Kevin Boehm
(Bloomberg) The passage of the recent $900 billion relief package was a bitter pill for the restaurant industry. Before the pandemic, restaurants employed more than 12 million people, according to the National Restaurant Association. Since March, however, the industry has been decimated, with tens of thousands of restaurants forced to shut their doors permanently. Many that have managed to remain open have had to lay off workers as well. Yet Congress and the administration, which have directed billions of dollars to the airline and the entertainment industries, have not seen fit to give any direct aid to restaurants.
Kevin Boehm is an independent restaurateur who was deeply involved in the effort to obtain some badly needed help for the industry. Boehm and his partner Rob Katz founded the Chicago-based Boka Restaurant Group in 2002; today they operate more than 20 high-end restaurants. I spoke to him recently about why that effort failed and what it has been like to