WASHINGTON, D.C. (WETM) — Last week, President Joe Biden signed off on the American Rescue Plan. That plan sends relief to Americans that were impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

This comes after many businesses were financially impacted by the pandemic.

“Business has been down, we’ve had to close down reopen closed back down again for, you know, a long time,” said Kristi Mertsock, Owner of Curly’s Chicken House. “Employees have been laid off, staff hasn’t been working. Several restaurants in the area have shut down permanently and they won’t ever come back, which is really sad. We survived this past year you know by the skin of our teeth.”

The American Rescue Plan included the Restaurant Reviatlization Plan that had $25.6B in grant funding for restaurants to pay employees, rent, insurance, or buy PPE.

“I feel that would be a great thing to get some relief,” Mertsock said. “Many of us restaurants have just been devastated by the past year— the whole year, and we’ve lost a lot of money. We’ve lost a lot of business. Things are starting to look up but you know if we could get some help and bring things back, that would be great.”

New York businesses could get a maximum of $5 million per restaurant.

Back in February, Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer said hopefully these funds will be enough to help hurting businesses while more Americans get vaccinated.

“Hopefully, by September we will have the vaccine and enough people with the vaccine that restaurants will be able to open, and New York life will come back to what it is,” Schumer said. “But New York can’t live without its restaurant, our restaurants can’t live without aid, we’re getting them the aid – that’s the good news.”

Registration to request for loans have not yet begun yet, but restaurants can apply for funding by clicking here.