Murphy covid-19 relief science for devastated restaurant industries relies heavily on "shaking the trees"

TRENTON, NJ – The reality is, Governor Phil Murphy still doesn’t have a solid plan on how to provide relief for tens of thousands of small businesses still feeling the COVID-19 crunch from Trenton. Indoor capacity limits on restaurants, gyms, salons and other businesses are still having negative financial impacts on small businesses that need more volume to survive the winter. On Monday, Murphy said he’s going to just shake the trees and try solutions and he’s doing everything he can to make it happen, except for increasing cap limits.

“On the indoor dining and indoor gyms, we’re trying to do everything we can whether it’s literally cash on the barrel from coronavirus relief funds distributed through the EDA, extending the ABCs for another six months to allow them to serve liquor not on their premises. Whether it’s indoor or outdoor dining, we are trying to do everything we can,” Murphy said. “But I have to say the reason I said, so there’s a lot of things we’re trying to figure out whether it’s indoors or outdoors right now, and try to really shake the trees on what else we could be doing for the industry, particularly as the weather gets colder.”

The Governor added, the future looks sobering right now for those industries.

“The numbers of late are sobering. One concern I think that we are coming to, all of us who are trying to get this as right as we can is we also don’t want to send mixed messages in terms of what we need folks to do right now. I have to say I’m even more sobered today than I was on Thursday or at any point last week,” Murphy added.

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