Congressional Hearing — National Small Business Week: Celebrating Our Main Street Champions (2021)

Summary

Printed record of a hearing before the Committee on Small Business of the United States House of Representatives, titled National Small Business Week: Celebrating Our Main Street Champions, on September 14, 2021. The committee met at 11:05 a.m. via Zoom, and Kweisi Mfume opened the hearing as Vice Chair of the Committee. The witness list names small business owners and executives, including Tod Greenfield of Martin Greenfield Clothiers and Jan Haviland of Haviland Corp. Mfume's remarks say small firms served the country through the crisis, from grocers supplying essential goods to small manufacturers producing PPE. Ranking Member Blaine Luetkemeyer introduces Haviland as owner and president of Haviland Corporation in Linn, Missouri.

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Issuer: Congressional materials
Document type: Congressional Hearing
Case: Chrg 117Hhrg45479

Cite this document

“Congressional Hearing — National Small Business Week: Celebrating Our Main Street Champions (2021).” Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/chrg-117hhrg45479/, SHA-256 f4663ea5dd2a88ca2ef355ee25ec0f0c60d8c224d03f3a10c45279f83ff2c0ae.

Full text

NATIONAL SMALL BUSINESS WEEK: CELEBRATING
OUR MAIN STREET CHAMPIONS

HEARING
BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD
SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Small Business Committee Document Number 117–032
Available via the GPO Website: www.govinfo.gov

U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45–479 WASHINGTON : 2021

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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
NYDIA VELÁZQUEZ, New York, Chairwoman
JARED GOLDEN, Maine
JASON CROW, Colorado
SHARICE DAVIDS, Kansas
KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
MARIE NEWMAN, Illinois
CAROLYN BOURDEAUX, Georgia
TROY CARTER, Louisiana
JUDY CHU, California
DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
ANTONIO DELGADO, New York
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
ANDY KIM, New Jersey
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri, Ranking Member
ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas
JIM HAGEDORN, Minnesota
PETE STAUBER, Minnesota
DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York
ANDREW GARBARINO, New York
YOUNG KIM, California
BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
BYRON DONALDS, Florida
MARIA SALAZAR, Florida
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin

MELISSA JUNG, Majority Staff Director
ELLEN HARRINGTON, Majority Deputy Staff Director
DAVID PLANNING, Staff Director

(II)

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CONTENTS
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Hon. Kweisi Mfume ................................................................................................. 1
Hon. Blaine Luetkemeyer ....................................................................................... 2
WITNESSES
Mr. Tod Greenfield, Vice President, Martin Greenfield Clothiers, Brooklyn,
NY ......................................................................................................................... 6
Ms. Jan Haviland, Owner and President, Haviland Corp., Linn, MO ................ 8
Ms. Shelonda Stokes, President, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, Balti-
more, MD .............................................................................................................. 10
Ms. Natasha Hudson, Owner, Hudson’s on Mercer, Dripping Springs, TX ........ 12
Ms. Gena Felder, Chief Financial Officer, TJ Hale, Menomonee Falls, WI ....... 14
Mr. Eric Childs, Owner, Mind’s Eye Comics, Burnsville, MN ............................. 27
Ms. Krystal Hernandez, Owner, La Plaza F!esta, Madelia, MN ......................... 29
Mr. Maurice Contreras, President, Volcanica Coffee Company, Suwanee, GA .. 30
Mr. Mark J. Lunde, Chief Executive Officer, Lunde Auto Sales, Wadena,
MN ......................................................................................................................... 31
Mr. Barry Schlouch, President, Schlouch Incorporated, Blandon, PA ................ 33
Mr. Jaime Di Paulo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Illinois Hispanic
Chamber of Commerce (IHCC), Chicago, IL ...................................................... 44
Ms. Susan Shaw, Owner, Shaw Insurance Agency, Hurst, TX ........................... 45
Mr. Donald Fox, President and Chief Executive Officer, Fox Theatres LLC,
Wyomissing, PA .................................................................................................... 47
Mr. Mitch Cook, Co-Owner, Avalon Bagels to Burgers, Yorba Linda, CA .......... 49
Mr. Greg Owens, Chief Executive Officer, Sherrill Manufacturing Inc.,
Sherrill, NY .......................................................................................................... 50

APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Mr. Tod Greenfield, Vice President, Martin Greenfield Clothiers, Brook-
lyn, NY ........................................................................................................... 61
Ms. Jan Haviland, Owner and President, Haviland Corp., Linn, MO ......... 63
Ms. Shelonda Stokes, President, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore,
Baltimore, MD ............................................................................................... 66
Ms. Natasha Hudson, Owner, Hudson’s on Mercer, Dripping Springs,
TX ................................................................................................................... 74
Ms. Gena Felder, Chief Financial Officer, TJ Hale, Menomonee Falls,
WI ................................................................................................................... 76
Mr. Eric Childs, Owner, Mind’s Eye Comics, Burnsville, MN ...................... 79
Ms. Krystal Hernandez, Owner, La Plaza F!esta, Madeila, MN .................. 82
Mr. Maurice Contreras, President, Volcanica Coffee Company, Suwanee,
GA .................................................................................................................. 84
Mr. Mark J. Lunde, Chief Executive Officer, Lunde Auto Sales, Wadena,
MN ................................................................................................................. 86
Mr. Barry Schlouch, President, Schlouch Incorporated, Blandon, PA ......... 88
Mr. Jaime Di Paulo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Illinois His-
panic Chamber of Commerce (IHCC), Chicago, IL .................................... 94
Ms. Susan Shaw, Owner, Shaw Insurance Agency, Hurst, TX .................... 104
Mr. Donald Fox, President and Chief Executive Officer, Fox Theatres
LLC, Wyomissing, PA ................................................................................... 106
Mr. Mitch Cook, Co-Owner, Avalon Bagels to Burgers, Yorba Linda,
CA ................................................................................................................... 109
Mr. Greg Owens, Chief Executive Officer, Sherrill Manufacturing Inc.,
Sherrill, NY ................................................................................................... 111
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IV
Page
Questions for the Record:
None.
Answers for the Record:
None.
Additional Material for the Record:
The National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) ..................... 115

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NATIONAL SMALL BUSINESS WEEK: CELE-
BRATING OUR MAIN STREET CHAMPIONS

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:05 a.m., via Zoom,
Hon. Nydia M. Velázquez [chairwoman of the Committee] pre-
siding.
Present: Representatives Velázquez, Mfume, Phillips, Newman,
Bourdeaux, Delgado, Houlahan, Mr. Kim, Craig, Luetkemeyer, Wil-
liams, Hagedorn, Stauber, Meuser, Ms. Young Kim, Van Duyne,
Donalds, and Fitzgerald.
Mr. MFUME. [Presiding.] Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
I am Kweisi Mfume from the State of Maryland; obviously not
Nydia Velázquez who has, unfortunately, been detained, but I sus-
pect should be joining us a little later in today’s hearing. I want
to officially call this hearing to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at
any time in the proceedings.
Let me begin by saying that the standing House and Committee
rules and practices will continue as they usually do to apply during
remote proceedings. All Members of the Committee are reminded
that they are expected to adhere to these standing rules, including
decorum, when they are participating in any remote event.
Now, with that said, the technology that we are utilizing today
requires us to make some small modifications to ensure that Mem-
bers can fully participate in these proceedings. It is important to
note that House regulations require Members to be visible through
a video connection throughout the proceedings, so please keep your
cameras on. If you have to participate in another proceeding, please
exit and then log back again later.
And in the event that a Member encounters technical issues that
prevent them from being recognized for their questioning, I will
then move to the next available Member of the same party, and I
will recognize that Member at the next appropriate time slot pro-
vided they have returned, obviously, to the proceeding. Should a
Member be interrupted by technical issues, again, I will recognize
that Member at the next appropriate spot for the remainder of
their time once those issues have indeed been resolved.
In the event a witness loses connectivity during testimony or
questioning, I will preserve their time as the staff attempts to ad-
dress the technical issues. I may need to recess the proceedings
from time to time or at a particular time to provide for a witness
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to connect. We would like to have everybody’s participation obvi-
ously.
And, finally, remember to remain muted until you are recognized
to minimize background noise. In accordance with the rules, staff
has been advised to mute participants only in the event if there is
an inadvertent sound or set of background noises. And should a
Member wish to be recognized, they must then unmute themselves
and seek recognition at the appropriate time.
Again, I would just like to say for those of you who may have
joined a moment or two late, as you can see, I am not Chair
Velázquez, the Chairwoman of the Small Business Committee. She,
unfortunately, has been detained and expects perhaps to join us at
some other part of this hearing. But as Vice Chair of the Com-
mittee, let me begin by thanking the small businesses that are here
with us today. Time is always a luxury for entrepreneurs like you,
so I really, really appreciate your testimony.
Since 1963, Americans have come together to celebrate National
Small Business Week. Every year during this week, we recognize
the small businesses in our communities and the entrepreneurial
spirit that helps to make this country great.
Reading the biographies of today’s witnesses, it is clear that this
spirit is alive and well, and, moreover, their stories are evidence
that regardless of circumstance, small business owners will always
rise to the occasion and achieve great things.
The integrity and the character of these businesses shine bright
over the past 18 months, a dark time, as we know, in our nation’s
history. COVID introduced challenges that would have been un-
thinkable a short time ago, but through it all, small businesses
have done what it takes to survive and to serve their communities,
nonetheless, during a time of great crisis. From grocers supplying
essential goods to small manufacturers producing PPE, small firms
have been there for our country every step of the way. And for that
we thank you.
Today, we are joined by small businesses operating in the dis-
tricts that we have the privilege to represent. These entrepreneurs
may be separated obviously by long distances and operate in dif-
ferent industries, but their determination and their will to succeed
unite them today.
So I look forward to hearing your success stories, and I know the
Ranking Member and everyone else in this Committee feels the
same way. What has happened and what has hurt your business
we are interested in. We want to know how we as a Committee can
help your businesses become stronger than ever, because busi-
nesses like yours number merely 30 million and employ half the
private workforce.
So, long story short, you are indeed the foundation of our econ-
omy and the glue that holds our communities together. For our
country to ultimately recover, we need your businesses operating at
full strength.
And I would like to, if I might now, yield to the Ranking Mem-
ber, Mr. Luetkemeyer, for his opening statement.
Mr. Luetkemeyer.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all
of the small business owners here with us today as we celebrate

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National Small Business Week, including my constituent, Jan
Haviland, owner and president of Haviland Corporation. Small
business owners like you are the drivers of the United States’ econ-
omy and workforce, and you have been absolutely vital in getting
our nation’s economy back up and running after the forced nation-
wide shutdowns and altered capacity restrictions this past year.
Small businesses are the life blood of our communities. They are
comprised of job creators and innovators alike. Across the United
States, there are an estimated 32.5 million small businesses, mak-
ing up 99 percent of all our nation’s businesses, employing over 61
million workers.
Whether you realize it or not, small businesses have impacted
the lives of every single American. As Ranking Member of the
Small Business Committee, it is an honor to work alongside my col-
leagues to create commonsense policies that uplift our nation’s
small businesses while also protecting the American taxpayer. I
understand the duty we have in fighting the deregulation, lower
taxes, access to capital, and increased SBA oversight, especially in
the wake of the pandemic.
As you all know, COVID-19 devastated small businesses with
overreaching State and local shutdown measures and altered ca-
pacity restrictions. Through no fault of their own, small businesses
have faced extreme challenges that are still ongoing. As a response,
Congress has created numerous small business relief programs to
provide much needed assistance to main street USA. Some of these
programs, such as the Paycheck Protection Program, have success-
fully assisted millions of small businesses from coast to coast pro-
viding hundreds of billion of dollars in assistance. Unfortunately,
small businesses continue to face increasing obstacles.
NFIB’s August job report found that 50 percent of all small busi-
ness owners reported job openings they could not fill in the current
period. A record high reading. Additionally, inflation continues to
skyrocket to the highest rate in 30 years. And my Democratic col-
leagues continue to top their reckless tax and spend spree, leaving
struggling small business owners with the bill.
As our nation celebrates small businesses this week and every
week, we must support main street USA by advancing pro-growth
policies that allow small business owners and their employees to
contribute to the economy and create jobs. We must get irrespon-
sible partisan spending under control, provide tax relief for job cre-
ators, and remove burdensome government mandates that are
being forced upon small business owners.
Again, I want to thank our panel of witnesses for taking time
away from their businesses for this important hearing as we cele-
brate small business resiliency. Look forward to your testimonies.
And, with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you. The distinguished gentleman from
Missouri, the Ranking Member, yields back.
I just noticed that we have been joined by our Chairwoman, the
distinguished Nydia Velázquez of New York.
Madam Chair, I would be happy to yield back to you appro-
priately so at this time so that you can continue.
Chairwoman Velázquez. [Presiding.] Well, I just want to thank
you and all the Members for being in this Committee today, and

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I just want to excuse myself. Both the Ranking Member and my-
self, we are voting on the Financial Services Committee reconcili-
ation package.
But I would like to introduce our witnesses. And our first witness
is Mr. Tod Greenfield, the vice president of Greenfield Clothing in
my district, Brooklyn, New York. Greenfield Clothiers is a Brooklyn
manufacturer of hand-tailored men’s clothing. The company was
founded in 1977 by Martin Greenfield when he bought the factory
from his former employer.
Survivor of the Holocaust, an immigrant to America, he joined in
1947 as an entry level floor boy, ultimately rising to vice president
of production before buying the company. Now, Martin, along with
his two sons, Tod and Jay, run the company as a trio of managers.
Tod has worked around the clock during the COVID-19 pandemic
to ensure his company stays open, whether by adapting his busi-
ness to make PPE or utilizing pandemic assistance programs from
the SBA to ensure his workers maintain pay.
Thank you, Mr. Greenfield, for being here today.
And now I call on the Ranking Member to introduce his witness.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Jan Haviland is owner and president of Haviland Corpora-
tion in Linn, Missouri. Founded in 1946, Haviland Corporation
began manufacturing custom floor and window squeegees in St.
Louis, Missouri. In 1974, they moved to the current location, Linn,
Missouri, where the manufacturing is still done today.
As industry evolves and grows, Haviland continues to expand its
product offerings accordingly. And during the pandemic, they were
able to expand their operations to provide crucial PPE supplies to
Missourians and beyond. This kind of adaptability and ability to
cater to new demands is part of what makes small businesses
great. They operate to meet the needs of their customers and com-
munity, not answer to big corporations.
Haviland has been a family-owned business since they opened
their doors and has a mission to continue manufacturing of prod-
ucts in the United States, creating jobs and innovations that keep
our country and economy strong. It is companies like the Haviland
Corporation that have helped Missouri lead the charge in our na-
tion’s economic recovery.
Ms. Haviland, thank you so much for being with us today, taking
time out of your schedule to share your small business testimony.
Thank you so much.
And, with that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
Mr. MFUME. [Presiding.] I think the Chair may have exited. I
do want to thank her for coming in to the hearing to explain the
situation that both she and the Ranking Member are faced with as
the dualities of this process that happen from time to time.
So, having said that, I would like at this particular time to do
two things. One is to introduce a witness myself, and then the
other obviously following that would be to yield to the distin-
guished gentleman from Texas for his chance to do the same.
As we know, this is a time to formally pause and to recognize the
services, the sacrifice, and indeed the integrity of our small busi-
nesses that exist throughout our communities. In Maryland’s Sev-
enth Congressional District, which I have the honor to represent,

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small businesses like in your district represent the real fabric of
our community. In my district, from Randallstown to Woodlawn to
Catonsville, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, downtown Colum-
bia, and several other communities, those businesses have become
the foundation of the recovery that we have witnessed here in cen-
tral Maryland.
This morning we will hear from my guest, Ms. Shelonda Stokes,
who is president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore and
the CEO of the Downtown Management Authority, a business im-
provement district in the heart of Baltimore City. In these capac-
ities she is responsible for building an environment that is condu-
cive to businesses of all types and, indeed, all sizes.
Ms. Stokes Co-Chaired the Small Business Recovery Task Force
during last year’s COVID-19 shutdown, and she serves on the Na-
tional Women’s Business Council as a Presidential appointee.
Prior to taking over the Downtown Partnership, Ms. Stokes was
president and CEO of a full-service marketing and entertainment
agency that she cofounded. Her deep understanding of what it
takes to create and to sustain a small business, particularly Black-
owned businesses, has led to an innovative new program helping
small business start-ups in downtown Baltimore City.
And so it is my, indeed, pleasure to welcome Ms. Stokes to speak
with us today about small businesses here in my district but also
across the country.
Ms. Stokes, thank you very much for being with us.
Ms. STOKES. Thank you for having me.
Mr. MFUME. Go right ahead.
Ms. STOKES. Thank you so much. And so I will not go into the
formal introduction.
Mr. MFUME. Oh, Ms. Stokes? Ms. Stokes, I am sorry. This is
what happens when you are not the Chair. I think the process here
is we are going to do the introductions and then come back and
allow each one of the guests today to speak. So it is my error. I
apologize. Thank you for letting me step on you as you got started
there.
And, with that, I would like to yield now to the distinguished
gentleman from Texas, Mr. Williams.
Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Ranking Member, for extending me the oppor-
tunity to introduce one of our witnesses and one of my friends. I
am proud to introduce Natasha Hudson.
Ms. Hudson is the owner of Hudson’s on Mercer Street, a live
music venue in Dripping Springs, Texas, which is located in my
district in the great State of Texas. Mrs. Hudson and her husband
started the business 6 years ago to bring fashion and knowledge of
the music business to the historic district of Dripping Springs just
outside of Austin, Texas.
Prior to starting this business, Ms. Hudson was a lifelong musi-
cian from Nashville, Tennessee. After teaching music out of her
home for 2 years and building a clientele, she expanded the busi-
ness to a 4,000-square foot event space and hired a teaching staff
of 12 people. Her hope is to spread the power of music and the arts
to the community has made Hudson’s on Mercer the place—I re-

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peat, the place—for night life and community events in Dripping
Springs.
Ms. Hudson, I can’t thank you enough for joining us today. We
look forward to hearing more about your small business experience
and your work with local communities. And I know that because
of small business owners like yourself, and even myself, we will
turn this economy around from the devastation we have seen from
COVID.
So I also want to thank all of our other witnesses for joining us
today, and thank you for being the heartbeat of this country.
And I yield my time back.
Mr. MFUME. The gentleman yields back his time.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Fitzgerald of Wisconsin.
Mr. FITZGERALD. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning. Good morning. It is my honor to introduce Ms.
Gena Felder, chief financial officer for TJ Hale Company.
Gena, welcome.
TJ Hale Company is a manufacturer of fixtures. It is located in
my district, the Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. The company was
founded in 1950 in a 3,000-square foot shop in Butler, Wisconsin,
which is also in the district, and specialized in supermarket inte-
riors and architectural woodworking. The company has since ex-
panded to 120,000 square feet of integrated manufacturing facili-
ties and offers interior service for retail, hospitality, restaurants,
and businesses, as well as architectural millwork in other indus-
tries throughout the United States and across the globe.
Ms. Felder has spent over two decades with TJ Hale and is re-
sponsible for the overall financial strategies and financial manage-
ment functions of the company. She is responsible for accounting,
treasury, budgeting, and financial planning, taxation, risk manage-
ment, legal, and information systems. That is just about every-
thing. I can’t think of anything else they could have you doing. She
is also a member of the company’s executive committee, and want-
ed to welcome Ms. Gena Felder as not only a constituent, but as
a witness. So glad you are here today.
I yield back.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you very much. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair would like to recognize Mr. Greenfield to proceed with
his testimony, and then we will go in the order in which the guests
have been introduced.
Mr. Greenfield.

