JINGLE BELL ROCKED: Town Hall Monday to Discuss the Bumpy Road Ahead for Bars and Restaurants

Originally Published : December 17, 2021

Dear HL Clients and Friends,

We know that you’re all scrambling at this point with testing and closing and re-opening and canceling and kicking shit. So, in order to keep you informed and updated, we are resuming our newsletters and will publish them as needed. We are back in Spring 2020 all hands on deck wtf mode.

As the souped up version of the virus spreads, we expect that the City and State will continue it’s streak of issuing confusing rules and regs. Testing protocols, shutdown requirements, masking, paid sick leave, ventilation, propane tanks and so it goes. We will do our best to follow it all and break it down for you as the issues develop. Oh yeah, and we have a new Mayor in a few weeks. Mr. Ridgie, I sure hope you have our new Mayor’s ear and that he is ready to go and help the industry on day one.

We also expect that we will get no further financial support from our Dearly Elected. God bless their hearts at the IRC as they punish their little fingers that feverishly post on Instagram imploring a refill of the RRF. We appreciate the effort but it’s not working and we have seen no movement whatsoever on the RRF. It looks like we are it, we are on our own. Gotta stretch whatever you got until we get through this wave. It might have to last through the winter.

And what should you do about closing it all down? And how do you pay your employees and keep the good ones? What about Landy and the rent? We will answer these and your other burning questions on Monday at our town hall style webinar:

Webinar Alert: Omicron Office Hours with Lee Jacobs and Chloe Brownstein

Come join us on Monday, December 20, 2021 at 12:00 PM for an Emergency HR Confidential Session: Omicron Office Hours. Register for this special session, here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_eHZzHV7FSA2sdYQTEq0gDw

During this time we will discuss everything we know and don’t know about Omicron. We will also go over the sometimes complicated sick leave laws and how they apply to you and your business. Most importantly, we will be there to be a listening ear, try to answer all your questions and tackle this together.

We have been in this together since the beginning of March 2020 and almost two year later, we are still here for you and the industry—and always will be.

See you all Monday afternoon.

Rent and Landlords in Omicron Time by Joe Taylor, Chair, Litigation Group

It is important to understand your rent obligations should Omicron leads us back to the way things were in spring of 2020. A number of our clients were able to secure some form of rent relief from their landlords, but the terms of those deals vary from case to case. Some tenants deals got a rent abatement on the condition that there are no future defaults.

If this is your case, the next step is to determine whether there was a force majeure clause included in the agreement and to what extent could it possibly forgive your inability to pay rent. If there is a force majeure clause, does it only trigger if there is a government order restricts your business, or does it allow you to avoid rent payments where the pandemic impacts your business in general?

For those of you who either did not secure a rent agreement, or could risk your landlord coming for the past arrears if there is a future default, please keep this in mind as we progress into the next weeks and months and reach out to us so we can discuss how to best handle the situation, including assessing whether, or when, to trigger your good-guy provision in your guaranty.

R.I.P. – The great jazz pianist, composer and educator Barry Harris. Listen to him here on Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a4n6yZIXxI

Hang in there,
David