caused by shutdowns and other pandemic-related issues.

Businesses don’t have to repay the money so long as they use their grant for eligible purposes by March 11, 2023.

Baker City’s biggest recipient is Windmill Enterprises, the business owned by the Brown family that includes Barley Brown’s Brew Pub and Tap House, and Sumpter Junction restaurant.

Windmill Enterprises was approved for a grant of almost $1.25 million.

Tyler Brown, who operates the brew pub and tap house on Main Street, said he understands that “sounds like a lot.”

But he said the grant, which is based on the company’s operating losses in 2020 compared with 2019, doesn’t include unrealized profit.

Brown said his family’s business will still end up losing a significant amount of money due to the pandemic.

One of their restaurants — Sumpter Junction, on Campbell Street near the freeway — closed in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, and has not reopened.

For much of the pandemic, Brown said it didn’t make economic sense to open Sumpter Junction given state-imposed limitations on the number of customers.

Right now, he said, it’s difficult to find enough employees to operate the brew pub and tap house.

Even procuring enough food through suppliers has been challenging recently, Brown said.

He said he recently ordered 100 cases of food but received only 60.

“Everything’s messed up in the supply chain,” Brown said.

Brown also pointed out that the pandemic has affected not only his family’s restaurants, but also the brewery, what he called a “double hit.” When restaurants and bars were closed during parts of 2020, and limited in occupancy for more than a year stretching into 2021, demand for Barley Brown’s beer, which is served in restaurants and bars across Oregon and in Idaho, all but evaporated, he said.

Many of those financial losses weren’t eligible to be included with the Restaurant Revitalization Fund application, Brown said.

That said, he is grateful that the RRF was created, and that his family’s business qualified.

“It’s a lot of money,” Brown said. “I’m confident that it will allow us to move ahead and continue to operate. But there’s a lot of problems money doesn’t solve. It takes so much time to rebuild a business.”

According to the Small Business Administration, RRF money can be used for a variety of purposes, including:

• Business payroll costs (including sick leave)

• Payments on any business mortgage obligation

• Business rent payments (this does not include prepayment of rent)

• Business debt service, both principal and interest (this does not include any prepayment of principal or interest)

• Business utility payments

• Business maintenance expenses

• Construction of outdoor seating

• Business supplies (including protective equipment and cleaning materials)

• Business food and beverage expenses (including raw materials)

• Covered supplier costs

• Business operating expenses

Other qualifying businesses

Barbara Sidway, who owns the Geiser Grand Hotel and Restaurant with her husband, Dwight, said she “very appreciative of all the government programs,” including the RRF, which approved $224,000 for the Sidways’ company, Grand History LLC.

“It’s not going to make us whole, but I’m not bitter about it,” Barbara Sidway said. “Life happens.”

Sidway said she is eager to use the grant to continue operating the business that the couple started when they bought the decrepit Geiser Grand, built in 1889, and restored it over the next several years.

“We are committed to surviving and thriving and getting back to where we were before the pandemic started,” Sidway said. “This program and others are going to help us get there.”

Both Sidway and Brown said they feel badly for the hundreds of business owners who didn’t receive a grant before the fund was depleted. They said they hope Congress replenishes the program.

“The restaurant business really took it on the chin compared with other industries,” Sidway said.

The Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association is among those urging Congress to pony up money for a second round of the RRF.

“We’re certainly working with our national partners, national restaurant association to try to replenish the restaurant revitalization,” said Greg Astley, director of government affairs for the Association. “We’re hoping that more money will be made available again. This didn’t happen overnight. It’s not going to be solved overnight. And even as we can reopen right now, we know that operators are facing a problem with getting people back to work.”

Restrictions during the pandemic have affected restaurants and other related businesses in a variety of ways.

Travis Cook, who owns Copper Belt Winery in the Keating Valley, said his tasting room on Main Street in Baker City depends on walk-in traffic, with that accounting for about 65% to 70% of its business.

“People come in off the interstate — they taste our wine, then they buy our wine,” he said.

But the tasting room was closed for most of 2020.

“We were pretty well closed for the duration,” Cook said.

His only business was bottle sales to-go, by appointment. Restrictions prohibited on-site tastings.

Due to this, he didn’t bottle as much wine as he normally would, between February and late April of this year.

“Last year I thought, ‘let’s see where this goes,’ ” he said. “I’m just starting to bottle and get inventory back.”

The tasting room is now open seven days a week. During the pandemic, he added space next door to the building he shares with The Cheese Fairy, owned by his sister Cody Cook. This extra space helped when restrictions began to ease.

“Our tasting room was easy to overcrowd,” he said.

Cody Cook said that from March through August of 2020, she could only sell chunks of cheese or pre-orders — and a bulk of her business is customers who come in and sit down.

But people still came, even if her offerings were limited. And many ordered gifts of cheese for the holidays.

“I wouldn’t have survived without the local support,” she said.

The Cheese Fairy received $28,240 through the RRF, and Copper Belt Winery $18,823.

Other Baker City businesses that qualified for grants, according to the Small Business Administration (the SBA database does not list which applicants have received, or spent, money):

•Aaron Schierman (owner, Lone Pine Cafe): $449,289

• Rising Sun Palace Inc., $377,877

• Frontier Restaurant LLC, $210,094

• Latitude 45 Grille LLC: $186,960

• AJ’s Corner Brick Bar & Grill LLC: $160,044

• Danjo Holdings LLC (Charlie’s Ice Cream), $13,295

• Ed’s Idle Hour LLC (Idle Hour tavern), $13,045

Lisa Britton contributed to this story, along with Davis Carbaugh of The (La Grande) Observer.