STATEMENTS OF MR. TOD GREENFIELD, VICE PRESIDENT,
MARTIN GREENFIELD CLOTHIERS, BROOKLYN, NY; MS. JAN
HAVILAND, OWNER AND PRESIDENT, HAVILAND CORP.,
LINN, MO; MS. SHELONDA STOKES, PRESIDENT, DOWNTOWN
PARTNERSHIP OF BALTIMORE, BALTIMORE, MD; MS.
NATASHA HUDSON, OWNER, HUDSON’S ON MERCER, DRIP-
PING SPRINGS, TX; AND MS. GENA FELDER, CHIEF FINAN-
CIAL OFFICER, TJ HALE, MENOMONEE FALLS, WI

STATEMENT OF TOD GREENFIELD
Mr. GREENFIELD. Thanks.

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Good morning, Chair Velázquez, Ranking Member Luetkemeyer,
and distinguished Members of Congress. Thanks for giving me the
opportunity to testify today.
I am Tod Greenfield. I live in Nassau County, New York. I am
an owner of Martin Greenfield Clothiers in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
We manufacture custom clothing for business people and weddings,
as well as Presidents and celebrities.
As you just heard, my father, Martin Greenfield, emigrated to
the United States as an orphaned Holocaust survivor in 1947. He
got his first job as a floor boy at the GGGs clothing factory we now
operate at. In 1977, after his employer decided to shut down the
factory, Martin purchased it and established Martin Greenfield
Clothiers.
Dad has always been grateful for having been liberated from Bu-
chenwald by the United States Army. He started his career as a
union member and always felt a strong desire to give back to the
communities that welcomed him. When the neighborhood got rough
and factories started moving away, Martin pulled other owners to-
gether and helped establish one of the first industrial parks in New
York City now known as Evergreen.
My father always considered the needs of the employees, the
neighborhood, the vendors, and customers in his decision-making
process. These values instilled into my brother Jay and I who cur-
rently run the company. I also serve as the current board Chair of
Evergreen.
Our company wasn’t prepared for the COVID shutdown and sud-
den loss of business. We could not have survived the devastating
effect without the two PPP loans, the EIDL loan, and the Employee
Retention Credit we received. These enabled us to hang on and
continue paying our employees’ healthcare during the shutdown
and the long months after.
Our business, custom-tailored clothing, is very dependent on
events. Business people dressing for the office, lawyers dressing for
court, and film and television production. Our industry was par-
ticularly hard hit because of this dependence upon in-person
events. This came on top of decades competing against cheap im-
ports from foreign manufacturers who benefit from unfair govern-
ment support. Directly because of COVID, our sales were down
over 50 percent for an entire year. We are finally experiencing a
return in demand for our clothing; however, sales are still down
over 25 percent.
As the only union men’s clothing manufacturer left in New York
City, we are an important resource, providing living wage jobs to
over 50 mostly immigrant craftspeople. Just as our father was able
to send my brother and I to college, so have hundreds of our em-
ployees been able to establish their families here in Brooklyn. We
were able to provide safe access to sewing machinery and space for
Parsons School of Design students while their school was closed be-
cause of COVID. Over the years, we have hosted classes from Par-
sons, FIT, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and many other
schools who seek hands-on learning experiences.
When the COVID lockdown silenced our factory, we were able to
safely reopen to produce and donate tens of thousands of masks
and thousands of hospital gowns needed by our local frontline com-

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munity. Before our first PPP loan was funded, we raised money
through a GoFundMe enabling us to purchase mask-making sup-
plies. We donated masks to St. Nick’s Alliance, Downstate Medical
Center, the New York City Administration for Children’s Services,
as well as many hospitals and frontline workers.
I want to thank you. Your actions through the CARES Act and
the American Rescue Plan provided life-saving support to our com-
pany, our employees, and our community here in Brooklyn. How-
ever, this support has ended before the pandemic. I urge you to
consider some additional relief targeted to especially hard-hit in-
dustries like ours which depend on in-person events.
Thank you for your time today.
Mr. MFUME. Mr. Greenfield, thank you very much for your tes-
timony, and congratulations on being a generational business that
has survived many decades here in this country. We appreciate
your time here with us.
The Chair would like at this point to recognize Ms. Haviland for
her testimony. Please go right ahead.
Ms. Haviland, you are muted.
Ms. HAVILAND. There we go. Is that better?
Mr. MFUME. There we go. That is a lot better. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF JAN HAVILAND
Ms. HAVILAND. Okay. Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Luetkemeyer, Members of the Committee, I am honored for the op-
portunity to testify for the Committee today about National Small
Business Week.
I am Jan Haviland, owner of the Haviland Corporation in Linn,
Missouri, a rural town of about 1,500 people. I am Chairperson of
the Missouri Leadership Council for the NFIB, industrial rep-
resentative for the Meramec Regional Planning Commission, and
on the board of directors for the Missouri Chamber of Commerce.
Haviland Corporation is a 75-year-old business started in about
1946 by my in-laws Warren and Van Haviland. Warren served in
World War II and the Korean Conflict and was a combat disabled
veteran recognized in both with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
After World War II, Warren worked with his father-in-law, a sani-
tary supply distributor in St. Louis. Warren enjoyed the industry
and saw a need for premium floor squeegees, thus Haviland Cor-
poration began.
Van Haviland was a majority stockholder since the inception of
Haviland, until my daughter and—Alice and I, purchased the busi-
ness in 2014, thus making Haviland a woman-owned business for
all 75 years. And since that time, we have done different types of
squeegees to increase our product plans.
In 1974, Haviland outgrew its location in St. Louis and moved
to Linn, Missouri in Osage County. There the factory was built in
a new Linn Industrial Park, and we have had two additions in the
eighties and the nineties to that building. Our staff has been con-
sistent for many years, and in 2010, I was named president of
Haviland and my daughter was named executive vice president,
and she is now well on her way to becoming the third generation
to run Haviland.

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The business practices changed, we had to contend with changes,
one of which was increased in products imported from China. We
had some purchases of materials from China, but greatly reduced
those purchases around 2009 because quality decreased and we
wanted to continue being a made-in-the-USA product as we are
today.
Raw material lead times have become a huge problem. We have
seen an increase in our lead times go from 2 to 5 days to 4 to 6
weeks or even more, caused by the lengthening of time needed to
get the materials. We have adjusted our order times to make sure
those materials do arrive so our products get out the door in a
timely manner. When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in March of
2020, we saw a drop in business for several months. And with the
help of the PPP funds, we were able to go through the rest of the
year. We also provided our county with personal protection equip-
ment in the form of washable gowns.
Since January of 2021, we have experienced numerous cost in-
creases from all suppliers, from corrugated boxes, steel, steel fin-
ishes, rubber, freight, plastic parts, nuts and bolts, and numerous
other product parts. In return, it has also caused us to increase
prices we have to charge. We usually had a 2 to 5 percent increases
every 2 years, but this year we are looking at a 10 to 12 percent
increase.
As the tax increase in the federal government is proposed for C
corporations, this would wipe out about two-thirds of our price in-
crease. In running a business it is essential to have the money to
cover cost increases, repair and replace equipment, do building re-
pairs, and to provide health insurance and wage increases for em-
ployees, hoping those don’t get wiped out with inflation. The price
increasing on materials, what would remain in our pocket with
that price increase, would be very little to cover the federal tax in-
crease on C corporations. The choice of either pricing ourselves out
of the market or covering the cost of doing business because of
higher taxes will have Haviland in a nearly impossible situation.
In 1946, Haviland had a choice of becoming a C corp, a partner-
ship, or a sales—a sole proprietorship. The C corp model is chosen
because it provided liability protection, even though it carried with
it two levels of taxation, corporate and individual. And small busi-
nesses like ours are reluctant to change over to another type of
business model. By treating all sizes of C corps the same with the
current proposed tax increases, this would jeopardize the small
business C corps by taking a disproportionate share of profits, dol-
lars needed to make their businesses grow.
We are a small business with less than 20 employees. We provide
health insurance for our employees, their families, pension plans,
stock ownership, profit-sharing plans, and college tuition donations
for our employees’ children, as well as other benefits. We proudly
manufacture in the United States, and Haviland Corporation be-
lieves in Americans helping Americans, and this has been a cor-
porate mission since inception with Warren and Van Haviland. It
is about providing jobs to pay for those little league uniforms or for
piano lessons, paying taxes to improve roadways, and providing in-
surance for our staff to relieve some of the stress that comes with
illness.

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It is important we work with one another, and by manufacturing
in the United States of America, we can do that. Now we need your
help to ensure that this ability to operate and grow and own those
small businesses continue.
Thank you.
Mr. MFUME. Well, thank you very much, Ms. Haviland. Con-
gratulations to you and your daughter on three generations of busi-
ness owners, but even more so, I guess, to have founded a woman’s-
owned business 75 years ago I am sure was a story in and of itself.
We appreciate your time and your testimony.
The Chair would like to again now recognize Ms. Stokes, who I
inadvertently cut off previously for her testimony. You know, it is
just great that you are here, Ms. Stokes. I have known you for
years, and I am going to give you a few minutes so that people here
on the panel will get to know you as well.
Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF SHELONDA STOKES
Ms. STOKES. Thank you so much, Vice Chair Mfume. I know in
the absence of Chair Velázquez, I want to thank her, you, and
Ranking Member Luetkemeyer, and all of the Members of this
Committee.
As you mentioned, I am Shelonda Stokes, an honor to stand be-
fore you today.
You are talking about a poor girl from Baltimore City who ma-
triculated through the Baltimore public school system, graduated
from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and then Morgan State Uni-
versity with a degree in electrical engineering, to owning a minor-
ity business and now serving as the president of Downtown Part-
nership of Baltimore.
To the Committee, I thank you for your leadership and commit-
ment in advancing economic opportunities for all Americans
through your work on behalf of small businesses. Your efforts and
your foresight over the last 19 months is really making a difference
to countless small businesses and their employees as we continue
to navigate a health and economic crisis unlike anyone has seen in
at least five generations. And so I would be remiss if I didn’t use
this opportunity to thank all of the Members of Maryland’s con-
gressional delegation.
Vice Chair Mfume, a special shout-out to you. I thank you for
your support and commitment to Baltimore. To you, to Senator
Cardin and Van Hollen. I mean, you guys have been tireless advo-
cates for small businesses and our city. I would also like to thank
just my board and our team, of course, and my family.
So a little bit about the organization, and I want to talk about
a program that we are highlighting in representing Downtown
Partnership, which we oversee 106 blocks. It is an improvement
district in downtown Baltimore representing property owners, busi-
nesses, 118,000 employees, 43,000 residents, and millions of annual
visitors.
So we provide services that make this area clean, safe, and vi-
brant for businesses, residents, and visitors, and our impact ex-
tends beyond downtown to the communities. We are proud that
many of our frontline team members are returning citizens, who we

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support with full benefits and a $15 an hour starting wage. And
we are excited that, you know, downtown is home to several federal
agencies, thank you, thriving corporations, and entrepreneurs. And
although we are small in geography, we are the city’s largest eco-
nomic engine with jobs and tax revenues that support our busi-
nesses.
So beginning with the pandemic, you know, my team and I have
been extremely busy adding new tools to support the communities,
the small businesses that we are talking about—restaurants, re-
tailers. I mean, we generated grants and gift card programs to real-
ly help pay rents, provide meals, and do those things that we know
our community needed. And during the shutdown, I was asked to
Co-Chair, along with Councilman Eric Costello from Baltimore
City, the mayor’s Small Business Recovery Task Force. And in this
rite, we were able to help coordinate the city’s economic response
by channeling the dollars you all provided in federal relief funds,
reducing business fees, streamlining permitting, and doing things
and expanding and creating opportunities like outdoor dining.
What we know is that federal stimulus and assistance provided
substantial infusion of resources to State and local governments to
help us turn the tide of the pandemic and lay the foundation for
a strong and equitable recovery. Specifically, we benefit from both
PPP and EIDL, those funds, and we are excited about the potential
in working with Mayor Scott’s administration to advance our city
with the ARPA funding you have coming. And if we could put on
the record just an early support for the pending infrastructure bill.
So as we recognize Small Business Week, I would like to high-
light a new program that we created titled BOOST. BOOST stands
for Black-Owned and Operated Storefront Tenancy. And we created
this program to do three things. We wanted to fill main street
storefronts that were left empty by the pandemic. You know, our
vacancy rates increased. We want to be intentional about accel-
erating the growth and success of minority businesses and we want
to make sure that we are serving as a catalyst for making down-
town Baltimore more reflective of the demographics of our city.
And so we launched the program in February. We selected in
this first cohort five Black-owned businesses to participate. Each
organization receives up to $50,000 in grant funding. They get
below-market rents in beautiful storefronts, and they get robust
training in the areas of technical, legal, accounting, and marketing.
We designed this program to have a force multiplier effect on the
health and wealth of our citizens, and we designed it with all of
our learnings from past programs.
So we see BOOST as this perfect example of how public-private
partnerships work. So thank you for your continued support.
And in addition to what we received from public support, we had
sponsoring corporations like our title sponsor, Fearless, of the pro-
gram. This is a model not just for being a title sponsor, but this
is now a $40 million minority-owned firm that is headquartered in
downtown Baltimore. We had other giants like Baltimore Gas and
Electric, M&T Bank, T. Rowe Price Foundation, so many others
who jumped in to say how could they help and layer on to the pub-
lic support to help grow and scale our businesses.

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Our program is simple, and when combined with other federal
and NGO programs, BOOST improves the return on investment,
because we see these businesses as they are more likely to succeed
and then hire from within the community.
To highlight those winners for this first cohort, we had the Black
Genius Art Show, which is a multimedia creative space and fashion
brand; Codetta Bake Shop, which was just featured on Good Morn-
ing, America, but this is a cafe and bakery specializing in creative
desserts; Elite Secrets Bridal, a bridal design house and boutique;
NKVSKIN, a natural beauty company featuring both products and
services; and Media Rhythm Institute, a hip-hop inspired media
space with a cafe and educational studio.
So Vice Chair Mfume, in your opening, you asked what the Com-
mittee could do to help, and I will respond with three things. One,
we need you to keep doing what you are doing to provide federal
support. Our businesses and our communities, we need it. You can
also continue to infuse downtown with federal agencies that really
help catalyze the community, and serve as customers for our res-
taurants and our retailers, and advocate for the continuation of
programs like BOOST. And so we just thank you. It is an honor
to be here.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Stokes,
your time is expired. I want to thank you for being a——
Ms. STOKES. Thank you.
Mr. MFUME.—former small business owner yourself and now a
fierce advocate for small businesses, particularly here in the State
of Maryland. And your work with the National Women’s Business
Council and all the other things are greatly appreciated by this
Committee.
The Chair would now like to recognize Ms. Natasha Hudson so
that she too might be able to offer her presentation.
Ms. Hudson, thank you very much for being with us. The floor
is yours. Please proceed.

STATEMENT OF NATASHA HUDSON
Ms. HUDSON. Good morning. Thank you so much. Thank you
for your admiration for small businesses. These stories so far this
morning have been truly inspiring, and I feel very grateful to be
a part of such a group. So let me tell you a little bit about us. It
is a privilege and an honor to address you today. Thank you for lis-
tening to our story.
My name is Natasha Hudson. My husband, Chad, and I, own
Hudson’s on Mercer Street, a live music venue in Dripping Springs,
Texas. Dripping Springs is a fast-growing community about 20
minutes west of Austin. It is lovingly described as ‘‘West of Weird.’’
Dripping Springs is home to many local-owned wineries, breweries,
distilleries, boutiques, and wedding venues, and is a great spot for
tourists and locals.
We started Hudson’s on Mercer Street almost 6 years ago, and
it has become a creative and encouraging musical hub and event
center for our community. We feature local and regional acts, party
bands, singer/songwriters, and open mic. We also offer music les-
sons for any age and skill level with an emphasis on live perform-

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ance. We are all about building confidence and loving everyone who
comes through our doors.
Having a huge passion for our community, we never say no when
asked to donate our venue to raise funds for foundations and indi-
viduals in need. Our chance to give back is what we missed the
most during the pandemic closures.
A music venue sounds frivolous to some, but to us it is our dream
and the way we serve our community. This venue is also the way
we support our family of five kids and provide jobs for many to do
the same.
In 2020, we were shut down for nearly 7 months. By offering live
streams of musical acts and virtual music lessons, we fought to
keep our business afloat and help provide income for local musi-
cians and bands who counted on us for work, but that only took
us all so far. When we were near the bottom of our business and
personal accounts and had gone through all personal savings to try
to stay open, we were given a sign of hope when we were ap-
proached by Congressman Williams’ team. They shared with us a
plan that made us feel encouraged and validated. We waited ea-
gerly for the Shuttered Venues Operators Grant to officially open
their application process.
We read all we could and joined webinars to help us understand
what information they would be requesting. As prepared as we
thought we were and with the help of our CPA, the process was
still a bit overwhelming and was difficult to navigate at times.
With website complications and application dates pushed back, we
grew weary. However, complications were completely understand-
able because this was the first time support of this stature had
been offered to music venues.
Thanks to the grace of God, the hard work of our brothers and
sisters in Congress, and the SBA, we were awarded a generous
amount to cover our losses from 2020. It came in the nick of time
and single-handedly put Hudson’s on Mercer Street back on the
map with no fear of demise. For that we are eternally grateful.
What you did for our family-owned business is incredible, and we
thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
The Shuttered Venues Operators Grant repaved the road for suc-
cess and ensured that our business will remain alive and strong.
We aspire to provide more community outreach and hope that the
joy of music and fellowship is the legacy of Hudson’s.
Thank you for your time today.
Mr. MFUME. Well, thank you very much. I have heard a lot of
locations, but I have never heard west of weird, so——
Ms. HUDSON. Yes.
Mr. MFUME. I really appreciate that very, very much.
Ms. HUDSON. Thank you.
Mr. MFUME. And thank you for making time to be here with us,
obviously.
Ms. Gena Felder is the last witness for this panel. And Ms.
Felder—and I hope I am—is it Felder or Felder?
Ms. FELDER. Felder.
Mr. MFUME. Felder. Excuse me. Ms. Felder, thank you for your
patience, and please feel free to proceed.

