Michigan hotel, restaurant workers flood website for $500 offer, crash system

On Monday morning the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association announced the launch of an employee relief fund through its foundation that would grant laid off hospitality workers $500 each if they met some basic criteria.

By Tuesday morning, the fund had been shut down after receiving an overwhelming amount of applications in the intervening 24 hours that at times crashed the website.

The demand supports the MRLA's projection that some 300,000 hospitality employees in the state will be laid off or furloughed as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

"We’ve never seen anywhere near the kind of demand that the website was exposed to," said MRLA President and CEO Justin Winslow. "And so we did experience some technical difficulties, but not before an awful large number of applications came in.”

Winslow said the association received just shy of 4,000 applications in the day the portal was live, which translates to roughly $2 million in potential grants, well over the $250,000 nest egg the MRLA's foundation was able to put together for the relief fund.

"It just demonstrates the need and how completely decimated the industry has become," he said. "People are looking for every and any bit possible of support right now.  And frankly I know we can’t be the single vessel that supports the industry and we knew that from the start ... but we’re just trying to do our part.”

Michael Gray, a 20-year restaurant veteran who was laid off from his job as director of operations at Detroit City Distillery, said he tried to apply to the fund on behalf of his wife, who lost her job as a server at Pop's For Italian in Ferndale. He had no luck.

"Income is a little bit limited and we knew that unemployment wouldn’t yield a large return for her, so I figured it’d be wise to fill out the information for her," Gray said. "On the first day that the website opened up it was already overwhelmed. I never got through."

Gray came back to the portal the next day, by which point the website announced the fund had been closed to new applications.

“Both times I just basically got a message that said: game over," he said.

Courtney Burk, the food and beverage director for the bar at the Apparatus Room in Detroit, had better luck with the portal.

"I think I did it right in the morning and I navigated it pretty quickly," Burk said. "But once it started getting passed around in our circles, within probably two hours I had at least 15 bartenders tell me that the site crashed or they weren’t able to apply."

She said she's hopeful she'll receive the grant, because her unemployment insurance is complicated. (She had already put in her notice at Apparatus Room when COVID-19 hit but hadn't yet started her new job at the Detroit Beer Exchange.)

It's not a lot of money, but it's enough to make a difference, she said.

“For us it would be huge for groceries at least for the next two months," Burk said. "That would allow us to pay all our bills and then to have that extra to get groceries. And the big thing is when we buy groceries we by them from our neighbors who are restaurants selling stuff."

But successfully submitting an application does not guarantee a grant. For starters, applicants must be able to prove they were working in the industry on March 10, when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency, and proof of a furlough or layoff as a result.

Once those criteria are met, the grants will be doled out on a first-come, first-served basis until the fund is depleted. That means only 500 of the 4,000 successful applicants can actually expect a check.

"The application review process has already begun," Winslow said. "We’re hopeful to get checks out the door in less than a week’s time."

Winslow said the MRLA is working on raising additional funds and hopes to re-open the employee relief fund in the future.

Until then, the public can make a tax-deductible donation to help grow the fund at mrlaef.org/about/donate.html.

"If you are in a position to help and you feel the need is out there but don’t know how to help, this is a pretty easy avenue to do so and have a tax deduction at the same time," Winslow said.

Send your dining tips to Free Press Restaurant Critic Mark Kurlyandchik at 313-222-5026 ormkurlyandc@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @MKurlyandchik and Instagram @curlyhandshake. Read more restaurant news and reviews and sign up for our Food and Dining newsletter.