Seafood and restaurants go together like fish and chips, like oysters and lemon juice, like lobsters and Maine.

Few industries collaborate as closely as restaurants work with their seafood providers. Nowhere is this more evident than in Portland, where Eventide sits a short walk from the fishing pier where one can watch as fish are offloaded from boats as seagulls swirl overhead, hoping for scraps.

Restaurants build close relationships with fishermen and the distributors that offload boats so they can continue to serve the most sustainable seafood in the world, caught by fishermen in their own community. This unique relationship worked well until the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered restaurants and left boats tied to the dock. In normal times, nearly 70% of all seafood caught is consumed in food service establishments such as restaurants and cafeterias. But we are nowhere near normal – we’ve seen restaurants’ cash drawers sit empty for months and seafood sales decrease by 80 percent.

As restaurants across Maine and New England slowly turn on their lights and begin to once again fill out their invoices, they’re asking for fewer lobster tails, oysters, and fish filets than ever before. Restaurants are working to fulfill orders for curbside pickup, “contactless” delivery or outdoor patios that have limits on seating capacity and fishermen seek to sell fish to locals straight from the boat, wholesalers have tried to go direct to consumer but all struggle to replace normal traffic and demand under these circumstances.

Despite increased foot traffic and lifted stay-at-home orders, fishermen and restaurants remain uniquely devastated by the crisis. Restaurants have lost more jobs than any other industry, but the damage doesn’t stop there. Aside from the 11 million workers directly employed by independent restaurants and bars, over 5 million more workers are employed by industries up and down restaurants’ supply chains, including fishermen and distributors from local economies across the country who rely on restaurants to serve their catch.

To save the millions of impacted livelihoods, independent restaurants and fishermen have asked Congress for direct aid. The HEALS Act, released by the Senate last week, comes up short in helping restaurants and key suppliers like the seafood industry. Restaurants don’t need more short-term loans: we need grants that would help us stay afloat for the entirety of this crisis.

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The bipartisan RESTAURANTS Act, as introduced in June by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), would provide $120 billion in grants to small, independent restaurants – such as Eventide and countless more in Maine. The legislation is widely popular, with over 120 cosponsors in the House and 10 cosponsors in the Senate.

A recent economic report released by Compass Lexecon projected that such a fund would pay for itself more than twice over, pouring up to $271 billion back into the economy, and would reduce the national unemployment rate by 2.4 percent.

Commercial fishermen and the seafood industry have asked for an additional $1.5 billion in direct fisheries assistance and $2 billion so the U.S. Department of Agriculture can purchase seafood – similar to how they provide relief to the meat and other impacted industries. While Congress has provided some financial relief to fishermen, it has become clear that additional assistance, through both direct fisheries assistance and USDA seafood purchases, will be necessary to help ensure fishermen are able to weather this pandemic. Direct assistance through the fisheries assistance program will allow fishermen to pay their bills and boat mortgages, provide for their families, and support our coastal communities despite the significant drop in demand for seafood products. USDA seafood purchases will help get fishermen back to work while simultaneously providing Americans with safe, sustainable, and nutritious forms of protein through the USDA food assistance programs.

Where else do those benefits go?

In 2019, travelers spent $279 billion on food services around the country. That includes tourism in states renowned for their seafood – like right here in Maine. With restaurants now fighting for survival, go-to summer destinations along the Maine coasts will lose a key part of what they can offer their visitors: sustainable seafood, fresher than anything you can find at your local grocery store or market — often landed that very day. In fact, by 2019 the farm-to-table and other direct-to-consumer markets had generated over $12 billion in income for small-scale producers.

The connection couldn’t be clearer: without restaurants, many fishermen have nowhere to sell their catch. Without fishermen, many restaurants have nothing to serve.

Saving independent restaurants means saving our seafood industry and other important industries. Restaurants are the places where the products of hard work in the fields and at sea are enjoyed by consumers in the company of friends and family. The sauvignon blanc from a local vineyard. The tablecloth manufactured on the other side of the state. And, yes, the lobsters landed at the Portland docks just blocks away. By passing the RESTAURANTS Act and providing additional assistance to the commercial fishing industry, Congress would make sure fresh oysters, lobster tails, and haddock filets continue to make it to consumers, returning hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs in the process.

Independent restaurants are uniquely tied to the fishermen in many states, just as the fishermen they buy from are uniquely wedded to the waters they fish. As restaurants’ lights flicker on and their doors open, fishermen untie their boats and return to sea. We are proud to harvest and serve the best-managed, most sustainable seafood in the world, especially when it comes on a steamed bun or slurped down with a squeeze of lemon. We need Congress’s help so we can continue providing for our fellow Americans.


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