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STATEMENT OF GENA FELDER
Ms. FELDER. Thank you.
First, I would like to thank you, Vice Chair Mfume and Mr.
Luetkemeyer, for giving us the opportunity to present today.
As CFO, I am proud to represent TJ Hale for this Subcommittee
meeting and appreciate the opportunity to discuss our interactions,
struggles, and involvement with the SBA.
As Mr. Fitzgerald explained our business, we have been in busi-
ness over 70 years. We work with retail and hospitality. So as our
CEO says, our business went from 60 to 0 very fast. The impact
of TJ Hale from COVID-19 was catastrophic. Our annual revenues
for many decades hovered around $25 million to $30 million. With
our revenue stream virtually dried up, open orders were canceled,
completed orders that were ready to ship were put on hold. Overall,
we saw 80 percent reduction in revenues compared to 2019. And
the majority of 2020 revenues came in the first quarter.
Through our existing lender, we were able to secure a PPP loan,
which was funded in April of 2020. During this process, TJ Hale
had no contact with the SBA.
In March of 2020, TJ Hale employed 104 employees. We strived
to maintain a skeletal crew of 40 to 50 employees to ensure that
our business and future business activity could be managed if and
when it returned. We also recognized the need to retain key em-
ployees.
Throughout 2020, the company continued to fund medical insur-
ance for all furloughed employees. During this time, we lost many
talented employees, who we still struggle to replace. As of the cur-
rent date, we have 73 employees.
On October 8, 2020, we filed for PPP loan forgiveness with 96
percent of our loan projected to be forgiven. And that is where the
struggles begin.
In January 2021, the company filed, through its current lender,
an application for a PPP 2 loan. On January 25, we received con-
firmation that our application was in the queue. Our expectation
was that our PPP 1 loan forgiveness and our PPP 2 loan funding
would occur in March of 2021. On February 5, our lender received
a request from the SBA for the forgiveness of TJ Hale’s PPP loan
through some affiliation requirements. TJ Hale submitted the ap-
propriate form 3511 on February 8.
On March 11, the SBA requested that we resubmit the form
again. And unknown to TJ Hale and our current lender, at that
time our forgiveness application was put on hold and consequently
our funding for PPP 2 was also put on hold.
On May 12, we were notified by our current lender that our PPP
2 loan application had been withdrawn by the SBA because the
funds—their program ran out of funding. We were then told we
had until May 31 to submit a new application for funding with the
Community Financial Institution.
On May 14, we were able to connect with a CFI lender who sub-
mitted an application on our behalf. On May 18, we received con-
firmation we were in the queue. Hallelujah. However, we were
then, again, asked for the affiliation rule documentation, which we
provided again. On May 24, we were told the affiliation rule hold

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was still on our account. And as you may be aware, time was tick-
ing because May 31 was the projected end date for funding.
So on May 25, we reached out to our local SBA office in Mil-
waukee, the entire executive board of the SBA, as well as Con-
gressman Scott Fitzgerald’s office, to assist us to resolve this hold
that was placed on our PPP loan that was also holding up our sec-
ond loan. We were finally able to connect with Ellie Berg at the
local office; however, she stated, ‘‘please know the district offices do
not have the ability or authority to clear any hold accounts in con-
nection with PPP loans or applications.’’
On June 15, Congressman Fitzgerald’s office started—excuse
me—it is very emotional for me—leading the charge to assist TJ
Hale through their efforts, the hold was finally released on June
25, and our PPP loan 2 loan was now pending validation. On June
30, the loan was finally approved.
An important takeaway from this process for us is that although
we are making a recovery, we are way behind pre-COVID revenue
levels. The initial PPP loan was to survive as a company and se-
cure employment and benefits for as many employees as possible.
Our PPP 2 loan, as we see it, is to help revive the business for
2021 and the future rebuilding to pre-COVID levels.
Respecting the fact that the program was developed and rolled
out in an extremely short period of time, our observation with the
SBA is they would have benefited from forming some kind of
SWAT team to help resolve issues with lenders and borrowers in
real time.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to let me share my story.
Mr. MFUME. Well, thank you very, very much, Ms. Felder. It
clearly sounds like it has been an emotional period and an emo-
tional ride. Glad to know that the business is still there, though.
That is the difference between so many others who have shuttered
and have not been able to come back. So best of everything to you
and the 73 employees that are still there with you.
At this particular time, we have been rejoined by the Chair of
the full Committee. So I would like to recognize Chair Velázquez
before we move into questions.
Madam Chair, you are muted.
Chairwoman Velázquez. Thank you, Mr. Mfume, for yielding,
and thank you for sitting on the Chair today.
I really appreciate all the witnesses for sharing your stories. And
we all know that this has been an unprecedented crisis in our na-
tion, the extent of which we never were prepared to face.
And so let me start by asking Mr. Greenfield, a constituent from
my district, the first question. And first, let me thank you for shar-
ing your story.
Last year, we fought hard to ensure our businesses could get
sources of funding to retain their workforce and keep their busi-
nesses going. Can you share with us your experience with SBA
COVID-19 relief programs and the challenges you have faced dur-
ing the pandemic?
Mr. GREENFIELD. Sure. Thank you, Chair. So we received—we
applied for and received both PPP loans and also the EIDL loan.
We are also working to get the Employee Retention Credits.

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Our company was hit very hard and still hasn’t resolved the
issues. Until all in-person events, courts, and business meetings
come back online, our business is going to continue to suffer.
When we applied for the forgiveness for our first PPP loan, we
actually spent 200 percent of the loan proceeds on forgivable ex-
penses. So it was a great help, but it didn’t provide the funding
needed for that 6-month period.
Chairwoman VELÁZQUEZ. And so you mentioned that you were
able to transition your business in the early days of the pandemic
to help first responders all while many were working from home.
How was that adjustment with manufacturing employees working
from home?
Mr. GREENFIELD. Well, it was very challenging. I have a lot of
elderly employees, but they had sewing machines at home. I got
permission from the union to do home work. All other industries
were operating from home with Zoom. We can’t produce things, but
we can sew at home. So we were cutting the masks and bringing
them to employees in their homes to sew at home and getting them
back and donating them to the first responders and the frontline
community.
And, you know, as a clothing manufacturer in New York City, we
were there and we were able to make tens of thousands of masks
and hospital gowns when they were desperately needed by our
community. And, you know, that is part of the value of preserving
manufacturing in the inner city locations.
Chairwoman VELÁZQUEZ. But the workers also step up, and
that is why it is so—I would like to ask you, can you explain why
it is so essential to be supported by union workers and what this
mean for the quality of your product?
Mr. GREENFIELD. Well, we always have a strong attachment
to our workforce, our workers. We are a family-owned business. We
are really like a family here. When my father started the business
in 1977, he hired seven people when he started and four still work
for us today.
Chairwoman VELÁZQUEZ. Thank you.
Mr. GREENFIELD. So our connection to our workforce is strong.
And we supported them during the shut down, they supported us,
and together we were able to help support our community.
Chairwoman VELÁZQUEZ. Thank you so much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
The Acting Chair would like to now recognize the distinguished
Ranking Member, Mr. Luetkemeyer.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Vice Chairman. And, Mr.
Mfume, you are doing a great job today. You are a natural for this.
Mr. MFUME. No.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. You are flowing very well through all of
the meeting here. Keep up the good work.
Mr. MFUME. Well, thank you. You are very kind, but I can as-
sure you this is like being thrown in the pond. I am just trying to
stay afloat.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Well, you have got a good life preserver on
then, I guess. You are doing well.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you.

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Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Ms. Haviland, thank you for being here
today. And, you know, as you well know, my little hometown is not
very far from Linn, Missouri, ride by your company a lot as we go
on Highway 50 there.
Can you tell me—you know, you survived all the years as a fam-
ily-owned business. What has it been like—what kind of changes
have you had to adjust to? And in the environment that we are in
today, what sort of changes are you making now on the fly to be
able to continue to exist?
Ms. HAVILAND. Today, we, again, as I said, we like to be Amer-
ican made, so we are constantly trying to find suppliers that we
can use that are American products or supplies that we can put
into the products we do. We have been very lucky that our work-
force has been very consistent. And so consequently, the knowledge
of making our product is very, very deep within our company. But
we are always looking for maybe something new, somebody may
need a little different product. We would be happy to make and try
and create that for them, and that has helped us tremendously.
We went from just doing floor squeegees to windows and also
doing the blades that go on automatic floor scrubbers. And so that
is—you know, just looking ahead and trying to figure out what is
the next product or project coming down the road.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Well, I know you were able to transition
to be able to help the local county health department with some
protective personal equipments and washable gowns. And how did
that feel to be an essential business where you had to show up
every day and be able to produce these things and be a part of the
support group to try and stem the pandemic and help all of us get
through that?
Ms. HAVILAND. Well, being in the sanitary supply business, we
are an essential business to begin with, but being able to reach out
to the community and say, hey, this is something that we can
produce for you and feel a good feeling that everybody had that we
were helping out our community to reach a level that might not
have been able to be met easily. And we were able to produce that.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. You mentioned in your testimony that you
are a C corp. I know that this last day or two here, we found that
there is a—that the administration and the Members on the other
side of the aisle are proposing a huge tax increase for C corps. How
is that going to affect you? Have you looked at that yet?
Ms. HAVILAND. I have not looked through the whole thing, but
as a C corp, when we were originally started in 1946, we only had
three choices: C corp, sole proprietorship, or partnership. And it
wasn’t until 1958 that the S corporation came in. By that time, we
were well on our way. And it will—if we have to look at paying a
large—much larger tax in C corporations, small businesses are
going to have a very hard time trying to increase prices and stay
in business and be marketable still, and I think this is really going
to be a challenge.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. I got a question along those lines, you
know. You talked a while ago about some of the increased costs.
I know that supply chain disruptions are part of increased costs.
There is an inflationary factor across the whole board right now.
How much of this can you eat and how much of it do you have to

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pass on, and how competitive is your market for your products so
that you at some point can’t market your products because you are
not competitive anymore with your pricing?
Ms. HAVILAND. Well, compared—many of the people that do
the squeegee business in the United States have gone to importing.
Right now, they are limited in what they are able to get. We have
seen some increase because of people not being able to get those
imports anymore. And when that reopens, we will, you know, be
losing probably some customers because of cost prices. And if we
increase our prices beyond what we can compete with, we will lose
much of the increase that we planned to do for this year. And, you
know, when we are looking at two-thirds of the increase being gone
just to pay taxes, that is significant.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Wow. I know you mentioned that you got
some PPP funds. How instrumental were those with your company
by being able to continue to exist because of those funds and your
employees continue to be employed?
Ms. HAVILAND. We used those to the full extent. It kept every-
body here employed and working throughout the pandemic, and it
was forgiven. And we were very happy that we were able to get
those.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Well, I wish you much success, continued
success. We will continue to salute you as we, you know—you
know, help all the folks in Linn, Missouri, there. So thank you for
being with us today.
And, with that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
Ms. HAVILAND. Thank you.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you very much. The gentleman from Mis-
souri yields back.
I will now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
And, Ms. Stokes, I would like to come to you for a couple of quick
questions, and obviously take as much time as you can within the
allotted time to expand. But when I was listening to Ms. Felder
from Wisconsin and all that she was going through, it occurred to
me that a lot of businesses like hers have to be their own advo-
cates.
Ms. STOKES. They do.
Mr. MFUME. I think, in her case, she was fortunate to have
Representative Fitzgerald there in the Fifth District to help her
out, but everybody needs advocates. And since you have gone out
of a small business operation and working with this national busi-
ness council of women, but more importantly advocating, can you
tell us what this Committee or what government agencies or what
other organizations might be able to do to assist you and others
who go out when you are not in a congressional hearing day in and
day out and fight for and work for and advocate for small busi-
nesses such as hers?
Ms. STOKES. No. Thank you so much. And you are really asking
the number one question. Coming from being a business owner my-
self, I think some of what you experienced and the challenges was
figuring out where information—like, how could you find out where
resources were available.
So the first thing that you guys do—and I mentioned it earlier—
making the resources available is step one. But aligning with orga-

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nizations like Downtown Partnership through the SBA and the
way that you do with other things is so vitally important, especially
as we look to talk to individual business owners that just need
help.
And there is so many—there is a myriad of things that they
need. Some of what we learned, similar to the experience just ref-
erenced, was that people—I mean, that their doors were closing.
They had no idea where to turn. In some cases, they qualified but
just didn’t have anybody to hold their hand throughout the process.
So as a convening organization, we could step in the role of that.
There are others in the city—BDC and others—who could really
step in and hold hands of organizations as they did that.
And so, you know, I would just ask that, as you continue to roll
these out, that you align with organizations like Downtown Part-
nership and others who can help foster that information and share
it more broadly.
Mr. MFUME. And because every small business is different and
located in different places throughout our country, rural or urban
or east, west, north, south, are there some fundamental basics and
universality that you could or think you should recommend for
businesses, particularly those who may be watching this and not
participating, or even for those who are on this particular panel
who have worked so hard to advocate on behalf of themselves? Are
there some rules to this, some key points that we ought to keep in
front of us?
Ms. STOKES. Right. One of the biggest lessons, I think, that we
learned in a lot of this, Vice Chair Mfume, also came from the work
that we have done with the National Women’s Business Council.
And for all of it, it is leveraging what exists. The SBA is a great
starting point for some of the information that is available to these
businesses.
But, more importantly, I think as they go through all of this, no
doesn’t necessarily mean no in this, right? I mean, we are, as
Downtown Partnership, a 501(c)(6) organization who in the first
round of PPP did not qualify.
And so having, you know, advocacy and all of those types of
things, really being able to tell the stories as you allowed us as
businesses to share today, help you all see where other areas can
be. And so if there is a need, you know, galvanizing and aligning
with other organizations to get the message out so that we can get
that to you, so that those initial noes can be shifted or maybe given
in other ways is extremely important.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you very much. I get the sense that a lot
of those stories are reflected in Ms. Greenfield and—Mr. Greenfield
and Ms. Haviland’s comments before us. In both of those instances,
these businesses have been around for generations and had to ad-
vocate, particularly then, when nobody else would.
So I am just hoping that this testimony is reproduced and made
available for people, particularly made available for the SBA and
others who oftentimes are looking for ways, I hope, to continue to
advocate for and to help businesses, particularly those who run up
against bureaucracies and can’t seem to get a lot done.
So my time has expired. I want to thank you very much, Ms.
Stokes.

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The Chair would like to now recognize the distinguished gen-
tleman from Texas, Mr. Williams.
Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before I get started, I would like to say to everybody on this call,
we need to cut taxes. We do not need to raise taxes for small busi-
ness.
Ms. Hudson——
Ms. HUDSON. Correct.
Mr. WILLIAMS.—good to have you with us. And the Shuttered
Venue Grant Program recognized that businesses like yours were
some of the first to close and last to open as a result of the COVID-
19 we saw. Even with the SBA disastrous rollout, I applaud you
for being so resilient in reopening your doors. I know that the
SVOG grant was a huge lifeline for Hudson’s on Mercer, along with
thousands of other venues. I am thankful you were able to weather
the SBA’s incompetence and keep your doors open. It is commu-
nity-driven business owners like yourself who are going to rebuild
main street America and regrow our economy.
So my first question to you is: I just want to give you a moment
to elaborate on how the grant helped your venue recover and how
business has grown since the reopening.
Ms. HUDSON. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. One of the blessings
has been to be able to pay rent and utilities consistently and not
have that worry in the back of our mind of how are we going to
get there to the next month.
Another thing is being able to hire more staff again and get them
working and needing a bigger staff because we are able to hire big-
ger bands and musicians and work them again on stage. They
bring in a crowd, and we all worked together to generate income
for each other. So that—the grant made that able to get started
again. So it has—that has been wonderful.
Mr. WILLIAMS. In your testimony, you mentioned some com-
plications with the SVOG application process. Unfortunately, it is
not uncommon to hear that Biden’s SBA has been difficult to work
with. I hear from countless businesses in my district about lack of
communication and inconsistent updates from the SBA that have
kept many of you in the dark.
Now, while I am glad to hear you finally received an award after
months of waiting, these issues still need to be addressed and re-
solved for those who have not. So, Ms. Hudson, can you discuss
your personal experience with the SVOG application process and
how responsive the SBA was to your inquiries?
Ms. HUDSON. Yes, sir. It was probably the most unclear, con-
fusing experience that I have had, even though I am very grateful
that it did all work out in the end. Even getting into the website
to be able to fill out the application came with many steps that
were unclear, and it was hard to dig through web—other websites
to find what information you would need. So that was—it was chal-
lenging to get even into the website.
And then the application itself was very thorough, and that
makes sense. They want to make sure we are a legitimate business
and we—our numbers need to be accurate and all of that. But it
was a lot of information needed and sometimes information that we
didn’t know we needed beforehand.

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So—and then there was the delay with the website too. So it was
all pretty challenging.
Mr. WILLIAMS. One of the reasons this grant program was so
impactful is because your business does more than just provide mu-
sicians with a platform to perform. Hudson’s of Mercer provides a
wide range of services to the community, from giving music lessons,
to inspiring artists, to provide a venue for local foundations to raise
money and make an impact on a variety of causes. And I want to
say thank you for your contributions to the 25th District of Texas
and all the work you have done in the community.
And I would just ask: Can you expand on some of the other ways
that Hudson’s reopening has influenced your local community?
Ms. HUDSON. Yes, sir. We are back to partnering with founda-
tions. In fact, this Saturday, we are joining up with an organization
who raises money for cancer patients and their families for alter-
native methods of healing.
So those are the things that we really strive to focus on, and so
we are able to do that again. We are bringing music into our town
all the time. People are here and being able to perform and getting
the joy of music. Our music lessons are back full speed, in person
and virtually, and that gives our students an outlet to perform for
200 or more guests a couple times a month. So those—as young
performers, that is wonderful experience for them. So that is defi-
nitely one of the beautiful parts of being open again.
Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, you can’t do it closed. You have been a
great witness, as has everybody. And I just want to close by saying,
we need to always consider cutting your taxes, not raising your
taxes.
With that, I yield my time back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MFUME. The gentleman yields back the remainder of his
time.
Thank you very much again, Ms. Hudson.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Fitz-
gerald.
Mr. FITZGERALD. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And I just wanted to, once again, thank Gena for being here
today. I think many of the Members of the Small Business Com-
mittee, especially in the last couple of months, we have been fo-
cused on, you know, for the most part, numbers and cases. And I
have had a couple of experiences—and, again, you can just tell the
emotion that is in Gena’s voice this morning.
I met with the Wisconsin Bankers Association about a week ago,
and one of the bankers there who—it is a medium-size bank—and,
you know, he literally was trying to explain to me, at one point in
February of 2020, when they—they had hundreds of people that
their—that there were customers of theirs for many, many years,
and he was losing sleep wondering if any of them would be able
to survive this. And he explained it was only through the PPP
loans that they did. And, you know, with literally hundreds of files
on their conference table at one of the banks, he said, I just didn’t
know if they were going to make it. So I think it is important for
us to remember the human element in all this and how difficult
and gut-wrenching this would be.

