This restaurant took out a $50,000 loan to support employees
Michael Morin — along with his two brothers and their father — opened Federico's in New Jersey in 1996. During the coronavirus pandemic, they decided to take out a $50,000 loan to help their employees.
Video transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MICHAEL MORIN: It's people over profit. That's our saying right now. You know, it's all about take care of your people, because for those-- without those people, you can't make a profit. We basically-- we had a line of credit at the bank across the street, and we've always had it, and it was to be used for if something happened, if business started getting slow or-- so we decided, why not take it?
Because if the banks are tightening up, they're going to lock down the line of credit, and we won't be able to get to it. So let's just take a cushion to help the people that are there for us, you know? Because it's all about our people. Because without those people that work for us, we don't have a business.
My father and my two brothers, we all started Federico's in 1996. And it's been great to us. It's-- I'm going to possibly, you know, start to bring my son in there soon, you know? That are the ground floor businesses that are going to, you know, teach the kids how to work. And it's this-- you know, from the looks of it, it looks like a lot of these businesses are going to be out of business. So it's saddening. I don't know if we'll have to close. We could have to, because if one person has it, we're going to close, because we're going to do the right thing and it's our responsibility to do the right thing.
Mom and pop businesses, if you're closed for one day, that's a day that you have no money coming in. There's no revenue coming in. So just that one day hurts. So now, days will go into weeks, and maybe months. And then, what are you going to do? I'm going to say definitely we'll be OK. We're going to come back, but it's going to be hard. You want to help a restaurant in your area? Go buy a gift card. You know, $5 dollars, $10, a dollar. It'll help them stay afloat, maybe.
In the beginning, we're like, we're not taking donations. And everybody was, like, no, I want you to have them. I appreciate that, but it's not what it's about. But we flipped it, and we ended up-- we told everybody, we said, OK, we're going to take the donation, but we're going to-- you're going to keep my employees working with this donation. And in turn, we're going to take that $100 and put it for $100 worth of food, and send it to the local ERs and take care of the EMS workers and take care of the local police, because those are all the people on the front lines that we need them right now, because they're the true heroes that they're going to get us through.
