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in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc after today everyone and welcome to another edition of in full zoom i'm nestor lacanto and i'm pleased to welcome our guest this week gwen yamamoto lau who is the program administrator of the hawaii restaurant card and we'll of course tell you a little bit more about that throughout this show and also sarah gwen who is the owner of pizza press and she's the director of the hawaii restaurant association ladies thank you so much for joining us you're welcome we're happy to be here thank you all right yeah gwen let me start with you uh tell us a little bit more about the hawaii restaurant card and i understand that you're just rolling this program out now yes thank you for asking so this is a economic 75 million dollar economic stimulus program put on by the state of hawaii and it is um the primary thing the primary purpose of this program is to inject 75 million into our very struggling restaurant industry and the entire food supply chain and when the state was looking at how we might deploy the funds it could have been done in a number of ways we could have given direct grants to restaurants and done it that way however we wanted to impact and help as many people as possible so we decided to deploy the funds through our displaced workers and the way we did that um is by mining the database of our unemployment system and downloading the eligible cares eligible individuals and issuing them cards that way and this is the way we were able to send out over 116 000 cards last week for for this program which they just started receiving wow that's great before we dig a little bit deeper into that let me bring in um sarah here and sarah you of course are a restaurateur you own a restaurant but you're also the director of the hawaii restaurant association could you so could you give us an idea of how badly the pandemic has impacted the uh the restaurant industry in hawaii um it's been detrimental and um just as a business owner um here and the first shutdown it was scary the second shutdown was it was brutal and um as far as with support with the the card it couldn't have come at a time and so it's been helpful for us we needed it we need to have our employees back at work and so we thank you so much for um to be able to get that so yeah yeah percentage-wise how would how far down do you say the business went at one point uh so as far as with the initial shutdown for my for our restaurant uh specifically it was um we took a 70 percent um hit in the first week i know some restaurants did worse some did better and it took a little bit to get to maybe 80 but that's the first shutdown the second shutdown it was um back again same thing but we got back to maybe half and so it was pretty scary and um as far as with the support and it couldn't have come at a better time we it was pretty scary times and um thank goodness it takes a village to to um as far as with the support from our customers that were our loyal customers that were coming in from our staff that was we're flexible as far as with okay we have to cut the hours um and they're just really resilient um so thankfully uh we we have a little bit of breathing room now yeah likewise with the the gum restaurant um industry you might imagine that this similar thing is is happening i think the fast food restaurant the drive-through operations have been doing well but it's the sit-down uh restaurants that have been hurt the most i mean um we're um the governor has been allowing take out but not dying in i'm not sure what the case is for hawaii but right now um it's restricted to uh take out and uh so um as you can imagine the restaurant industry has been hurting as it has been you know nationwide uh i mean a lot of folks um are suffering and in fact a lot have uh you know been saying that they may be forced to shut down if not uh temporarily permanently is that similar to the case in hawaii uh yeah it's similar and um you can do you know similar here um the fast foods and the lines with the big chains the taco bells mcdonald's you see the lines there but it's a small restaurants mom and pops that that you know need their support and more important than ever to support local uh and as far as with takeout um you know i am a go-getter and no stone left unturned but takeout only was tough it was really tough and that got us to maybe half but half isn't cutting it but still having to to pay for our um our rent and and and everything um and so us on the restaurant side you know i feel like we're doing our part um i in good conscience would not open up the restaurant if i didn't feel that it was um not safe so we take precautions six feet distance master required high traffic areas those are clean and sanitized so we're doing our part and um and keeping you know our customers coming in keeping them safe keeping our staff safe yeah okay and gwen tell us a little bit about um the genesis uh for this program how did it all start um who had the id yeah um tell us about um why um what uh the government how the government came up with the idea yeah actually um and you know before i get into that i just wanted to mention and piggyback off of sarah are just the surface because underneath the restaurants are the local farmers the local fishermen the local ranchers and the supply chain there that are really also impacted so you know this this is is killing a a dozen birds with one stone so that's you know that's a good way to do it so actually this was the brainchild of kurt osaki uh osaki creative and he is a member of the chamber of commerce hawaii and he took this idea from a a small little town in london called brixton and this was in 2008 with the meltdown the financial melton in 2008 this town decided that it wanted to create its own currency to keep the money within its town so that the money keeps flowing over and over again and so they created its own currency unfortunately we're not able to do that here in hawaii however he took that idea and then pitched it saying hey what if we did something like this where the restaurant card a prepaid card could be used to uh to benefit um you know not just one business but many businesses down the