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And I appreciate all the small business owners. I once was a
small business owner. And, you know, I realize that the proprietor,
that the owner, that the boss is sometimes the last person in line.
And that is hard to go home and tell your spouse that, well, there
may or may not be a paycheck next week. So I understand kind
of what you are going through.
I will just say this, and I wanted to ask Gena kind of where we
are at. In many instances, it looks like the loans went out, no mat-
ter how difficult it was to acquire them, to accommodate them. And
now we are in this phase of the forgiveness part. And I am just as
worried about this with the amount of red tape that currently ex-
ists and how we are going to work through that.
So, Gena, can you just explain kind of what your experience is
so far on the loan forgiveness part of this?
Ms. FELDER. Sure. TJ Hale was—in 2013 was bought 70 per-
cent by a private equity firm. So that is where I was mentioning
before the affiliation rules, because the affiliation rules say you
have to have under 500 employees. So we had to prove to the SBA
that we were considered or investment company is considered a
small business investment company, or SBIC licensed by the SBA.
So TJ Hale—was not subject to that affiliation rule.
So the form 3511 that I mentioned before has four ways you can
be waived, and the third waiver on that form is are you funded by
an SBIC company, which we checked yes to the box. And the in-
structions say, if you answer yes, you don’t need to complete any
other sections of the form. So we did that, submitted that, thought
we were on our way.
So for 2 months, we thought everything was being processed. Our
bank actually submitted the forgiveness application in November,
and it wasn’t until February that they received any communication
that there were any issues with the forgiveness being processed.
And that, of course, like I said, held up the PPP 2 loan. We
couldn’t get financial statements issued because, you know, we
were banking on the forgiveness, and we were doing financial mod-
eling based on that.
So—and it really took until the end of May for that finally to be
lifted, and only through—we believe, efforts through Shannon at
your office helping guide that process for us.
Mr. FITZGERALD. Yeah. Thank you. And that kind of is my
point.
And I would just say to the Chairman and the Ranking Member,
I mean, I think part of what this Committee’s oversight should be
is to kind of bird-dog this process all the way up to the end to make
sure that the SBA is doing the due diligence on the followup. I real-
ly think that, you know, the Members of Congress, we can have an
impact on that, but this Committee should be higher profile and
really watch this closely, so—and I know we have no time left, so
I would—I would absolutely love to hear comments on that in the
future.
Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. FELDER. Thank you.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you very much. The gentleman yields back.
The Committee has just about expired its allotted time for this
first panel.

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I want to thank the entire panel, all of you, for bringing with you
five different stories for this Committee to hear and to understand
and to be a part of the public record. We hope that the persons who
have been watching this have learned something and gained some-
thing.
But most of all, we hope that all of you will continue to do what
you do, because you really do represent in many respects the real
backbone of businesses that we can’t always see and don’t always
know about. Some of you are nameless and faceless, but your sto-
ries are really monumental in terms of what they do in the aggre-
gate to hold this country together.
So I thank you for your time. All of you are free to exit the Zoom
platform now if you would like and to continue to watch by way
of streaming.
And I also want to just thank the Members on both sides of the
Committee, particularly Mr. Luetkemeyer, the Ranking Member,
for their patience with me today as we try to get through this first
round together.
And at this particular point in time, I would like to yield to the
distinguished woman from Pennsylvania, Ms. Chrissy Houlahan,
who will now Chair and guide the second panel.
Ms. HOULAHAN. [Presiding.] Thank you, Representative
Mfume.
And my name is Chrissy Houlahan. I represent Pennsylvania’s
Sixth Congressional District just outside of Philadelphia. It is my
pleasure to begin panel two, and I will begin right away, since we
are a little behind, by saying, of course, welcome, and let me yield
first to Ms. Craig, who will introduce our first witness.
Ms. CRAIG. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, for yielding.
And thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today. I am
really pleased that we are holding this great bipartisan hearing to
honor our nation’s small business heroes, and especially to listen
to every single one of you.
I am very proud to support the bipartisan resolution recognizing
this week as National Small Business Week.
Small businesses employ over 130,000 employees in my district
across all professions. I am proud of the work of this Committee
and Congress has done, especially over the last 18 months, to bring
aid to our local business owners. But I know that there is more to
be done.
I am so proud to introduce here today a constituent and business
owner from my district, Eric Childs. He owns Mind’s Eye Comics.
And, Eric, I am so pleased to have you here from Mind’s Eye
Comics here this morning.
I am especially grateful to Eric for serving on my newly formed
small business task force with a diverse set of other small business
owners from across Minnesota’s district—Second District, rep-
resenting industries from breweries to manufacturing to technology
solutions. In fact, we are holding our first meeting on my small
business task force tomorrow during Small Business Week in
Lakeville.
Today, I am looking forward to hearing more about how Eric’s
decision to buy Mind’s Eye, as a longtime patron, was an oppor-
tunity to build community, and how he has been able to bring our

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community together at Mind’s Eye Comics, especially through the
last 18 months.
Thank you so much, Mr. Childs, and welcome. I really appreciate
you serving as a witness today.
With that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you, Representative Craig.
And I would now like to yield to our Ranking Member, Mr.
Hagedorn, to introduce our next witness.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair. I
appreciate that.
I am honored today to introduce Ms. Krystal Hernandez, owner
of the well-known and much loved Mexican restaurant, La Plaza
Fiesta, in Madelia, Minnesota. Madelia is a town of about 2,500
people, and it is really just one of the finest establishments that
we have in our district, and we are so honored to have Ms. Her-
nandez with us.
She also owns a grocery store right next door, so she has been
expanding her business. And I think there is even more to talk
about as far as maybe moving into other locations. We will get into
that.
Through many trials and tribulations, including a devastating
fire that wiped out about eight businesses in Madelia’s main street
in 2016, and then of course the recent obstacles with COVID and
everything, Ms. Hernandez has worked hard to build a terrific
small business, and she and her husband and others have worked
tirelessly utilizing her business, La Plaza Fiesta, as a means of
bringing the entire community in Madelia together.
And I have said it many times. Our small businesses are the peo-
ple on the ground that have the most to gain and also the most
to provide and to give to our communities to keep them going. And
that is why it is so important that we do everything possible to
help them keep rolling along.
Instead of promoting an environment that views, you know, com-
petition as hostile, La Plaza Fiesta and their team are working
with surrounding restaurants, and they kind of feed off each other.
If one restaurant needs something, they help out and vice versa.
And that is exactly the type of thing we need to be seeing in order
to build all of our communities across the board.
It is this type of attitude, love of community, and great food and
drink, I tell you—I have full disclosure. I have been there several
times. It is a great spot to eat and drink—that is allowing La Plaza
Fiesta to expand their second location. They have taken all that
they have done, and they are moving to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Not moving, but they are expanding to Sioux Falls. So we con-
gratulate Ms. Hernandez on that.
We are so blessed to have integral members of our community
like Ms. Hernandez that make Minnesota’s rural downtown so spe-
cial and vibrant and resilient, and no matter what the world
throws at them. And this was so important to keep our rural econ-
omy rolling.
So without further adieu, I would like to first congratulate,
again, Ms. Hernandez and her team at La Plaza Fiesta for all their
success, and welcome her to testify on our national small business
hearing today.

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Thank you, Krystal.
And thank you, Madam Chair, and I yield back.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Hagedorn.
And now I would like to yield to Ms. Bourdeaux to introduce our
next witness.
Ms. BOURDEAUX. Thank you, Chairwoman.
And thank you to our witnesses for joining us today. It is won-
derful to hear from small business owners from across the country
about their stories and the contributions they make to their com-
munities.
I am extremely proud——
Ms. HOULAHAN. Ms. Bourdeaux, you may have two sound
versions on right now.
Ms. BOURDEAUX. I am so sorry. I will be right back. I have got
to reboot. Sorry. One sec.
Why don’t you move on to the next one, and I will be back.
Ms. HOULAHAN. All right.
Ms. BOURDEAUX. It will only take a minute.
Ms. HOULAHAN. I will now yield to Mr. Stauber to introduce
our next witness, and I will come back to Representative
Bourdeaux.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you very much.
And I am very excited to introduce the witness from Minnesota’s
Eighth Congressional District, Mark Lunde. Mark started Lunde
Auto Sales in Wadena, Minnesota, in 2016. A used car dealership
with nine employees between their two stores, Lunde Auto Sales
provides a personal touch to the car shopping experience. Lunde
Auto Sales has an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau,
a testament to Mark’s leadership.
Mark is an active member in his community, serving as a city
of Wadena city counselor, a member of the Wadena Housing and
Redevelopment Board, a member of the Tri-County Hospital Foun-
dation Board, and a member of the Wadena Hockey Association
Board.
Thank you, Mark, for taking time out of your busy schedule to
share your testimony with us today, and I look forward to ques-
tions and answer.
And I yield back. Thank you.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Stauber.
And I will circle back around to Ms. Bourdeaux—I am sorry.
Yeah—to Ms. Bourdeaux to introduce her witness.
Looks like she might not be back, so I will yield now to Mr.
Meuser to introduce our witness as well.
Mr. MEUSER. Well, thank you, Chairwoman Houlahan. I appre-
ciate it very much. I am about to introduce someone who is no
stranger to you either.
It is my pleasure to introduce Mr. Barry Schlouch, a fantastic
business—small business person as my witness for today’s hearing.
Mr. Barry Schlouch and his wife, Deb, founded Schlouch, Incor-
porated, a site design and heavy civil construction firm
headquartered in Blandon, Pennsylvania, in my district, Chair-
woman; many employees from yours as well.
Barry and Deb founded Schlouch, Incorporated, in 1983 in the
basement of their home in Berks County, Pennsylvania, a fantastic

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American business story. That year, they won their first job, which
I was told a couple of times how excited they were, a $15,000 con-
tract to prepare a site to construct a Wendy’s restaurant.
Today, Schlouch, Incorporated, employs over 285 people and is
known as the leading total site preparation specialists in eastern
and most of Pennsylvania, I believe, serving many local, regional,
and national customers.
Since forming Schlouch, Incorporated, Barry and Deb have cre-
ated conscientious relationships between employees and customers
alike, while providing excellent quality of work to their customers.
Creating a safe environment for employees and customers has been
of the utmost importance to Schlouch, Incorporated, and it shows
in every day of their work.
As Barry states in his testimony and will, his company has three
main priorities: safety of the people, safety of the people, safety of
his people.
Over the last 38 years, Barry has not only built an incredibly
successful business that employs hundreds of people, but he has set
an incredible example for small businesses across the great Com-
monwealth of Pennsylvania.
I would just add that knowing Barry and the trials and tribu-
lations and accomplishments they have had, they have been very
strategic, very thoughtful. They certainly work hard, but they work
smart. Caring is a big part of what their company culture is about,
certainly for the long-term interest of the business itself, of its em-
ployees.
I have actually attended a morning huddle where they very hap-
pily join about 6 a.m. as the day begins in that line of work. They
care for their customers, they care for their payers, and they care
tremendously for our community. Again, as you well know, Madam
Chair, nothing special occurs throughout Berks County and sur-
rounding counties without usually Barry’s involvement.
Barry, I thank you for the excellence you bring to our community
as both an employer and as a leader in our community, and I look
forward to your testimony and sharing your experiences with us.
And I yield back. Thank you.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you, Representative Meuser, and wel-
come to our—to my neighbor, Barry.
And, with that, I will yield back to Representative Bourdeaux to
introduce our final panelist.
Ms. BOURDEAUX. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Sorry
about that. The brave new world of Zoom here.
Thank you again to our witnesses for joining today’s hearing, and
it is so wonderful to hear from our small business owners across
the country, to hear about their stories and their contributions to
their communities.
I am extremely proud to have Maurice Contreras of Volcanica
Coffee, which is headquartered in Suwanee, Georgia, and to hear
his testimony today. He is one of the many very diverse small busi-
ness owners that we have throughout Georgia’s Seventh District.
Maurice started Volcanica Coffee after visiting his homeland in
Costa Rica. While he was there, he saw an opportunity to import
great-tasting coffee from volcanic regions, such as in Costa Rica, to
consumers. The company started part time in his garage and now

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operates a coffee plant near Atlanta, Georgia, with 20 employees
that includes his wife and his two children.
I met Maurice during a manufacturers’ roundtable held in my
district during the August district work period, and I am extremely
proud and grateful to have him join us today. And coffee drinking
has been sort of one of my key vices, and so it is particularly rel-
evant and a business that I deeply appreciate.
Thank you, Maurice, for taking time out of your busy schedule
to join us. I look forward to hearing your testimony.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you.
And, with that, we will move over to our panelists’ testimony,
and I will now recognize Mr. Childs for 5 minutes.

STATEMENTS OF MR. ERIC CHILDS, OWNER, MIND’S EYE COM-
ICS, BURNSVILLE, MN; MS. KRYSTAL HERNANDEZ, OWNER,
LA PLAZA F!ESTA, MADELIA, MN; MR. MAURICE CONTRERAS,
PRESIDENT, VOLCANICA COFFEE COMPANY, SUWANEE, GA;
MR. MARK J. LUNDE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, LUNDE
AUTO SALES, WADENA, MN; AND MR. BARRY SCHLOUCH,
PRESIDENT, SCHLOUCH INCORPORATED, BLANDON, PA

STATEMENT OF ERIC CHILDS
Mr. CHILDS. Thank you, Representative Houlahan and Chair-
woman Velázquez, Ranking Member Luetkemeyer, and other Mem-
bers of the House Committee on Small Business, for this oppor-
tunity to share my testimony today.
Also, thank you to Representative Craig for the invitation to tes-
tify at today’s small business hearing. This is truly an honor and
a privilege to be a participant in representing the small businesses
of Minnesota’s Second Congressional District and residing city
Burnsville.
Today, I will do my best to express a few moments significant to
my journey, in hope to convey who I am and how I came to be the
proprietor/owner of Mind’s Eye Comics and the positive difference
I choose to make in my community utilizing my business.
Early on in my life, I was encouraged, I was taught that I could
be anything I aspired to be and achieve anything I put my mind
to. All that is required is a little hard work and dedication. Simple
but powerful concepts. These ideas reinforced in faith and a belief
that God has purpose for each of us.
For these lessons, I am extremely grateful. Thank you, Herbert
Logan Childs and Barbara Sue Childs, my parents. Thank you for
your wisdom, integrity, character, and belief in me.
Thank you, Ms. Davanni, for seeing the value in all your fourth
grade students, including myself. Thank you for being willing to
sacrifice your own hard-earned money for your class and, on occa-
sion, even your personal time, all to find a way to engage, help, and
encourage each of us. For me, it was comic books you would dis-
cover to be the catalyst for completed assignments and instilling a
passion for reading.
Thank you, Dr. Helgeson, my high school humanities instructor,
for showing us there is greatness in all of us, and celebrating all
cultures in your class.

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Each one of these individuals have impacted my life tremen-
dously and left a lasting impression on me, one of positivity, inspi-
ration, encouragement, and a belief that we are all connected and
can make a positive difference in the lives of others. I share these
personal insights of my past influences first because these are the
philosophies and the beliefs at the core of the businessman before
you today.
These ideas would prove to be instrumental to the future core
purpose of Mind’s Eye Comics and would be put to the test begin-
ning a little over 3 years ago after acquiring the business in 2018.
Mind’s Eye Comics first opened in 1998 by Mr. Troth—Mr. An-
drew Troth. Troth established the comic shop, in my opinion, that
finally showcased the medium in the way it deserved, much like
any other respectable bookstore. Beautiful layout; clean, well-orga-
nized space would become my favorite comic bookstore in Min-
nesota. With excellent customer service, a welcoming atmosphere,
and a wide selection, Andrew truly had raised the bar on what it
meant to be a comic shop.
For 20 years, I was a patron of Mind’s Eye Comics, later in life
would become the place I brought my own children to encourage
their reading.
In 2018, Mr. Troth announced he planned to retire and would be
closing the store. I couldn’t watch the place that was so important
to so many and so unique in our community to come to an end. I
couldn’t accept it, so much so that I asked Mr. Troth if he would
consider selling the store, to which he replied, No, unless of course
you are inquiring for yourself. He says, For you, Eric, I would con-
sider it, as your heart’s in the right place.
This marks the beginning of the next chapter. The baton has
been passed.
Thank you, Mr. Troth, for trusting me with what you started and
considering me a worthy ambassador of this truly unique and spe-
cial place of culture, imagination, and creativity.
Now instead of closure, I saw opportunity. I saw an opportunity
to build community, inspire and enrich the lives of others. Mind’s
Eye Comics now advocates for literacy, makes Black history more
accessible through graphic novels, assists educators in discovering
alternate graphic source materials to coursework, provides an out-
let for the works of independent and minority creative teams, and
still serves as your community hub of all things geek.
So, in closing, I would like to share a story from my first summer
open in 2018.
Two young boys no older than 12 years of age came in and
began, you know, just excitedly perusing the comics on the shelves,
one of which, after making his purchase, rushed over to our nook
and began reading, completely captivated and flipping through the
pages.
The other young man soon came over and joined his friend that
was reading, and he asked his friend, he said, Is your mom going
to be okay with you spending all of your money on these comics,
to which he replied, She is always trying to get me to read. I am
reading.
Thank you, guys, for the time.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you.

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And from a former educator and somebody who spent a lot of
time on childhood literacy, I really appreciate the story, and also
really appreciate your shout-outs to all of your educators and
teachers in your past. And thank you again, Mr. Childs.
Ms. Hernandez, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF KRYSTAL HERNANDEZ
Ms. HERNANDEZ. Thank you. It is an honor to be here, and I
just want to say thank you for letting us be here.
Like Representative Hagedorn said, I am Krystal Hernandez. I
am the owner of the La Plaza Fiesta and Fiesta Market, which is
located in Madelia, Minnesota, which is about a population of
2,500.
And my husband and I purchased the restaurant in 2012, and
we pride ourselves on providing a welcoming atmosphere with
fresh-made meals. We are committed to ensure each visitor enjoys
their experience and their meal when they come in our doors, and
we want to help keep Madelia a destination in southern Minnesota.
You might be looking at me wondering why I have a Mexican
restaurant, but I have always had a dream of owning a restaurant,
since I was little. I came from a family that we didn’t get to go out
to eat very often. We didn’t have a lot of money. And I always—
I came from a very work—hardworking family as well. My parents
always had two or three jobs.
And the day came, when I was 14 years old, that I had to get
my first job to help with family bills, to keep our house, and it was
a dishwasher job. And, from there, I guess the rest is history, you
could say. I fell in love with the restaurant business, and I worked
my way up. And I met my husband at a Mexican restaurant that
I worked at in Owatonna, Minnesota.
And the last 10 years that we have been in business has been
full of challenges, from a devastating fire to a global pandemic. But
one thing has stayed consistent. We have learned valuable lessons
through all of it and have come stronger—come out stronger in the
end because of it. For the longevity of the business, we have
learned how to pivot and overcome the crazy obstacles put in our
way, and we have been grateful for the community we live in.
We are who we are because of our amazing support system here
in Madelia and the surrounding areas, and it is important in a
small town to come together and raise each other up in any way.
And we have been—we have been a witness of that, because all of
the businesses in our town have supported us from day one, and
Madelia is such a special town because of our like-minded mind-
sets. We have amazing businesses who faithfully support one an-
other.
In February of 2016, I was 8 months pregnant with our first
child, and eight other businesses on Madelia’s historic main street
were engulfed in flames and reduced to rubble. It was a dev-
astating blow to our established location that we have worked my
entire life for to create. And with the help of charitable donations,
our strong faith, community outreach and involvement, positive
mind-sets, and a lot of people in the mix, we were able to tempo-
rarily relocate at the Madelia Golf Course while we rebuilt our res-
taurant on main street.

