Eduardo’s Story

Eduardo Gonzalez, Owner, Señor Sushi, Mesa, AZ

I’ve been in the restaurant business for close to 40 years and a restaurant owner for more than 30 years. I’ve been supporting entrepreneurs in the community for many years as well to start and grow their businesses.

My business is located in a low-income neighborhood that saw a lot of layoffs because of the pandemic. People are reliant on their unemployment insurance and if they do not receive it there will be a chain reaction that means all the small businesses in the neighborhood will lose their customers. According to Restaurant Business Magazine, over 100,000 restaurants have closed down in the US, and low income communities were absolutely hit harder.

I own three restaurants and have 70 families relying on me. I could not get a PPP on the first round because well connected businesses got ahead of me in line and the program ran out of money. 

There are over 60,000 minority-owned small businesses in Arizona alone, and countless families that rely on them. I had to personally help some employees who were going to be evicted. We need to extend the UI benefits because it will ultimately help businesses stay open, and stay afloat.

I told our Arizona governor that reopening too early would damage our small businesses further if we had to close again. His response was to tell me we had a lot of open beds in hospitals. I’m so disappointed in our leadership who don’t care if people get infected and cause the economy to get worse. We became one of the pandemic hotspots of the world.

The mistakes our leaders made have caused a lot of pain in the community. Congress, and Arizona leaders in particular, must act immediately to support the small businesses and workers whose lives they made worse.