chain and feed people while they're at it okay and so um as i understand it and as you mentioned this is primarily um right now for those who are in uh unemployed correct um what what other impact will it have for example um uh will it if for those who might be on um food stamps or snap card rather is there any effect yeah actually if you ask me i would have loved to issue a card to everyone but it had to be cares act fund eligible so they had to have been negatively impacted by the pandemic it couldn't just be just because they're on you know food stamps or because they're seniors on fixed income because i really you know would have loved to help them first responders would love to reward them with this but we couldn't do it it had to be they had to be curious fun eligible and they had to be uh negatively impacted by covet and that's why we chose the displaced workers who lost their jobs due to code in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc gu self storage conveniently located near the harmon mcdonald's we offer affordable rates online payments and auto bill pay for your convenience plus gate access daily from 6am to 9pm call us today at 648-7867 for more information in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc okay so the cards will be loaded with uh 500 that they can use at the local restaurants yes local restaurants fast food caterers and bakeries okay and um so how did you manage to i guess yes you used a database from the pula program to to reach all these folks and they didn't necessarily have to have to apply were they automatically qualified yes so there are uh um so this first tranche is for um the regular unemployment um uh compensation insurance uh claimant so that's about 116 000 and change of them we are getting uh working on getting the poor claimant database um that's 30 some thousand of them so it's going to be almost 150 000 altogether who receive a card we needed to work with a database because if we had to have 150 000 people apply for this program we would still be in the application process um so you know and then it's going to be chaos right and we didn't want our displaced workers to go through yet another uh you know application process because you know they they were already struggling already trying to get through our ui system just because of the volume um you know so just to give you some uh some idea of how quickly we put this program together our first meeting was september 8. september 8th was the first meeting we pulled the data on october 1st and sent it up to um money network the card issuer the reason we chose money network and metabank was because they are the ones who did the stimulus payments for unbanked individuals who were getting stimulus checks um if you recall there were systemless checks right in march um there are about three million people who did not have any bank account and so they couldn't get a direct deposit nor could they get a check so the way the government got them the money was through prepaid cards using money network and metabank and so because we knew they were more than able and capable of doing cares funding programs quickly and in scale we we were working with them we uploaded the data october 2nd the cards were in production and mailed uh october 12th which happened to be a fitter holiday but they dropped it in the mail on the 12th and they started people started getting it on the 15th wow talk about the rapid response great job uh sarah can i ask you um what have you um let your members restaurants know about how to what they need to do to accept the cards pretty simple um so as gwen had mentioned um it's it's a fast food restaurant establishment's fast foods bakery so there's a certain code not you know it doesn't work at a grocery store uh so there's there's certain codes um that you qualify so those are the restaurants fast foods bakeries um just as if you were accepting a credit card purchase so just scan it has your name on there there's a couple of things though um so it's for food purchases it does not count towards um alcohol it does not count towards gift cards um and so on our side um it's an honor system we need to make sure as restaurant owners and as we're receiving these cards um that you know and the customer should know too if it's a purchase for those things just have it separate um other than that pretty simple just make sure that um you inform yourself about it and then get the word out and so i've been promoting it on instagram social media um we on our side we have promotions um buy spend thirty dollars and get a free garlic cheesy bread or a deep dish cookie there's that that has you get twenty percent off if you use a card i think it was 605 free notches when you use your use a card so just getting the getting the word out about it but very simple very easy yeah and so your membership i think as you as you noted is kind of reacting to you and saying hey okay how do i market to these folks and what what can i offer them to make them come over to my plan yes and then there's a lot of questions around there there's um hawaii it's a hawaii i think card there's a faq any kind of questions you can refer to that website how do you qualify what what can you purchase a wealth of information um on the hawaii restaurant card faq yeah it's kind of a treat though too i mean because you guys can do dine in you can actually um have some time some some extra money for your family to be able to take them out to for a family dinner yeah yes i think that it was great just um and and um having um you know the families come in and enjoy a meal together on the weekends weekdays so it's nice to see you know getting back to some sort of normalcy normalcy and to see our customers and to see the smiling faces to see the kids you know they've been cooped up and and uh just to be able to to see them it's been it's been great all right and gwen um is there any thought at this point i know that the the state government has been using um cares act to to fund this but has there been any thought to maybe expanding it to say those families who uh may be um you know still employed but um on the lower end of the income um uh totem pole so that they can you know avail of some uh additional um money