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The restaurant has never been an easy business to be in, but our
passion for serving and cooking meals makes it all worth it at the
end.
As we were recovering and overcoming the fire, the global pan-
demic happened, as we all know, and this was hard because every-
thing was and sometimes still is unknown. We worked really hard
to pivot our menu, pay our staff, because we knew, if we would lose
them, we would lose Plaza, and just take one day at a time.
We prayed a lot. Our faith is everything, seriously. We were for-
tunate—sorry—to survive through it all, but that was a big help
because of the PPP loans and the restaurant revitalization funds.
I know we wouldn’t have the same outcome if it wasn’t for that.
Sorry.
We have gone from a staff of 5 people to 30, and I take that re-
sponsibility very seriously. And they are the backbone of who we
are and—because of our success today. So, without them, we would
be nothing. I—some of them have been with us since day one and
have endured every challenge with us by my side.
I honestly love what I do, and I love sharing with the people who
helped me along the way. And my biggest passion is to teach peo-
ple about other cultures and to mix cultures together into a com-
munity.
We are planning on opening a second location for the restaurant
in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, starting in January of 2022, and we
are partnering with some friends that are eager to mix both of our
passions and our experience together into one beautiful location.
Thank you.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you, Ms. Hernandez, for that really
passionate testimony.
Mr. Contreras, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF MAURICE CONTRERAS
Mr. CONTRERAS. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Chairwoman Velázquez, Ranking Member
Luetkemeyer, and Members of the Committee, and Congresswoman
Bourdeaux.
My name is Maurice Contreras, the CEO and founder of
Volcanica Coffee. We are a specialty coffee roaster of exotic im-
ported coffee from volcanic regions from around the world.
I am honored to come before this Committee to tell you about our
company. We are a family-owned business that I started in the ga-
rage of our home 17 years ago. It all began after frequent family
vacations to my homeland in Costa Rica. During one of those vaca-
tions, I realized there was an opportunity to import, teach, and in-
troduce great-tasting coffee to the U.S.
Coffee had always been in my blood and has been in our family
for at least two generations, starting when my mother and grand-
father would assist in the harvesting of coffee beans high in the
mountains of Costa Rica.
Volcanica Coffee started out as a part-time side business, but we
now operate a large coffee roasting plant near Atlanta in Suwanee,
Georgia, with 20 employees that includes my wife Diane, and our
son Aaron and daughter Adriana.

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When I started the business in 2004, it required a lot of work
and research. I had to learn how to build a website, how to drive
traffic through borrowing books from the website. I spent many
early mornings and evening hours building the business.
I will tell you it was not an overnight success, but even with lim-
ited time to work on it, it grew every year to the point that I could
leave my corporate job in the wireless telecommunications industry
and focus on growing the business full time.
Today, we carry over 150 different coffees imported from volcanic
regions from around the world. Our focus is on high quality, using
the latest coffee roasting machines manufactured in the USA that
have low emissions. We have various quality control measurements
in place to ensure that we only ship great-tasting coffee, and we
offer 100 percent customer satisfaction.
Volcanica Coffee carries a broad line of estate, peaberry, decaf,
and flavored coffees. We fresh roast and quickly ship to consumers
around the world. Our website offers subscription programs and in-
dividual purchases, and we are also available on Amazon.
Specialty coffee has been a growing trend, and many consumers
have been discovering that coffee can be enjoyed much like a fine
wine, with various flavor notes depending on the region and roast-
ing techniques. Coffee is much more than just a drink to make you
alert. The coffees we import are from mineral rich soil that are
very aromatic with a remarkable taste and are also kosher cer-
tified.
We have been growing very rapidly as consumer preferences
have shifted to brewing high-quality coffee at home. We are hon-
ored that last month we were ranked number 514 on the Inc. 5000
list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. by Inc.
magazine.
Just this month, we moved into a larger coffee plant, nearly dou-
bling our capacity, to accommodate our growth.
We have been blessed—and giving back is very important to us—
so we donate 1 percent of our website retail sales to the organiza-
tion called charity: water, which brings clean, safe water to commu-
nities around the world. Over 7 million people now have access to
clean water through projects funded by charity: water. We also do-
nate to local charities and first responders.
I am very grateful for the opportunities that we have here in the
United States to be able to experience the American Dream. I am
also grateful to be able to build a business with our family and to
provide employment opportunities for our Members.
Thank you, and I am very happy to answer any questions.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Contreras. I really appreciate
your testimony as well.
Mr. Lunde—I hope I am pronouncing that correctly—you are now
recognized for 5 minutes as well.
STATEMENT OF MARK J. LUNDE
Mr. LUNDE. Thank you. It is Mark Lunde.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Lunde.
Mr. LUNDE. You bet. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairwoman Velázquez and the Small Business
Committee, for having us here today.

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I actually have three broader topics. While our exact business
challenges and opportunities are always a moving target, I have
got three broader topics I wanted to comment on. And one is the
federal minimum wage and how it affects us as a small business.
While I agree a livable wage is certainly the goal and aspiration
of every American, many experts agree and most data suggests
that even $15 an hour is not a livable wage in most parts of the
country. And across-the-board mandates, which are another real-
life example of an unfunded mandate to a private business, while
they do have limits and exclusions, are harmful to competition in
specifically rural markets where I live. Furthermore, they stifle
new opportunity and training opportunities for people entering the
workforce.
And I wanted to give an example of an 18-year-old that we re-
cently hired, a high-school graduate who chose not to enter college
and chose to enter the workforce with us. And had we been forced
to pay him $15 an hour or more with a mandate, we wouldn’t be
able to hire him. And in the time he has worked full time for us,
starting at $10 an hour, he has earned two raises, been placed on
a monthly bonus program, which puts his pay much higher than
the per hour minimum that could be proposed.
And I believe that wages, like prices, should be set, corrected,
and ruled by the market with all moving parts considering job
types, parts of the country, parts of the area that you live in.
Employers in 2021 should be as aggressive as ever to push wages
upward, and those that aren’t will be out of business pretty swiftly.
Following the pandemic, the underserved market, such as hospi-
tality, retail, restaurant, several others like that, they have all seen
huge spikes in their human resource expenses. And while we cer-
tainly want to avoid inflation, some view this as simple market cor-
rection. And many of these sectors’ employees and former employ-
ees have taken this time to go back to school or seek other opportu-
nities altogether.
And so, with that, that is that one.
The other big one for us, in rural Minnesota at least, and I think
across the nation as I read, is affordable daycare. This is a huge
stumbling block for economic development in the country, let alone
in rural America. In fact, according to the Committee for Economic
Development’s Report of Child Care in State Economies, in 2019,
there were 674,000 childcare programs in the United States with
revenues of $47 billion employing 1.5 million workers. And the
spillover impact to those programs generated an additional $52 bil-
lion in local economies.
And regarding employment, direct—beyond direct jobs in that in-
dustry, an additional 507,000 jobs are supported within commu-
nities, leading to an overall jobs impact of 2 million workers.
Now, obviously, these numbers have been hugely affected by the
pandemic. And just in our small area, I know of three different
home-based and small daycare centers that called it quits early in
the pandemic and shut their doors for good for one reason or an-
other.
According to Rania Antonopoulos of the Levy Institute, they esti-
mate that, following the great recession, had investments in care
infrastructure been in conjunction with the investments in physical

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infrastructure, they would have yielded twice as many new jobs as
the latter investments alone.
Particularly in rural America where I live, there again, we have
a huge hill to climb in the way of economic development and get-
ting people back to work, and part of that is investing seriously in
daycare, home-based childcare, and after-school programs.
Thirdly is kind of—is kind of something that seems to be winding
down, which is unemployment benefits, or extended benefits. All
the like are kind of lumped in here. And, again, while totally nec-
essary in the full throes of the pandemic and uncertain times, man-
dated shutdowns and the like, this has become a joke in many
areas. Many, if not most, businesses I know of up and down main
street—factories, offices alike—are in desperate need of employees.
Businesses are changing models, hours, and even services be-
cause of lack of available workforce. Meanwhile, those same able-
bodied workers are or were collecting checks versus working. Some
call this a work ethic issue. Some call it a government handout. I
call it just bad for business.
In 25 years of business, I never dreamed that I would literally
have to compete with unemployment compensation to attract and
retain employees. I believe any and all forms of this must come to
an end really quickly so we can get back to work.
Those are my topics. Again, I thank the Committee for having all
of us, and I am open to any questions.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you so much, Mr. Lunde, for your testi-
mony as well.
Mr. Barry Schlouch—I know I never pronounce that right—you
are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF BARRY SCHLOUCH
Mr. SCHLOUCH. Thank you, Representative Houlahan, and
thank you, Representative Meuser, for inviting us. And thank you
to all the Representatives for taking this time to listen to small
business. And congratulations to all my peers for the courage and
the willingness to come along and share your story. I have got like
four pages of notes myself of learning.
With that, I hope you have all played Monopoly, and I hope you
landed on Reading Railroad, okay? That is where I live, Reading
Railroad, Reading, PA. And we are in the process of restoring a rail
from Reading to Philadelphia, which I am very involved in, so stay
tuned to hear more about that.
But back to the three things. Thank you for the wonderful intro-
duction, Congressman Meuser. I am not going to kind of go through
our background, but we did start straight out of our basement in
1983 as a 25-year-old and a 23-year-old next to me, my wife. And
we built this company from a capital investment of $2,000 to about
a billion 7 in business, collectively over the 38 years, and we are
doing about $100 million a year now. So amen for America. I mean,
where else could you do that? It is America.
So I feel the dream is alive and well. Our daughter is positioned
for success. She is 39 years old. She will be the proud leader of a
woman—women in construction—women in mining construction, so
it proves out that women can succeed as well, and Stacy is a role
model.

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I want to talk about the three things of safety—the first priority,
safety; the second priority, safety; the third priority, safety—and
how it can transform every business.
So that is what we do at Schlouch. And, really, to work safe and
be safe, it takes a tremendous commitment. It takes leadership, it
takes standards, it takes process, it takes training, it takes execu-
tion, and it takes accountability.
So we are faced with what is called the fatal four every day,
which is electrical, falls, struck by, and caught between. So our
company was positioned for success for the pandemic not knowing
it. And, believe me, I could do without this pandemic.
So when it came about in February last year and we got word
of this and we got information, we created what we called the fatal
five. I told you what the fatal four is. The fatal fifth is COVID-19.
So we go every day for zero injuries, every day, okay? And we have
gone sometimes over—years with no injuries.
Our goal is zero COVID-19. Now, people are like, wow, that is
impossible. Well, we ran all the way with 285 employees and fami-
lies through Thanksgiving 2020 with zero COVID-19, okay? But we
followed the process. We had the standard. We had the account-
ability. We were trained.
When the Governor shut down our business, he thought that was
best for the State. Construction got shut down. Thanks to Con-
gressman Meuser, I got to speak with him, and we repositioned
them for success and reopened construction safely 6 weeks later.
But I had to prove to the Governor and his team that we could do
it safely, and we have.
So I just want to talk to you a little bit about the things that
we are doing. So, this morning, I started with an app on my phone.
This is how a day starts. I have an app. I asked a—I answer the
questions, symptoms, anybody positive? That app goes in to all 285.
If we got yes to any question, boom, we contact trace right away.
And, boom, we quarantine or whatever is necessary.
So a couple weeks ago—I live on a 70-acre farm with my wife
here, and I was out cutting hay. And I got a call from my IT guy
who said, Hey, do you have your laptop?
Yeah.
Wipe it down.
The IT department—a mother of one of the people had tested
positive, had touched my computer. Wipe it down. That is the de-
gree of what we are doing today. Okay.
So I am asking government to listen to us, trust us, empower us.
We got it. Okay? And I have asked Governor Wolf that, the same
thing. I know you are trying to help us, but mandates really create
distrust. It widens the gap. I spent all day yesterday mitigating the
President’s speech last week, because I am vaccinated and we have
a lot of vaccinated people, but not everybody’s vaccinated.
We got this, and, now, the unvaccinated people, when this plays
out, are going to have to prove to me every week that they are not
positive by getting a test. They have got to prove it to me. Okay?
That doesn’t build trust. It doesn’t build cohesiveness. And there
are ways that we can do it, and I have shared it with you, you
know, that we are already doing.

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I want to share with you also, the online training has been great.
The working from home has been great. We are continuing it. And
I know I am running out of time. And we are promoting it. So
where there has been international articles on the details of what
we are doing, you know, as a company, we want to take the suc-
cess, share it, and we want to get to zero COVID-19 for the coun-
try.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you so much, Barry. I really appreciate
your testimony and insight as always.
That concludes the opening remarks of all of our panelists, and
we will now move on to Member questions, and we will be alter-
nating back and forth between both sides. And so I will first recog-
nize Ranking Member Mr. Hagedorn for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hagedorn, are you still on?
I don’t see him, so I will go on instead to Ms. Bourdeaux next.
Ms. BOURDEAUX. Thank you so much.
Maurice, thank you so much for joining the Committee today.
And just thought I would talk a little bit more about your experi-
ence. You know, one of the things we talk about a lot in this Com-
mittee is how do we help support small businesses as they are get-
ting started, and then how do we support them as they are grow-
ing.
And so, just to start off, you know, if you could tell us a little
bit about your journey. You had a successful career prior to start-
ing your business. What made you start a small business, and
what obstacles did you face to getting up and running?
And you need to unmute.
Mr. CONTRERAS. Yeah. Thank you.
So when we got started, it really—I started it only with $5,000,
which was good on a virtual company, you know, on a website. But
when we moved into the manufacturing plant, it required several
hundred thousand dollars. The equipment and the tax laws that
had been in place for small businesses, especially a C corp, were
very favorable to us, and really allowed us to be able to buy new
equipment, build out the plants, and even, you know—you know,
as our business grew, we invested more and more and more. And,
you know, our tax liability wasn’t as great because of the laws. And
that really helped us tremendously.
Part of the reason why, you know, I started the business was
somewhat as—you know, I wanted to create a legacy for our family
and do our—do something else, not just work for large corpora-
tions. And so, at first, it was kind of toying around and just, you
know, figuring out what would work.
Coffee was not my first thing. I did a couple of other things. But,
you know, it was—it was really that. It was knowing that, you
know, long-term, you know, to build a business and to have the
American Dream really was attainable, but it just required a lot of
work and action to get started and do it.
Ms. BOURDEAUX. And just along those lines, what has been
some of the biggest challenges as you have gotten bigger? So, this
sort of, getting started, you had the capital and the resources to get
there, but you have now expanded and grown and has that been
a smooth process? Are there things that we need to be thinking

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about as a committee to help promote small businesses and to help
them to grow?
Mr. CONTRERAS. Yeah. It is funny, you know. Every time I
think that we are going to get to a plateau where, okay, all right,
now I can relax and maybe enjoy some of our fruits, now I have
to spend another 40,000 here, another 60,000 here, another
100,000.
So what would be very helpful is just to have availability to ac-
cess credit for small businesses and it has been difficult, you know.
We don’t even have a line of credit yet with our existing bank that
we have been doing business with since the beginning.
Hopefully that is going to come together, but, you know, some-
thing to be able to help us, you know, make those initial invest-
ments. That would definitely help. And then the other thing right
now, which is already been mentioned, is the issue that everybody
has with employment, you know. Hopefully, that is going to end.
I know a lot of the programs that are in place have ended, but
it really is a struggle and anything that can be done on your all’s
end to get the people that are on the social payroll to come back
to work would be very beneficial to us.
Ms. BOURDEAUX. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your
time and for coming and many best wishes for the future growth
and success of your company.
Mr. CONTRERAS. Thank you.
Ms. HOULAHAN. [Presiding.] Does the gentlelady yield back?
Ms. BOURDEAUX. I yield back, yes.
Ms. HOULAHAN. The gentlelady yields back. And I now recog-
nize the gentleman from Minnesota for 5 minutes, Mr. Stauber.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Lunde, from your testimony, it sounds like you believe the
federal government often gets in the way of small business success.
As a small business owner myself, I agree with you. Is there any-
thing that you think the government is getting right at the mo-
ment, i.e., a tax policy or SBA assistance program.
Mr. LUNDE. Yeah. Thank you, Congressman Stauber, I do. First
of all, I think the steps taken by this very Committee just last
week in advancing the $25 billion legislation to help small busi-
nesses directly is a huge step. You know, I have had an oppor-
tunity to review that legislation and so many times they are so
packed filled with different small little programs that don’t actually
affect anything and don’t really get the money where it goes or
where it should be going. In this case, I believe it does.
And, furthermore, for all the complaining I have heard about the
SBA over the last 17, 18 months, I think with the huge job that
they had to do getting funds into bank accounts to get people’s, you
know, health insurance and to get people’s paychecks paid, they
have just done a fabulous job and, obviously, not flawless, but I
think they have done a wonderful job of helping the American busi-
nesses is what they are there to do.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you very much. And then let’s go to the
business you are involved in. You know, with reports of used cars
up 41 percent due to inflation, have you begun to feel the impacts
on your business and are there adjustments you are already plan-
ning to make in the wake of inflation?

