Policy Recommendations To Support Small Businesses In Response To The COVID-19 Crisis

Over the past week and a half both Graffito and Commonwealth Kitchen have been on the front lines of the COVID-19 induced small business crisis facing our communities in the Boston area and across the state and nation. Between our organizations, we work with, support, represent, collaborate with, and cheerlead hundreds of small, local, independent food and retail entrepreneurs, their businesses, and their workers. The countless (and heartbreaking) conversations we collectively had this past week helped us understand the depth and breadth of the crisis facing small businesses today and for the foreseeable future.

It’s clear to us that this economic crisis requires major government intervention. So, we decided to put our heads together on a broad set of policy recommendations that local, state, and federal government must act on immediately in order to limit any further harm to small business owners and their workers, and to help get us all back to work as soon as it is safe to do so.

We’re calling on all elected officials, business leaders, and allies who care about the future of small businesses, workers, and neighborhood vitality throughout our communities to read our recommendations, share them widely, and act on them swiftly.