for for food for the families like um we were talking with sarah that just to take the kids out to eat and have a family dinner at a restaurant yeah so it would be dependent on the um the source of funds and so you know the cares funds in hawaii i think governor pretty much has every it's fully subscribed um however if congress does come up with a second tranche of that and depending on what the requirements are we can take a look at that if they are more flexible with the requirements and certainly we can take a look at at being more flexible with our requirements yeah what are some of the questions that you've gotten from the applicants or the participants rather from the displaced workers yeah yeah you know so so one of the things that they're asking us right now is am i eligible am i going to get a card and so what we did was we worked with our contractor and they set up an am i eligible portal which people can go in and put in a couple of pieces of information and see if they're going to get a card and we did that because we knew there's a lot of volume and we knew people were curious as of this morning there was something like 130 thirty thousand inquiries to that portal already um so you know um i think that made it so helpful for um alleviating them from having to call us directly through a cost center on that um other questions uh are primarily from restaurants and sarah did a great job in covering it you know we want to make sure that alcohol is not included we also you know i'm so amazed at the creative promotions that the restaurants are doing one of the things though we're telling the restaurants our cash back is not allowed you know we want to keep the funds in the restaurant industry to to get the uh impacts that we're um hoping for you know with the the economic impacts um of investing in a restaurant industry is more than two to one so it's it's huge for the state for the employees yeah sure and sarah can you can you talk a little bit about the importance of that money being spent locally because that circulates right there's two three times you know that that multiplier effect yeah exactly and and then that dollar that is spent at the restaurant is going back to employ the you know the employees and then for us you know we have to you know our suppliers the farmers we source our produce locally um and so just giving it it back and and i think it's times two or one point you know if you round up it would be be you know that going back to the economy and that's exactly what we need and so when that came out i was like oh my gosh like that it's brilliant actually so couldn't come at a better time couldn't come at a better time so thank you yeah that's great uh gwen i just wanted to find out from you um if you have any advice as i mentioned earlier i think the governor the administration here is considering a similar program if not um this same while i recreate the wheel right if it's working for you guys so what would your advice be um what are some of the main points you would give to them um as uh if we roll out a similar card program yes i think it needs to be a public-private partnership and we've gotten great partners with the hawaii restaurant association with the chamber of commerce with the hawaii agricultural foundation and also with our contractors you know money network and meta bank so it it it cannot be it takes a village right so we were able to stand it up so quickly uh because of our partners and it's thanks to them and our uh policy makers who supported it as well as our governor in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc gu self storage conveniently located near the harman mcdonald's we offer affordable rates online payments and auto bill pay for your convenience plus gate access daily from 6am to 9pm call us tod
y at 648-7867 for more information in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc did you have a specific uh task force or creating i know that you are the program coordinator but you did you draw on as you said a private um uh membership task force as well yes so we've we had at the beginning we were having meetings like twice a week um now we're you know where it's less than that because it's been launched do we have a meeting on friday but we have a quite a large meeting of public workers as well as private industry and all of our partners and restaurants were also part of that because we wanted to make sure that we got their feedback um to make sure that we were doing what was right for them right and there's you had no incidents of fraud because it's sort of like an automatic um qualification right because i know for our um unemployment program we've never had one we actually the department of labor here actually started up guam's very first unemployment program because of the need for the the through the pua but this is a non no need to apply kind of program that you you guys start up so the recommendation would be also to use whatever they've done already with pua so they don't have to redo that whole process because it is and i recall it it did take quite some time for everyone to fill in an application and then be vetted and all that stuff correct right and and that was part of why we were able to do it so quickly because our department of labor already vetted these people and they are eligible based on our criteria um you know i do i do know that there were people who had um claims and they weren't settled in september september is when we pulled the data but they might have been settled in october um unfortunately we were not able to issue them a card um you know they have to have been settled and paid and deemed eligible in september in order to get a card yeah and sarah do you have any recommendations or insights for our struggling uh restaurant industry uh in terms of the experiences that you've gone through in hawaii i would say as a restaurant um owner it it is tough we are not going to sugarcoat it it is tough um but you know um for me i'm always looking at the half you know the glass is half full i'm always like i'm licking through instagram social media anything each week i'm looking what can we do um and as long as i'm doing my best we're doing promos um we're you know shaking you know all