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Mr. LUNDE. Sure. Yeah. Another great question. New and used
car inventories seem to be a topic on a lot of people’s minds lately.
We see it on the news a lot, you know, on Facebooks of the world.
We have certainly seen higher wholesale prices at our auctions and
we buy a lot of vehicles from around the country and we see it pret-
ty much coast to coast.
And so, you know, with that, yes, of course, higher wholesale
prices is going to translate to higher retail prices with the major
manufacturers, you know, stalled in manufacturing. Obviously, the
big, big stores, the big, big franchise dealers and what not are con-
suming a lot of what would normally be left for independents like
myself.
And so that, of course, means more competition equals higher
prices equals higher prices for the consumer buying a car. So we
are seeing that. We are seeing higher prices obviously that will
lead to inflation.
I don’t know if that is a temporary inflation, but for now the
market of used cars, especially, is up and the market for new cars
is practically nonexistent.
Mr. STAUBER. I think one of the concerns for new cars, Mr.
Lunde, is the chip shortage and the chip shortage is made—many
of them are made in the Communist country of China that are
holding up the out of dealers from getting their new chips. We are
hearing dealerships that normally get 40, 50 cars a month are get-
ting two or three new cars just because of the chip shortage. And
I think that is where we, in America, we can mine the critical min-
erals and rare earths. Manufacturers should make those chips here
so the supply chain dependency is in our own hands. We are learn-
ing from cobalt so many things, including supply chain dependency,
which would help.
And then the last question is, are there any major concerns that
you are having with discussions—let me rephrase that. Are there
any other major concerns you are having with discussions in Wash-
ington that could impact your business?
Mr. LUNDE. Specifically, no. I think the general thing, as you
mentioned in your introduction of me, I am also on the city council
here in Wadena, so I get a lot of phone calls, emails, things of that
from local business people and citizens alike. And I think the big-
gest thing going in business right now in the car business, in gen-
eral main street businesses is just general uncertainty. You know,
I hear a lot of people asking, when do you think we will get back
to normal? And then there is this new thing, of course, called the
new normal, which I think we are all tired of hearing that one too.
I think in reality there is no going back to, quote/unquote, nor-
mal. This is business as usual. This is the new economy and busi-
nesses have changed. As you mentioned through COVID, we have
learned a lot. And some of it very positive.
The Zoom meeting we are having here today. Think of all the
savings costs and otherwise that this allows us to do. So——
Mr. STAUBER. In my remainder 20 seconds, can you talk about
discussions that we are having about minimum wage and over-
spending by the federal government? You got 15 seconds.

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Mr. LUNDE. You bet. There again, my belief on minimum wage
is, there was probably a time and there was certainly a time in this
country where that was necessary. I don’t believe that is right now.
I think that employers and businesses alike can and should up
their spending on that. They are going to do it on their own any
way or they are just going to be left without employees.
So I think it is an overreach by the federal government.
Mr. STAUBER. Okay. Thank you.
And, Madam Chair, I yield back. Thank you.
Ms. HOULAHAN. The gentleman from Minnesota yields back. I
now recognize the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Meuser, for
5 minutes.
Mr. MEUSER. Thank you, Chairwoman Houlahan. Mr. Schlouch,
very nice to see you. Deb, Mrs. Schlouch, very nice to see you. We
really appreciate you being here in your opening testimony. It was
on target as I certainly would have expected, so appreciate that.
So the Paycheck Protection Program clearly was very important
to help through COVID-19. Barry, I would like to know when
COVID-19 first begun, we had a strong federal response. We had
a statewide response. How did Schlouch, Incorporated weather the
pandemic and relate it to some of the factors from the government?
Mr. SCHLOUCH. Well, like everybody on the call, it was a huge
challenge. The worse thing that happened was when I had to show
up in the morning and tell 285 families and our workers to go
home and I don’t know when you are coming back. That was hor-
rible. I never thought I would see that in my lifetime at least while
I am healthy. Generally that happens when you go out of business
or you bankrupt, but I did it because it was the order.
So and then we spent 6 weeks, about 70 percent loss in revenues
that we normally would have. So we got some waivers. In Pennsyl-
vania, there was a waiver process and we did get some waivers for
some hospitals and things like that. So we did get about 30 percent
going. We paid for our employees’ healthcare during the time. We
kept it going.
So it was a risk I was willing to take because, you know, I be-
lieve in them. So that was hundreds of thousands of dollars that
we put out during it not knowing how this was going to end. And
I got to say the PPP really helped. We received it. It has been for-
given and it really helped offset the loss.
However, if we can get to point where government starts listen-
ing more and allows us to help, we could have actually kept work-
ing safely through the whole thing where outdoors heavy civil and
that money could have helped somebody else. So we did it. We got
through it. It was very chaotic and we did the best we can with
what we had.
Mr. MEUSER. All right. Great. In the interest of time, I know
safety is one of your mantra at your company. Feel free to comment
on that, but I am also very interested in your thoughts on some of
the big federal legislation coming along? We have got a 3.5 or 2.5,
whatever it happens to be, reconciliation bill and also a transpor-
tation infrastructure bill, which, as you know, I feel very strongly
for the T&I bill, not so much for the reconciliation bill.

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I would like your thoughts and what you think the economic im-
pact is to our community, as well as Schlouch, Incorporated as
well.
Mr. SCHLOUCH. Well, let me start with infrastructure because,
you know, there is nothing I can do there because government
owns the infrastructure and the public right away. You can help
as you can with safety and our military. Those are the two areas,
I think, if you want to help, those are the areas you can help.
However, with the infrastructure, don’t put in things like project
labor agreements and things like that that penalize our employees.
We have 285 of the best, and when you start thinking like project
labor agreements that prohibits our employees from working on
public works projects and I fully oppose that one. They are baked
in these transportation bills. I would never ask Congress to pro-
hibit union labor from working on public work, but somehow Con-
gress has made it okay to prohibit nonunion.
So as far as the 3 and a half trillion dollar budget bill or the ex-
pansion bill, I sent a letter to Representative Houlahan I oppose
it. And we oppose it because it increases taxes at a very poor time.
I mean, right now inflation is going up, prices are going up.
We would have to try and pass it through or it would come out
of profit, and it would hinder—you know, right now we are invest-
ing heavily in wages and in training and we do the things that we
need to do with the money that we work hard to earn.
And as I did with you, I called you on the PPP. I told you how
I spent every dollar of that money and it all went to wages, train-
ing. Every red cent of that we got in forgiveness.
Mr. MEUSER. That is great. Speak about inflation a little bit.
How has that affected your business and do you see it in the short-
term or longer term problem?
Mr. SCHLOUCH. Well, construction is crazy. I mean, if you fol-
low materials and you follow what is going on and some of it we
are still recovering from supply chain from the pandemic, we had
to give it some time because, you know, lumber is way up, steel is
way up. Whatever we can manufacture locally, we should invest in
locally, but it is a real problem with the cost and I don’t know how
much more our end users, which are the homeowners and the busi-
nesses, are going to be able to bear out of this.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Unfortunately, the gentleman’s time has ex-
pired.
Mr. MEUSER. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. HOULAHAN. You are welcome.
Mr. MEUSER. Thank you very much, Mr. Schlouch.
Ms. HOULAHAN. I now will yield to the Ranking Member, Mr.
Hagedorn, who will be recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Madam Chair, thank you for that. Really ap-
preciate it and, again, so proud to have Krystal Hernandez from La
Plaza Fiesta restaurant with us today and as I have said many
times that our small businesses are pillars of the community and
they have big investments in the community and they have done—
they do so much, especially for our small towns.
And what Ms. Hernandez and her team have done is a testament
to that in the city of Madelia, about 2,500 people. So appreciate you
being here.

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And Ms. Hernandez, I was inspired to hear that some of your fel-
low taxpayers have stepped up with Paycheck Protection Program
restaurant revitalization fund, things like that. It seemed to have
a big impact in helping you get through a tough time with the
coronavirus.
I also was kind of interested, though, in talking about your other
business. How is it that you decided to expand into the grocery
business and, you know, maybe you can tell us your background on
that as a small business person why you made that decision?
Ms. HERNANDEZ. Okay. That is a good question. I kind of al-
ways wanted to have a Hispanic store ever since the one that was
currently in Madelia had closed. Way back before the fire, we had
this crazy idea like we always do, we always have these crazy ideas
and we started getting it ready and we were 30 days out of open-
ing—the day of the fire, we were 30 days out of opening so it got
pushed behind again.
And so the reason is because in our town there is 35 percent of
the population is Hispanic and not just from Mexico. Like they are
from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, all Central America. And
we have a chicken processing plants in Madelia that we are so
thankful for in our town and a lot of those people are employed
there.
And our grocery store—our regular grocery store doesn’t have a
lot of their products that their used to in their countries. And so
we just thought it would be good to provide that in our community.
We also—a lot of people always wanted like to-go meals, things
ready quicker than a restaurant can provide.
So we thought that our initial idea was to open up like a little
deli with a few ethnic groceries and now it is kind of expanded into
like a mini supermarket.
Mr. HAGEDORN. It sounds like you really found a way—you got
a niche market there and you are going to meet the demand. It
sounds like good business. So we wish you well in that enterprise
as well. Tony Downs, that group, was actually at our job fair today.
I am in Mankato at South Central College at a job fair.
So quick question: So how do you think some of the labor short-
ages and inflation maybe with the products that you have to pur-
chase or inflation from other businesses that you do business with,
how has that affected your business now and do you need some
help there?
Ms. HERNANDEZ. It has made it very chaotic. Kind of just like
everything, but we have been—I don’t know. I just always have a
positive mind set. I know that is really important and our faith has
kind of pulled us through everything.
If I am being honest, it has been challenging in a lot of ways.
There is shortages on food, there is shortages on even to-go boxes
right now. Napkins. Things that are obviously vital to staying in
business now that we actually get to be open, now there is so many
shortages on that.
Thankfully, I am super grateful for our 30 core people that we
have working for us, but just like everybody else, we are competing
with, like, unemployment and things like that and trying to find
employees.

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Now that we are growing, we need more employees as well. So
it has been challenging, but yeah.
Mr. HAGEDORN. So a lot of supply chain issues and probably
sometimes not even able to provide the products and services that
you would like, but hopefully that will get ironed out. I know the
workforce issues have been tough extra federal unemployment ben-
efits, which have prevented some people from going back to work.
Those are ending now, but you are a lifelong resident of southern
Minnesota. You are an entrepreneur who started her business, I
think, at what, 22, something like that. You have been through
more challenges than you can shake a stick at and what we don’t
want is some bad government getting in the way from this point
forward.
So I would just like to congratulate you on what you and your
team have done. Really appreciate what you have done for the com-
munity of Madelia and the folks down here in providing the exam-
ple to others and I wish you well on your expansion to South Da-
kota and to the grocery store business as well. Thank you for being
here and testifying.
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. HERNANDEZ. Thank you.
Ms. HOULAHAN. The gentleman yields back. And I want to now
say thank you to our panel for taking the time to walk us through
your successes and your challenges as well. We really appreciate it
and we know that it is really not easy to take time away from oper-
ating your businesses. So we really appreciate your thoughts and
insights, particularly, my background is in entrepreneurs as in
small businesses and I know just how important hours of your time
is.
So this concludes the second panel of three and those of you who
participated in the second panel can now exit the Zoom platform
and those who are participating in the third panel hopefully are
here already. If you would like, you can continue to watch the pro-
ceedings on the live stream.
And with that, I will have the opportunity to introduce Rep-
resentative Dean Phillips who will be taking over as the Chair for
the next panel. And thanks so much, once again, for joining us.
Mr. PHILLIPS. [Presiding.] Thank you to my colleague Chrissy
Houlahan and welcome to our third panel today. Grateful to all of
those who have testified before and eager to have our final panel
start. We will just take a moment to introduce each of you, but for
turning it over to testimony, and I will now yield to Representative
Newman to introduce our first witness. I want to make sure our
panelists are on. All right. Well, if Ms. Newman’s not here, I will
introduce our first panelists.
Let me just get this. Mr. Jaime Di Paulo in his 10 years of presi-
dent and CEO of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Jaime has more than doubled its membership—[audio malfunc-
tion]—he has established four priorities as CEO such as being the
meeting point for the Latino companies in Illinois multiplying the
ways to train Hispanics with small businesses ensuring that His-
panic companies can have all the information to access credit and
government contracts, and bringing together minorities from Illi-
nois to access better business opportunities.

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Throughout his career he has helped open and grow hundreds of
businesses in his community and he grew the LBCC membership
from 30 to 900 Members. He previously served as the business de-
velopment director for the Greater Oklahoma City Hispanic Cham-
ber of Commerce and worked as the director of the Mexican and
American Thinking Together Foundation.
And now I would like to yield to our Ranking Member on the
Subcommittee on Investigations, Ms. Van Duyne, to introduce our
next witness.
Ms. VAN DUYNE. Thank you very much. I would like to inter-
view Susan Shaw. Susan grew up in Hurst, Texas, before at How-
ard Payne University. After spending several years in the title
business and 7 years in retail, Susan and her husband Howard
bought a family-owned independent insurance agency in 2000,
which is now called Shaw Insurance Agency. And they have been
serving the DFW community since 1981. Married with two adult
children, an adult stepson, she is an avid reader, mission-minded
world traveler, and a self-described community volunteer junkie,
which I can personal attest to.
Active in the Hurst Chamber of Commerce, she serves as the ex-
ecutive Board of Directors, she chairs WILD, which is Women In-
spiring Leadership Development. She has received numerous
awards since she was the 2015 Shining Star Award for her involve-
ment in the Community Enrichment Center, the 2017 HEB cham-
ber member of the year, the 2018 Shining Star Award by the HEB
chamber, and she was selected as the 2019 director of the year for
the chamber and the recipient of the Gertrude Award for 2020.
So, Susan, I am so happy that you are here with us. Thank you
so much.
I yield back.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you, Ms. Van Duyne.
And now I will yield to Ms. Houlahan to introduce our next wit-
ness.
Ms. HOULAHAN. You thought you could get rid of me.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Right back at you.
Ms. HOULAHAN. I want to have the opportunity now and the
pleasure to introduce Mr. Donald Fox. And while I came to know
Mr. Fox under really difficult circumstances, it has been a genuine
honor to learn about him and see first hand his passion for serving
Members of our community.
Mr. Fox is the owner, president, and CEO of Fox Theaters, LLC,
which is a movie theater company based in our district in
Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. The company was founded in 1957 by
his father Richard Fox and it now operates 20 screens in three the-
ater locations, one in Wyomissing and two in Ocean City, Mary-
land. Don has over 40 years of industry and national trade associ-
ated experience and he is currently reviving the business after suf-
fering devastating pandemic related losses as you can probably
imagine over these last 18 months.
Emergency Federal Relief programs that we have championed
here in this Committee, including the SVOG, the PPP, EIDL loans,
and ERC have all been keys to the survival of his business. Don
resides with his wife in Wyomissing. Again, it is my pleasure to in-
troduce him and I look forward to his testimony.

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And with that, I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you, Ms. Houlahan. And now I would like
to yield to Ms. Young Kim to introduce our next witness.
Ms. YOUNG KIM. Thank you, Chairman. And it is my honor to
introduce Mr. Mitch Cook. Hello, Mr. Cook. Mr. Cook is co-owner
of Avalon Bagels to Burgers. It is a small business representing
California’s 39th district and serving the most delicious bagels and
burgers in all of southern California.
Mr. Cook and his business partners, Mark Cook and Gilbert
Mendez, started Avalon Bagels to Burgers in 1997, first in Yorba
Linda and established a second location in Placentia in 2001. More
importantly, Mr. Cook is a father of four and grandfather of ten.
Oh, my goodness. I just became a grandma of my very first child,
but ten grandchildren. Kudos to you. You know, I had the pleasure
of visiting his small business in Placentia a couple weeks ago and
meeting some of his employees.
Mr. Cook, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your
busy day from running your business to joining us today. I look for-
ward to hearing more about your business and what you do for our
community.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you, Ms. Kim. And I believe I yield back
one more time to you to introduce our last witness.
Ms. YOUNG KIM. Yes. It is my pleasure to introduce Mr. Greg
Owens. He is a cofounder and CEO of Sherrill Manufacturing and
Liberty Tabletop in Sherrill from New York. I am introducing Mr.
Owens on behalf of Representative Claudia Tenney. Mr. Owens and
his business partner Matt Roberts started Sherrill Manufacturing
in 2005 after flatware producer Oneida Limited moved its manufac-
turing overseas from upstate New York.
Both former Oneida employees, Mr. Owens and Mr. Roberts, they
purchased the company’s old New York factory and hired back
many of their former colleagues. In an era when many U.S. manu-
facturing firms have moved to China or elsewhere, Sherrill Manu-
facturing now flourishes with tens of thousands of customers na-
tionwide while supporting over 15 employees in stable, well-paying
positions.
I look forward to hearing Mr. Owens’ insight into how we can
help renew the American manufacturing to strengthen self-suffi-
ciency, the availability of high-quality jobs, and flourishing commu-
nities across the nation.
Thank you, Mr. Owens, for joining us today.
Mr. PHILLIPS. And thank you, Ms. Kim.
With that now, we will go to our testimony. I will recognize Mr.
Di Paulo for 5 minutes for your opening statement.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Representative Newman would like to intro-
duce her witness, too.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Oh, I had introduced him in the—maybe you
didn’t hear me.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Oh, never mind. I take it back.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Okay. I hope everybody did hear my introduc-
tion, but Mr. Di Paulo, if you would like to begin your 5-minute
opening statement, you can proceed.

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STATEMENTS OF MR. JAIME DI PAULO, PRESIDENT AND
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ILLINOIS HISPANIC CHAMBER
OF COMMERCE (IHCC), CHICAGO, IL; MS. SUSAN SHAW,
OWNER, SHAW INSURANCE AGENCY, HURST, TX; MR. DON-
ALD FOX, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, FOX
THEATRES LLC, WYOMISSING, PA; MR. MITCH COOK, CO-
OWNER, AVALON BAGELS TO BURGERS, YORBA LINDA, CA;
AND MR. GREG OWENS, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
SHERRILL MANUFACTURING INC., SHERRILL, NY
STATEMENT OF JAIME DI PAULO
Mr. DI PAULO. Thank you, Representative. My name is Jaime
Di Paulo. I am the President of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce and thank you, Chairwoman Velázquez, and all the
Members of this House Committee and especially to my congress-
woman and my dear friend, Mary Newman, for allowing me to
speak in front of you today.
And I would like to thank the Board of Directors at the Hispanic
Chamber of Commerce, Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,
for the trust they believe in me. We have an incredible Chairman
and 11 very committed businesspeople. They are really committed
to move the agenda as taking care of small businesses in our com-
munity. And also to the team at the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce, mucho gracias. Thank you for your hard work day in
and day out.
This is the reason we are here testifying. It is an honor to testify
at this hearing and to have the opportunity to share some matters
for your consideration. As we have been all working hard to endure
and overcome the pandemic, several things have happened that
merit your attention and consideration. Yes, thousands of Latino
businesses have disappeared. They are no longer in business, but
many, many others remain standing and remain strong ready to
fight on.
We know things that we have done better or worse without the
U.S. assistance. The assistance has been made available from you.
And yes, much, much work remains to be done if you want Latino
businesses to reach their full potential. Small businesses are the
backbone of the United States economy making up 99 percent of all
businesses.
The federal government has an interest in creating and main-
taining the level of playing field for all businesses throughout this
country. Certain changes to the disadvantaged business program
would help to further establish a level playing field, structural
changes that would improve the competitiveness that DBE in the
U.S. economy as whole include: number one, keep all graduates
from DBE programs until 2 years up to the President declares a
national emergency due to COVID ended.
And number two, modify the gross receipts calculation, but not
counting the subcontract expenses by DE firms. Number three, in-
crease the small business size standards by 25 percent effective im-
mediately and then annually to match the inflation. This changes
will give small businesses throughout the United States a fighting
chance to make it through the pandemic stronger than they start-
ed.

