How to apply for the Restaurant Strong Fund’s All Day Campaign

On Thursday, October 7, 2021, Grubhub and The Greg Hill Foundation’s Restaurant Strong Fund announced they will be giving $4 million in grants to support restaurants across the country that have been working hard to survive the pandemic. Ranging from $5,000 to $50,000, the grants are part of the Restaurant Strong Fund’s All Day campaign and will help restaurant owners fund indoor and outdoor dining improvements, equipment and technology maintenance and upgrades, marketing and promotion efforts, staff hiring and training, COVID-19 compliance, and infrastructure improvements.

To help restaurants prepare for the application process, Greg Hill, the founder and President of The Greg Hill Foundation and the host of The Greg Hill Show on WEEI in Boston, is sharing insights into applying for this next round of funding.

A message to independent restaurants from Greg Hill

At the beginning of March 2020, we recognized that Covid-19 would shut the restaurant industry down. With our partners and the tremendous support of our community, we created and launched The Restaurant Strong Fund to help provide aid to restaurant employees and owners. We, of course, had no idea how long Covid-19 would wreak havoc in our communities and wouldn’t have guessed that to this day, restaurants would still be suffering from this continued pandemic.

As we sit here today, I am honored to have been able to donate over $9.5 Million to the industry through various grants. I am also excited to share with you that The Restaurant Strong Fund and Grubhub are teaming up to provide over $4,000,000 in grants to support small business restaurants in 7 different cities. If you are a restaurant located in Boston, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Portland, and Denver and are in need of support, I highly encourage you to apply for our latest grant program: The Restaurant Strong Fund’s All-Day Campaign.

Starting October 13, 2021, the Restaurant Strong Fund will accept grant applications for the first 500 restaurants located in each of the seven cities and have five or fewer locations. The application period will close on October 20, 2021, and grants will be fully distributed to restaurants in mid-November.

There will be three phases of the All Day Grant review process:

Phase 1: Judges will review and rank all 500 grant applicants. 100 applicants will move on to the second round based on their needs and potential use of the grant.
Phase 2: follow up questions will be sent to the remaining applicants to refine their plans for the grant and provide additional details to gauge the potential impact that a grant can make. After review, the $5,000 and $10,000 grants will be awarded, and 11 finalists will be selected.
Phase 3: A panel of 3 judges will hear final pitches from the 11 finalists. One of the restaurants in each city will be selected as the $50,000 grant recipient, while the others receive $25,00 and $10,000 grants.

When creating your application, please keep in mind that the panel of judges is looking for as much detail as possible. To apply, you will need to:

Provide a short description of your restaurant and why your restaurant is in need of this grant
Provide a detailed description of how you plan to use the grant funds and how this grant will impact your restaurant and employees
Provide your profit and loss statement for 2020- 2021

Additionally, while these elements are not required, I do recommend sharing the following:

Any documentation that you can share will provide additional information about how the grant will be utilized
A video explaining how this grant will impact your restaurant and employees

Independent restaurants are the beating heart of our local communities. By supporting these restaurant owners and assisting in creating sustainable businesses, we know we will make a significant impact on the thousands of employees and their families.

To apply for the grant, please click here, and if you have any questions, please email [email protected].