the customer our customers that are coming in i'm thanking everyone i mean you know thank you so much i know you have places that you can go but for you to choose to come to us for our staff and our employees building their morale and getting them excited and um so i would say don't you know don't give up it is challenging times um and rely on your you know your um other you know as far as with restaurant owners um and this too shall pass it's challenging it it will will pass yeah yeah it has to it absolutely has it has to i i know that um hawaii um had uh governor yigi had just recently announced the reopening of the tourism industry um how has that gone so far for the restaurant in the hotels good i i um so i you know make sure that i you know i i keep myself physically fit and healthy during this time so i i normally do a run around diamond head in waikiki and um it was nice you know we we saw um you know the tourists coming back and and um so you know as far as with the tourists there's hotels and those hotels employ um the people here um it's all a good all a good thing everybody just needs to do their part rare mass social distance those things and so um it's been good it's been you know this past week for us for the business it's um it was very encouraging we had a good week and that's good to know it and are you optimistic that if the uh tourism industry and and obviously it's not going to come back like you're not going to get your record numbers that you had right before the pandemic but they'll probably be a gradual build up but are you optimistic then that if that gradual buildup happens that the restaurant industry in the hotel industry will sort of follow i think so i think so it is um you know as far as with what i've seen um with this past few days of it opening and and seeing um the hotels and the restaurants around the waikiki area and that's like the times square of new york and and so it wasn't hustling bustling like before but it is nice to to see um the other folks there and so i am optimistic in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc gu self storage conveniently located near the harmon mcdonald's we offer affordable rates online payments and auto bill pay for your convenience plus gate access daily from 6 am to 9pm call us today at 648-7867 for more information in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc yeah and how about you gwen what what's uh what's your thoughts um how how's it been for uh you know the government side in terms of the opening of the tourism energy street to see visitors start uh trickling back in yeah seven thousand eight thousand visitors a day which is uh a short uh much much short of what the normal is but it's uh it's it's a start and i think uh so far so good i know that there were some concern from travelers it's really really good to see um travel bloggers who actually say it was more stressful getting ready to come then once they landed it was nice and smooth as long as they did what they were supposed to do so it's encouraging and and we hope that it it continues to work out well yeah i i did an interview last week with the head of the hawaii uh tourism uh authority and uh one of the questions i asked him um and he was very frank about it was you know we have this sort of spectrum in which um you know people are fearful still and they don't uh necessarily want to see the visitors come back just yet and then there's the other the business side that um you know they're fearful for their continued livelihood and so um how do you balance that and um how how in your in in your personal opinion has it been for you in terms of balance making that balance between reopening and closing it um uh closing it up tight uh for me it's been um you know again it's it's it's hard because everyone has their own personal circumstance for example i have not seen my mother-in-law or i've seen her through a window since april so we have not visited we drop things we drop off groceries for her pick up food for her but you know she's been um she's been hold up by herself just because she's a high risk uh and so it's been hard on her and and and then there's others who might my son he's you know he's 19 and they think they're invincible and and they're anxious to go out he's actually in arizona and he we just sent him back to college there so you know it takes a balance and um we just as sarah said everyone just needs to do their part where their mass shows the distance you know do what they need to do so we'll get through this we'll get through this yeah and sarah let me end with you just uh tell me from your perspective as a business owner um how do you see the the balance being struck um i i think that you know with what gwen had mentioned like everybody does their part the social distancing um and wearing a mask uh and but you know we want to get back to some sort of normalcy like i miss going out to eat and so for us to be able to dine at our favorite restaurant um it was nice to to you know to enjoy a meal and so you know if everybody does their part with the tourists here i don't have a problem with it i welcome it um but you know for us to be responsible about it that's why there's requirements as far as with with the capacity that's allowed within a restaurant um so i think it's a good thing and and um as far as with uh pre-existing diseases and and and and the customers and people like that then you know we'll you know they'll stay at home and to make sure that they're protected um so i think it's a good thing um everybody needs to do their part all right thank you very much sarah gwen she is the owner of pizza press and the director of the hawaii restaurant association and when yamamoto lao is the program administer of the administrator rather of the hawaii restaurant card which just launched 500 up from a federal cares act fund and must be spent in local restaurants and eateries and so good luck on the program sounds great and possibly guam will implement something similar to that uh thanks and aloha ladies appreciate you joining us bye thank you bye and that's in full zoom for this week i'm mr lakanto we'll see you again next week stay safe everyone in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc
