Funding from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is starting to matriculate out in programming.

One example is the Restaurant Revitalization Fund.

Administered by the federal Small Business Administration, the program has a pretty simple mission per the SBA: “To provide funding to help restaurants and other eligible businesses keep their doors open.”

The funds come with a wide range of uses and are entirely grant dollars as long as they’re spent by March 11, 2023.

Vince DeJoy, the city’s planner, said the funding is for “independent restaurants that have 33 percent in-house seating and can demonstrate a loss compared to 2019.”

“I am personally going to hit as many restaurants in Warren as possible,” DeJoy said, with information on the program.

The Warren County Chamber of Business & Industry has taken a similar approach.

“We have shared this through our email and social media channels but have no direct involvement with the program,” WCCBI President/CEO Jim Decker said.

This isn’t the first round of stimulus this industry has been made eligible for throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Decker explained that “receipt of prior assistance is not an automatic disqualification but definitely impacts the amount of assistance that may be available to an entity.

The application period is open and is being handled solely by the SBA and is open to restaurants, bars and caterers as well as breweries, inns with onsite sales as well as food trucks, among others.

Interested entities will be required to determine their loss through one of several different calculations.

“All of these programs look at defensible losses incurred and assistance provided to ensure that no ‘windfall’ occurs,” Decker explained, defining a windfall as “grant funding in excess of loss experienced.”