About 75 percent of Pierce County’s restaurant loans fell under $100,000. Among the hundreds of restaurants that secured loans under $150,000 were franchises of publicly traded, multimillion dollar companies such as Dairy Queen, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, and Jack in the Box, whose largest stockholder is the megafund BlackRock. If the program had been administered and structured differently, it could have helped more people.”Īn analysis by The News Tribune, for instance, found that the largest 10 loans to restaurants in Pierce County, including a regional franchise owner of several Domino’s Pizza stores, accounted for nearly half of the total amount received by the local industry. The program valued “speed and efficiency over accuracy or equity. “They were able to take advantage of the program and navigate within it because of the way that it was structured,” said Fan of Bigfoot’s PPP tally. The hastily written bill was intended to rescue small businesses suddenly reeling from the effects of a pandemic by offering forgivable loans for keeping employees on payroll it was later adjusted to allow spending on other costs like rent and utilities.īigfoot Java was eligible for PPP thanks to an exception for franchises and chains that allowed any business with fewer than 500 employees per location to apply - a move that benefited some of the wealthiest restaurant chains in America, including franchises of McDonald’s, Subway and Dunkin’. These loans will likely never be audited by the Small Business Administration, the federal department tasked with overseeing the federal stimulus package known as the CARES Act, because each falls well under the $2 million threshold promised for such accountability.

“It does raise questions about the equity of how the funds were distributed though,” she added, and “points to larger problems” with the program. Fan, a small business attorney and director of the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic at the University of Washington. “I don’t have all the facts in this case, but it does not appear that what the company did was improper,” said Jennifer S.

Jiwani’s name appears, too, on documents affiliated with Trimark Student Housing, a system of off-campus housing near the University of Washington in Seattle, and Trimark Hospitality, which owns 14 mid-tier hotels in five states. State records indicate the drive-thru chain belongs to Al Jiwani and Jennifer Whitmore. The company employs more than 500 people, an average of 16 employees per location, based on jobs reported in Small Business Administration data and information from former employees.

An associated real estate and investment company, Bigfoot Properties and Bigfoot Investment Group, also received separate loans. A chain of drive-thru coffee stands in Western Washington received $2.5 million from the Paycheck Protection Program, a prime example of how the pandemic relief bill intended for small businesses benefited companies with deeper pockets and better financial connections.īigfoot Java had more than 30 locations in seven Washington counties when the pandemic hit last spring, and each received an individual PPP loan, averaging $74,000.

Bigfoot java application