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This could translate into real jobs, real opportunities in every
economy throughout the country. A stronger economic framework
will help create a stronger fearful economy for everyone.
Latino businesses are the life line in the communities in which
they operate. Continued investment by the United States Congress
to ensure that these businesses have access to critical, technical as-
sistance throughout organizations like the Illinois Hispanic Cham-
ber of Commerce and any little Chamber of Commerce around the
State, around the country will deliver significant return.
These organizations are key stakeholders in the communities.
They are from the own community. The great majority of them
built these organizations from the ground up. Latino business own-
ers and entrepreneurs they care about their own. Providing these
resources to enable them to guide and serve Latino businesses is
a much needed step that must be fully considered as we move for-
ward to the post-pandemic future.
As to specific recommendation, the IHCC worked closely with Il-
linois Center at to propose the creation of Hispanic business center
at the SBA to create initiatives that are geared to serve commu-
nities with very specific needs like programs that the SBA operates
to support women, veteran, and Native American communities.
We are happy to offer for the record a memorandum that out-
lines the reasoning of the creation of Hispanic business centers,
and also known in Chicago as the Hispanic Center for Entrepre-
neurship. We ask that this Committee consider making an invest-
ment to ensure the largely unrepresentative, underserved Latino
businesses receive the assistance that can enable them to achieve
their full potential and I assure you if we do that, we will have a
better taxpayer dollars base.
In closing, I can see Mr. Chairman and Members of this Com-
mittee there are many issues to discuss. Count on me for my full
support and participation of this honorable Committee as many
times as necessary so that together we can find solutions to this
problems. We are here to help as we always say in the chamber.
Thank you for this incredible opportunity. It has been an honor to
represent over 170,000 businesses in the State of Illinois. This is
from a Mexican immigrant to you. Thank you so much for this
magnificent opportunity.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you, Mr. Di Paulo. And I don’t think I
have ever seen a witness use that 5 minutes to such perfection in
my career in Congress. Thank you.
And now it is my pleasure to recognize Ms. Shaw for 5 minutes
for your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF SUSAN SHAW
Ms. SHAW. Great. Thank you so much. I was very honored when
Representative Van Duyne called and asked me to do this today.
So thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate all that you are doing
to pay attention and listen to our small businesses and the chal-
lenges that we face. Thank you to the other Committee Members
for allowing us to be here today.
I am co-owner of Shaw Insurance Agency. It is a family-owned
insurance agency started by my father in 1981 who was actually
a nuclear physicist for General Dynamics for a number of years,

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didn’t want someone else to put the ceiling on himself. So then he
started a real estate company and then later on insurance. He did
not find insurance quite as interesting as I do, though.
So in 2000, my husband and I purchased the insurance agency
and it was only one carrier, one company, and only home. So grow-
ing up in an entrepreneurial family, Howard and I really jumped
in knowing that we didn’t know insurance at the time, but we
knew people and we knew ourselves and we knew that we lived our
values and we knew what culture that we wanted the agency to
grow into. And so we also understood not all business is good busi-
ness. So we very carefully grew the company that way.
Now, we represent over 60 companies, 60 carriers with the per-
sonal lines department, as well as a commercial department. So
March 2020 came around and the way of doing business around the
country kind of changed in an instant. While some States were cer-
tainly hit harder than others, it was the small businesses in each
community around the country that really bore the brunt of those
shut downs.
Small businesses don’t have the same deep pockets. They can’t
afford to keep the staff and the electricity on, so sometimes they
have to make those hard choices just in order to save their busi-
ness. I felt strongly from the beginning that we were not going to
go remote if at all possible. I knew from human nature that routine
and people are important, but especially in times where fear is a
presiding factor.
Fear of the unknown is hard and certainly none of us expected
this to last as long as it did. We are still dealing with it, although
I believe strongly that not only Texas, but especially north Texas
kind of faired better than many parts of the rest of the country.
Decisions had to be made not only about my own personal busi-
ness, but I am the Chairman of the board of the HEB Chamber of
Commerce and so we had to make decisions every day that affected
the chamber, as well as all of our Members.
How do we continue to support them became the question that
the chamber president and I discussed daily many times multiple
times a day. We made hard choices, but our mission was to support
the small businesses and we did so in many different ways.
Every decision we made advancing business and strengthening
community. We did remain open during the pandemic in its en-
tirety. We made changes in the way that we did business. We
closed the lobby to walk-in people, sales people, delivery, and even
our own clients.
We did temperature checks daily and our agents had to record
that daily when arriving for work and sign the form in the back.
We had a local company come in multiple times to fog the entire
office to kill any airborne bacteria, any airborne germs, anything
that we could do to make our staff know that we were there to help
them and there to protect them.
We wiped down and we still continue to wipe down all touch
points three times a day in an effort to maintain top cleanliness
and, again, reduce the risk of spreading germs. After deciding to
open back the lobby, we met with our staff to see what their com-
fort level was. We continued to do the touch points, cleaning those.
At the beginning after spring break last year, the kids couldn’t go

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back to school. We had every agent bring in their laptops in the
hope that we didn’t have to go remote, but we wanted to be ready
if we did.
We ended up having two agents that needed to work from home
in the mornings in order to help their children do remote schooling.
At noon, they would head back to the office and start their work-
day over again. We had got through the year that way. When it
came time for school to start again, we noticed two of our agents
were getting really stressed about this.
So we decided to offer to allow them to bring their children to
work and do their school here. This time school was not going to
be just until noon every day; it was going to be all day. We offered
this option and the relief was palpable for our staff. You can see
that relief. We had school that day that way for 6 weeks.
During all this time, I saw people spiraling emotional and phys-
ically from the stress. That was the emotional toil that Howard and
I wanted to avoid. Our staff feels the same way. We feel like we
avoided what so many others went through, but it wasn’t without
sacrifice. It was tough. We continued to work our regular hours to
maintain that sense of normalcy.
Our insureds needed us and we made sure that we were there
for them. Most importantly, our staff knew that we valued them
and we did what we could to take care of them physically as well
as emotionally. We did not cut hours; we didn’t cut pay. We main-
tained full staff with full benefits the entire time.
While we are not through with the pandemic all the way, things
continue to change. We as small business owners must learn to
cope and be willing to change still when necessary. Lessons learned
along the way, but overall caring and dealing with our clients and
our staff with compassion has allowed us to still grow during this
time when many businesses closed their doors.
Challenges are necessary and part of the journey, but if you don’t
use those opportunities to encourage, teach, mentor, and lead other
people, you would have wasted the journey in front of you.
Thank you for allowing me to share my story.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you so much, Ms. Shaw. And now Mr.
Fox, you are recognized for 5 minutes for your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF DONALD FOX
Mr. FOX. Representative Phillips, Representative Houlahan, and
Members of the House Small Business Committee, thank you for
the opportunity to testify before you today. As the owner of a small
business, I am deeply respectful over the work that you do on be-
half of companies like mine.
I am president and CEO of Fox Theaters, a movie theater com-
pany based in Wyomissing, a suburb of Reading and Pennsylva-
nia’s 6th congressional district. The company founded in 1957 by
my father Richard Fox with a single drive-in theater outside of
Reading, today operates 20 screens in three theater locations, one
in Wyomissing and two others in the resort town of Ocean City,
Maryland.
Forty years at the helm of Fox Theaters has given me a valuable
perspective from the negotiating with Hollywood movie studios to
competing against much bigger regional and national movie theater

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companies to delivering a high-quality experience to our customers,
all with the limited resources of a small businessman.
One of my most satisfying aspects of my work is providing gain-
ful employment, whether it be first jobs to 16 and 17-year-old high
school students or to senior citizens looking to make some extra
money or full-time employment for theater cleaners, kitchen work-
ers, supervisors, and theater managers. They all dedicate them-
selves to providing first-class, first-run movie theater entertain-
ment 7 days a week to our loyal customers.
We have all been through an unprecedented time for the last
year and a half. As was the case with most nonessential busi-
nesses, we closed our doors on March of 2020 and, except for a few
weeks, stayed closed the rest of the year. During that period, our
sales were down 96 percent. Prior to March of 2020, we employed
125 people in Pennsylvania and Maryland, but when the pandemic
started, we had to lay off all but two full time and three part-time
employees.
Thanks to Congress’ speedy action, the Paycheck Protection Pro-
gram helped us bring back more of our full-time management, even
though we were still shutdown, to provide them a steady and reli-
able income.
Today, we are employing 65 people who are all working very
hard at rebuilding our business. Federal emergency relief has been
key to the survival of my company. In addition to PPP, we were
able to access economic injury disaster loans and employee reten-
tion tax credit program, both of which have been very meaningful.
With those funds we were able to keep the electricity on and a
skeleton crew employed while we waited for the pandemic to end
so our customers could return to watch movies in our theaters. But
it didn’t end. It continued on and on, and our debts piled up.
Representative Houlahan, as you know, we struggled and pivoted
where possible to figure out a way to survive the pandemic. We
sold curbside popcorn to our loyal customers and set up a pop-up
drive-in theater at one of our locations, but it barely scratched the
surface. The movie theater industry needed a rescue package, espe-
cially if small and independent operators like Fox Theaters were
going to survive the pandemic.
Movie theaters joined the Save Our Stages cause launched by
live music venues to ask the federal government to help entertain-
ment venues across the country survive until the audiences could
safely return. No one ever imagined that it would take until the
summer of 2021 for the movies and our customers to begin to come
back. The economic loss that we experienced was devastating for
businesses, big and small, that rely on people gathering together.
Thankfully in 2020 in December 2020, the $15 billion Shuttered
Venue Operators Grant program, SVOG, the crown jewel of federal
relief for our industry passed Congress and was signed into law.
What was then a cause for celebration soon became a long and
challenging setback. Over the next 6 months, businesses teetering
on the brink of bankruptcy held on while the Small Business Ad-
ministration struggled to get their program up and running.
The roll out of SVOG was extremely challenging, and from the
time the bill was signed until the time the funds were disbursed,
thousands of small operators that were shuttered by the pandemic

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waited anxiously to receive this emergency relief. Many of you on
this Committee and in Congress were instrumental in helping com-
panies like mine navigate the bureaucracy and you allocated more
federal resources to solve the operational issues the program was
facing.
In particular, the support we received through Representative
Houlahan’s efforts to expedite the SVOG funds were critical for the
survival of my company and for many others. Fox Theaters lives
another day because of what Congress did, but we are not out of
the woods yet.
The Delta variant surge has thrown a wrench into what we
thought was the start of a comeback earlier this summer and now,
unfortunately, the release dates of major Hollywood movies are
changing once again.
The demise of the movie theater industry has been predicted
many times over whether it be by cable television, DVD, and now
streaming. But Americans don’t want to remain in their living
rooms. They crave a shared experience out of the home with fami-
lies, friends, and strangers and the thrill you only get in a movie
theater immersed in the big screen. I am so grateful for the work
Congress has done and continues to do, and on behalf of my family,
my employees, and the thousands of Fox Theaters’ customers in
Pennsylvania and Maryland, I thank you very much.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you, sir.
And now I recognize Mr. Cook for 5 minutes for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF MITCH COOK
Mr. COOK. Thank you, Representative Phillips and Representa-
tive Young Kim, and other Members of the Committee. Appreciate
the opportunity to testify in front of the Committee and to hear the
stories of so many other small business people and the journeys we
have all been on. Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story.
My name is Mitch Cook. As you know, I am one of the owners
of Avalon Bagels to Burgers. We are a fast, casual restaurant and
we specialize in bagels, sandwiches, melts, salads, smoothies, and
grilled items that we make fresh every day. We have two locations
in the 39th district, both owned in North Orange County in South-
ern California in the 39th district, one of which opened in 1997, the
other in 2001.
We employ approximately 30 people between both sites and we
serve the best customers in the world. About 15 percent of our peo-
ple have been with us for over 15 years and a host of others for
over 10 years as well.
One of our slogans is we reserve the right to overserve our cus-
tomers, and we have tried to make that our objective from the day
we opened. And we try to treat each other as family and our cus-
tomers like our friends. When the pandemic began, we were like
everyone else has talked today, thrown off our moorings in a hurry.
From mid-March of 2020 through the end of May, we were losing
cash and revenue and wondering how long we could sustain the
business, how long could we stay open? Things became pretty des-
perate. We ended up every Tuesday selling off boxes of meats and
vegetables and toilet paper, anything we could do to generate in-
come and our customers stood by us.

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Fortunately, we had some cash reserves. We were able to keep
all of our staff, but had reduced operating hours. In mid-May of
2020, we received our initial round of PPP funding and that was
a huge blessing. It allowed us to cover our expenses and make up
some back pay to those who had a shortfall due to our reduced
hours. That loan was approved for forgiveness in October of last
year and gave us a base to make due the balance of 2020 and all
the variations that came with the recurring shut downs and
changes in regulations and closures.
Because our revenue had such a significant drop in the second
quarter of 2020 and thanks to the PPP Extension Act introduced
by Representatives Young Kim, Bourdeaux, Luetkemeyer, and
Velázquez, we were eligible for the second round of Payroll Protec-
tion Program funding in April of 2021. For those of you who
worked on getting these funds through to so many across the coun-
try, I would like to say thank you.
In both instances when the money actually hit our bank account,
I couldn’t believe it was coming. And when it did, I almost felt like
Jimmy Stewart in ‘‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’’ So thank you very much.
We were desperately in need.
The current challenge, as you have heard all morning, had to do
with labor shortages in trying to determine how to price our prod-
ucts when the cost components—every cost component we have is
increasing. With regard to the labor issue, the unemployment bene-
fits seem to be a reason to discourage people from applying for
work and while I know they were recently—the pandemic specific
unemployment benefits were recently discontinued, I hope this will
encourage more and more folks to apply for work.
Hopefully, the inflation factors will come under control as has
been mentioned, again, many times, whatever we can do to help
the supply chain disruptions would be a tremendous benefit to all
of us. And at the end of the day, we are all obviously working to
support our families and those we love, especially at the small
business.
I feel like that is the heartbeat of what we do. So it has been
an honor to be a part of this group, and thanks for the opportunity
to share a little bit about our story.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you, Mr. Cook. And last but not least, I
recognize Mr. Owens for your 5 minutes of testimony.
STATEMENT OF GREG OWENS
Mr. OWENS. Thank you, Chairwoman Velázquez, Ranking Mem-
ber Luetkemeyer, and our Representative in New York’s 22nd con-
gressional district, Claudia Tenney, the rest of the Committee
Members, I thank you for the honor and privilege to testify before
the House Committee on Small Business during National Small
Business Week.
My focus will be on the successes and the issues facing small
business in the manufacturing sector of our economy. It is my hope
that the Members of this Committee and staffers will take the time
to read through my written statement as there is simply not
enough time to cover all the topics that I want to discuss in detail.
My name is Greg Owens, and I am here representing our com-
pany, Sherrill Manufacturing, and our brand Liberty Tabletop.

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Though, it may sound hard to believe, Sherrill Manufacturing is
the only flatware manufacturer silverware left in the United
States.
Our company sells and manufactures our flatware. We also sell
other kitchen and tabletop items online. Everything is made in the
USA. Sherrill Manufacturing also has a GSA contract to supply
flatware to our military, something that we and all of our employ-
ees are proud to produce every day.
Our company was formed back in 2005 when Matt Roberts and
I purchased the flatware manufacturing equipment from Oneida
Limited located in Sherrill, New York. The Oneida factory was once
the largest flatware manufacturing facility in the world employing
over 2,300 people.
Why did Oneida Limited decide to scuttle the factory that had
been around since Abraham Lincoln was President? The answer is
simple: Unfair competition from China. The math was simple:
After years of fighting to keep the facility alive, Oneida manage-
ment realized that they could purchase manufactured product from
Chinese factories cheaper than they could buy the raw materials to
make it with here in the United States.
This situation, unfortunately, still exists today. The American
steel industry is largely protected from dumping by the Chinese
and others by tariffs under Section 232. While tariffs on steel may
be in place to protect the raw material side of the manufacturing
business, there is little been done to protect the manufactured
goods side.
This means that the Chinese continue to dump subsidized steel
in to the United States, but instead of doing it in the form of raw
materials, they simply do it in the form of finished products. The
only viable solution to this is to increase tariffs on finished goods
across the spectrum to a level that is sufficient, perhaps similar to
those on raw materials, to stop the ill-effects of this unfair trade
practice by the Chinese and others who seek to gain unfair advan-
tage over American manufacturers.
As the only manufacturer of flatware in the United States, the
pandemic had a major impact on our business. Our sales grew by
over 150 percent from pre-pandemic levels. Why? Because Ameri-
cans, the American consumer want to buy American. However,
there is an issue here. When you go to store to buy products by law
the purchase that you are making, the product package has to have
country of origin label on it. That is not the case online.
Included in the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, commonly
referred to as the China bill, the Senate has taken action in the
form of an amendment to the bill requiring the country of origin
labeling, or COOL, listings be made for products sold on the web.
I am hopeful that the House version, which is being drafted, now
will contain similar COOL language and be passed into law short-
ly.
My final point, but perhaps the most important of all is that
there can be no Renaissance in American manufacturing without
workers. A simple walk down main street looking at all the help
wanted signs provides graphic evidence that we have a worker cri-
sis. There are currently 1.3 million more job openings than people

