Minnesota's small businesses need your help. We’re acting responsibly as part of the overall effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, as well as following the orders to shut down our establishments. We’re reminding our employees to protect themselves, and we’re doing everything we can to be good members of the Minneapolis and Minnesota community.

But we need your help. Our businesses are all notoriously low margin, and many of our employees are living paycheck to paycheck. Many of us are going above and beyond to pay benefits to employees even if they aren’t working; we’re urging our employees to apply for unemployment compensation. We need help from the City and the State to stay afloat, we need an assistance program put in place to help out our hourly and salaried staff.

An immediate step that the State and City could take to provide relief is to allow small businesses to keep their sales and use tax, which otherwise would be due March 20. That money could be more effectively deployed to help local businesses and their employees stay afloat in this time of need.

Please – step up and help us protect this community.