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on the unemployment rolls. Population growth is at historic lows
and workforce participation rates are also down substantially.
Automation will help to some degree, but will fall far short of
bridging the worker gap, but there is a solution and it is an adja-
cent, seemingly unrelated news story that seems to make the paper
every day. We are also in the middle of an immigration crisis.
While I realize there are widely divergent views on this issue, I am
not sure anyone believes that the current situation is in any way
acceptable.
America is starved for workers and we have millions of people
who are either already here or arriving in increased numbers every
day. I believe it is time to put aside the partisan wrangling and the
rhetoric in order to put this situation in order and resolve these
two major issues facing us today as we rebuild our post-pandemic
economy.
Despite the partisan divide on many issues, made in America, in-
cluding the return of a manufacturing industry to our shores, is
one issue that seems to draw all sides together. The pandemic has
taught us many supply chain lessons.
To give us a level playing field and protect us against industrial
policies of other nations that unfairly dump their products in our
marketplace, give us the raw material we need to build our widg-
ets, give us the labor force that we need to expand our production
in our factories, give us all these things and American small busi-
ness will turn on the lights in factories across the country and help
drive our economy to future decades of growth and prosperity.
I appreciate the opportunity to address the Committee today, and
look forward to answering a couple questions perhaps.
Mr. PHILLIPS. All right. Thank you, Mr. Owens.
And now we will move to questioning. And it is my pleasure to
recognize my colleague, Ms. Newman, for 5 minutes.
Ms. NEWMAN. Well, good morning, everyone. I apologize for—
specifically to Jaime. I am so sorry, my friend. I was in a T&I
markup, and they had me in a cage. I couldn’t get out. No. I am
kidding. I do have a question for you regarding your testimony and
thank you so much for articulating all of the wonderful things that
the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce does because it is remarkable
in our State and it is a really great model for our entire country.
So my question has to do with disadvantaged business program
or we frequently refer to it as DBE. I know you shared some of the
improvements. I would love for you to recap them for this team for
the record, but then also I have one other tiny question, so if you
want to share, Jaime, the floor is yours.
Mr. DI PAULO. Thank you, Representative Newman. And in our
chamber, we have very unique Chamber of Commerce. We helped
several federal programs. We have in our offices a small business
development center and we also have a PTAC, a procurement as-
sistance center and several other programs. The U.S. Department
of Transportation and we work with the Atlantic to create opportu-
nities for minority-owned companies to get access to fair con-
tracting, really.
So what I was talking about, Representative Newman, is we
need to implement the level playing field. So if minority companies,
actually, are there to grow, the object of the program is for them

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to become primes eventually. And the way the program is set up
right now, they will never become primes because after they grad-
uate after 2 years, they don’t qualify to be DBEs and so on and so
forth.
If they make too much money, they are kicked out of the pro-
gram. So the objective here is to make sure they become primes.
And after they become primes, obviously, the wealth goes up. So
that is what I was talking about.
Ms. NEWMAN. Great. And one other question before I let you
go. So I know that, you know, the lack of labor is affecting every-
body and there is a bunch of different reasons for that whether it
is childcare or they are working with an illness in their family or
whatever it might be, do you have any immediate solutions for our
small businesses that are looking for labor that the chamber has
had success with or other programs that you know are helping
bridge that gap in matching unemployed with small businesses?
Mr. DI PAULO. Thank you, Representative Newman. That is a
great question. The word of the day is labor force. What did the
labor force went? And the several indicators that address that
issue. One of them is the federal benefits that just ended. So some
States that is a good thing now. We are going to see an influx of
laborers coming back to the workforce, but especially in the service
industry, people went out and got other jobs. The manufacturing,
construction, those two industries are booming. So that is where
the labor force went usually, especially in the minority commu-
nities.
So what we see now is restaurants in commerce adjusting to
those schedules and we see, for example, in Illinois, as you may
know, restaurants, for example, they were open three shifts; now
they are adjusting to open up two shifts and hoping they can bring
some more laborers coming in to work. So we going through the ad-
justment period.
We are going to see labor improvement pretty soon in the next
couple months once the economy and everybody else is back to the
workforce 100 percent.
Ms. NEWMAN. Well, thank you so much, Jaime, and I really ap-
preciate your thoughts and comments today.
And I yield back, Chair.
Mr. PHILLIPS. All right. Thank you. Now it is my pleasure to
recognize Ms. Van Duyne for 5 minutes.
Ms. VAN DUYNE. Thank you very much, Chairman. Thank you.
By the way, Mr. Owens, I understand you are from Rome, New
York. I lived there for 4 years. My dad was in the Griffiths Air
Force Base. So I read all about you. I have actually been to your
facility before. We actually have some of your products. So I love
the small businesses upstate New York around the country.
Ms. Shaw, thank you for joining us again. Look, I appreciate all
that you have done. I love that story that you told about, you know,
opening up your conference room and having kids come in so that
your workers would feel comfortable, they would be able to keep
their eye on the kids, make sure they are going to school. It is
those types of things that I saw around our district, around our
communities that really helped, I think, you know, working fami-
lies be able to achieve success in the last 18 months.

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In your testimony, you thought that North Texas faired better
than most during the pandemic. Can you elaborate a little bit on
maybe that success?
Ms. SHAW. Certainly.
Well, for one thing, we didn’t shut down like so many—excuse
me—of the other States around the country did. I feel like we fared
better because of that. And, because of the fact that we did not
shut down, there were people moving here constantly.
I am in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and the growth in our area
has just exploded, and so those people coming in, buying homes,
paying into the community, paying taxes into the community, and
buying services and goods, all of those really helped to keep the
north Texas area vibrant in a time that—that many businesses
were still struggling, of course, but I feel like we fared better than
other parts of the country in many ways.
Ms. VAN DUYNE. So this administration and the majority con-
tinue to pose several tax increases that will undoubtedly affect
small businesses. We have a Small Business Administration who
did not see the tax hikes at all—that tax hikes are affecting small
businesses. You know, coming off an almost two-year pandemic,
can you talk about how tax increases on your small business would
affect you and other businesses?
Ms. SHAW. I don’t see how it can not hurt the small businesses.
Increased taxes mean we won’t be able to give our employees raises
that we would like to. It means we can’t maybe do maintenance
that needs to be done sometimes to the building and your facilities.
It keeps us from hiring additional employees, and it hinders our
ability to do upgrades to computer equipment and some of the
other things that it takes to keep a business running as it should.
I don’t know how it would not hurt us. I can’t find a reason.
Ms. VAN DUYNE. Okay. Thank you.
So, in your role as the Chair of the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Cham-
ber of Commerce board, have you seen labor shortages or heard
from chamber members who are struggling to find workers, and
what are you hearing that led to these storages, and how have
businesses responded to them?
Ms. SHAW. Absolutely.
I believe every single business that I am aware of from the small
mom-and-pop businesses to our local hospitals to the airport, DFW
Airport, to our waste management, they all have shortages. They
all are looking for qualified people. Republic Waste Management,
they have started their own training school.
So they are all trying to find ways to participate in that job mar-
ket. You know, they are trying to find the people. The government
checks, I think they were way too much and went on for way too
long, and it took the incentive away from people to go back to work.
They became too comfortable staying at home. And then, whenever
they could make more money staying at home than coming back
out to work, when they go back to work, it is gas, it is money for
lunch, it is money for childcare.
And so, when everybody—they were being paid more to stay at
home, then our businesses that were opening up, as they were
opening up, our essential businesses, such as our first responders
and our hospitals losing those people, that is not the same people

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that are working in minimum-wage jobs. These are people from the
minimum-wage jobs all the way up to our hospitals that are strug-
gling.
For the Chamber of Commerce, we worked tirelessly to try to
work with our Members. We—actually, we have a business expo
coming up, and we have incorporated a job fair into that. So we
have worked with all three cities in Hurst, Euless, and Bedford,
and we will be putting signs out trying to really get more commu-
nity involvement and trying to let the people that are searching for
a job or ready to get back in the workforce, we are trying to intro-
duce them and put them together with the local business owners.
So we are hoping that our job fair will go well, and so, you know,
we are just trying to do anything that we can to help support our
local businesses.
Ms. VAN DUYNE. Excellent. I see my time has expired. Thank
you very much.
I yield back.
Ms. SHAW. Thank you.
Mr. PHILLIPS. All right. Forgive me.
And now it is my pleasure to recognize Ms. Houlahan for 5 min-
utes.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you again, Mr. Fox, for joining us today, for the op-
portunity to kind of share a little bit about your experience in
terms of live venues, in terms of the people who are from industries
like yours who were the very first to have to close and who will
still be the very first to experience being able to get back to some
sense of normalcy. I am very, very grateful to you for the narrative
that you can share with us and the experience that you can share
with us.
And, particularly for this part of the country, for the middle,
mid-Atlantic of the country, our experience is very different than
other parts of the country’s experience were, and we did have to
do a lot of things very differently in our part of the country so that
we could protect, frankly, other parts of the country from experi-
encing what it is that we have experienced over the last 18 months.
And so, for that, I really want to pay tribute to you for having done
the right thing in keeping people safe and healthy in their homes.
So, with that, I would love to know if you could share with me
what we can do from this point on. You mentioned your concern
with the delta variant. I have concerns, too. I don’t believe that we
are necessarily out of the woods here and that people still, I think,
are a little bit reticent to come out and participate in live events.
What can we be doing to be helpful to continue to bring people
around to your businesses?
Mr. FOX. Representative Houlahan, thank you very much for the
question. And, again, thank you for the honor to be speaking to all
of you today.
So I have been listening to all the testimony. I am surprised by
some of the things I heard, not surprised by some others. Your
question is a good one, and I am going to say a word that I don’t
think I have ever heard said yet today: Immunization. That is what
we need to do. I know it is a political topic, and I don’t want to
get into politics.

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But, for my industry, that is the difference maker. And I think
that is what will ultimately lead us out of the delta surge or any
other surge that we are going to have in pandemic, is immuniza-
tion. Herd immunity, whatever you want to call is going to be as
the result of that. But, until we get more people immunized, we are
going to have this battle in my business and in any other business
that is asking the public to come, because the public is a diverse
group, and it is a group of younger people who feel that they don’t
need the vaccine or older people who won’t dare go anywhere with-
out a mask or a vaccine, and a lot of people in between.
And people who go to movies represent every walk of life, every
socioeconomic group, and we would like them to gather together to
have fun, to enjoy, to take some time out, to eat, drink, and recline,
like we have in the front of our theatre.
And, without, you know, the vaccine, it is not going to—it is not
going to work, and so we just need more vaccination, and that is
the difference maker for us.
I do want to shout out two things that I did hear from two of
the other testifiers, Mr. Owens and Mr. Di Paulo. I loved what you
both said about how to address some of the labor issues. I think
immigration is a tough topic. We have huge labor challenges in our
industry for a lot of reasons—a lot of reasons that Mr. Di Paulo
spoke about.
And I think what the—what the pandemic has shown us is that
the federal government can act and act quickly with great focus,
not without problems, bureaucratic problems, but it can work. And
I applaud what you have all done, Members of this Committee and
Congress, to—to not just save our industry, but to save American
industry. You have done an amazing job, and I am very proud of
the federal government and what it has done.
Ms. HOULAHAN. Thank you. And I think you are right. I have
been listening to the testimony all day, and I haven’t—you are
right—heard immunization as an answer, and I think that it is
really, really important.
One of the things I am really proud about Pennsylvania’s Sixth
for is, for a certain amount of time, we were leading the nation in
terms of vaccination rates, literally the county in the country that
was most vaccinated.
And what is really, really cool about parts of our community is
that we are 40 percent Democrat, 40 percent Republican, and 20
percent Independent, and we collectively believe that immunization
is the way that we can find our way out of this. And so, for that,
I am appreciative.
With my last 45 seconds, if you can give one piece of advice—
I am an entrepreneur to another entrepreneur—to our entre-
preneurs out there about having the stomach to be able to be an
entrepreneur, what would be your seasoned experience that you
can share with the rest of us on that?
Mr. FOX. You know, don’t—you don’t get a lot of sleep as an en-
trepreneur. You wake up thinking about the—your customers and
the people who work for you and all the challenges that are out
there, so just keep yourself in good shape, eat healthy, and, you
know, believe in the people who work for you, because they are ex-
traordinary. And treat your customers like kings, because they are.

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And, without customers, you have no business. Without employees,
you have no business. And, in my business, without movies, we
have no business. So those are our big three.
Thanks.
Ms. HOULAHAN. And, with that, we have run out of time. I
thank you so much.
And I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you, Ms. Houlahan.
And now I yield to Ms. Young Kim for 5 minutes of questioning.
Ms. YOUNG KIM. Thank you, Chairman. And I want to thank
our Committee Chair and Ranking Member for holding this impor-
tant hearing. And I am delighted to participate and honor our
small business owners from our respective districts during this Na-
tional Small Business Week.
In my mind, every week should be National Small Business
Week to honor the great work our entrepreneurs do in creating jobs
and being the engine of our middle class and mainstream stream
economy.
Small businesses have already suffered through one of the worst
economic crises and market disruptions in our nation’s history be-
cause of that COVID-19 pandemic.
But fortunately our country came together in a bipartisan way
to provide immediate relief for struggling small businesses through
programs like PPP, and gave entrepreneurs like my witness, Mr.
Cook, and many others that testified today to keep their capital
and keep their businesses open and retain employees during the
pandemic.
And, once again, in the 117th Congress, we showcased once again
what we can achieve in a bipartisan fashion by passing that PPP
Extension Act that allowed additional 2.7 million loans for $54 bil-
lion total in aid. So I am really glad that our witnesses took advan-
tage of those PPP loans and were able to use it to keep your busi-
ness open.
So, with that, I would like to ask Mr. Cook, you know, we are
all struggling, but you weathered through the difficult times, and
you are now successful. So I want to thank you for being the job
creator. But I see that you started your career in industrial engi-
neering.
So can you explain to the Committee what made you change
course in your career and establish your own business and take on
this risk of becoming an entrepreneur?
And, in your time as an entrepreneur, how would you compare
this COVID-19 pandemic with other economic downturns?
Mr. COOK. Thank you, Representative Kim, and thanks to all of
you for the opportunity to be a part of this morning of sharing our
stories.
How I ended up switching from industrial engineering to owning
our own business is kind of a long story. In 1971, in El Monte,
California, my parents bought a Taco Bell franchise, so I grew up
all through high school and through college, small family business,
and you all know the story—working tirelessly and being involved
in the day-to-day operations of getting by.
Then went through school and had an engineering degree, and
I did work for different corporations for 16 to 18 years. And, al-

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though it was good, there was always a part of me that missed the
day-to-day life of owning your own business. And, in general, in my
opinion, life is relationships. It is relationships at every level, with
people, with God, with ourselves, with others.
And I just found that, when you own your own business and you
are in the—kind of into the fray every day with folks, those are
deep. And so——
Ms. YOUNG KIM. Yeah.
Mr. COOK.—we were able to purchase a few more Taco Bells in
1996, and then, in 2001, had the opportunity to get involved with
Avalon. And so that—just kind of the way I was wired led me more
toward having my own business and giving own shot.
With regard to how it has compared, the tough part, I am sure
all of you can relate to. This downturn was so fast and so sudden,
and to have to make decisions on the fly so quickly compared to,
say, the 2008, 2009 recession where you kind of saw it coming and
there was a gradual slope to it, that was really tough.
But, again, I just reiterate what everyone said. Thank you to all
of you at the federal level that were able to provide us with funds.
It was a life-saving box for us, so thank you.
Ms. YOUNG KIM. Sure. Thank you for sharing your story.
Now, as you continue to operate your business, I know there is
a lot of the policies that affect your operations. So can you share
with us how the increase in inflation and price of goods and the
supply chain disruptions are impacting your business operations?
Mr. COOK. You know, again, as everyone else has said and as
just Econ 101 is, as our costs go up, we have to change our prices.
And, especially when you are small, that is—that is a tough exer-
cise to do repeatedly and to do often.
So that is—it has been hard, and we don’t want to drive away
customers in trying to stay competitive. So the inflation is high.
But, on the supply chain disruption is every day as we show up,
we don’t have something. So it has been tough on productivity. It
has been tough on offering our customers the best products we can,
and has just made what is already a tough business—any business
is tough, but what has made an already tough business has just
added a whole layer of complexity on it that has made it tougher
as well.
But thankfully we have been able to weather it, and we look for-
ward to what lies ahead.
And just want to reiterate, too, with Mr. Owens’ idea on immi-
gration, I appreciate you sharing that thought, that we are for the
immigrant. We are a nation of immigrants, and I know it is a very,
very complex issue, but we encourage you to do whatever you can
to make it fair and just for folks to come here and pursue whatever
they feel they would like to.
Thank you.
Ms. YOUNG KIM. Sure. Thank you so much for your testimony.
And, from one immigrant to another, I am here to live the Amer-
ican Dream because of the opportunities that this country provided
for me and my family. And thank you for mentioning the impor-
tance of welcoming immigrants to this country who wants to also
live that American Dream.

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So thank you, all of you, for your hard work and for weathering
through the difficult times. And we are here to be your small busi-
ness advocate.
Thanks again for joining us. I see that my time is up. Thank you
so much.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you to my friend from California.
In fact, no more beautiful words could be uttered to close this
hearing. And I want to thank you all, all of our witnesses, for join-
ing us. You have been heard. We have your backs and, rest as-
sured, despite what you all see on TV screens at night, we are uni-
fied on Small Business Committee to supporting you.
Many of us are business owners ourselves, and your testimony
hits home to us, and we want to thank you.
So, with that, I must ask that you log out of the platform now.
If you want to continue watching for a few more moments on You
Tube live stream, please feel free to do so.
But, most importantly, heartfelt gratitude. Keep the faith, and
hang in there. We are going to be helping you out. Promise.
Thanks, everybody.
And, with that, we will now close the hearing, but just some brief
comments first.
You know, hearing from our main street champions during such
a difficult time in our nation’s history, especially for the business
community, is touching, inspirational, and reminds us of why we
must unify behind support for small businesses. I believe represen-
tation begins with listening. That is what we have done here today
on a bipartisan basis.
And, on that note, just in the last week here in my district, Rep-
resentative Angie Craig, my colleague here from Minnesota, and I
hosted a roundtable. And, just yesterday, Representative Van
Duyne from Texas came up to Minnesota, and we also had a listen-
ing session with small businesses, hearing many of the same things
that were shared today.
I think it is important for Members of Congress on a bipartisan
basis to sit together and listen together to the issues that are fac-
ing so many in our country.
I think right now about Christine Lantinen, the owner of Maud
Borup, which is one of the oldest candy makers here in Minnesota.
She talked yesterday about being 100 employees short right now,
paying for shipping containers from Asia that had been $3,000 per
40-foot container that are now $25,000, if you can even get one.
We know how tough it is. We know how inflation impacts you.
We know how labor crunches impact you. We also want to ensure
that your tax dollars are well used, just like all of us, of course.
We are unified to that end.
So I ask that you all keep the faith, you keep in touch with us.
I think it is integral, imperative that we continue to fulfill our mis-
sion to provide support to small businesses. During COVID, where
some of the funds have been distributed, in my estimation, many
of our estimation, in an inequitable fashion, we can and must rec-
tify that. And we have to ensure that capital provision is available
to entrepreneurs in this country.
Moments ago, stories were told of immigrants coming to this
country with big dreams, and that is exactly what the United

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States is all about. And, to the extent that we can ensure that
there is access to capital so that those dreams can be pursued, we
must do so, and do so fast.
So, with that, I want to thank all of our witnesses for joining us
today, and I would ask for unanimous consent that Members have
5 legislative days to submit their statements and supporting mate-
rials for the record.
And, without objection, so ordered.
And so, if there is no further business to come before the Com-
mittee, I do not have a gavel, but I have a pen, and we are ad-
journed.
Thanks, everybody.
[Whereupon, at 2:19 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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APPENDIX

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File and source

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Our copy: chrg-117hhrg45479.pdf
Original: www.govinfo.gov