Hi, I'm Dan Pramak and welcome to Axios Recap. Today is Monday, July 20th. The NASDAQ is up, air travel is down for the first time since April, and we're focused on the future of restaurants.

Today, the U.S. Senate will begin buckling down on the next federal stimulus.

You might recall that the original stimulus from April totaled around $2 trillion, but a whole

lot of that was predicated on a belief that we'd soon get a handle on the coronavirus.

Sadly, we blew it, which means all sorts of businesses are facing dire situations once again.

And perhaps no sector has been hit harder than independent non-chain restaurants.

There's about half a million of them in the U.S., with one report estimating that 85% could go under

by year end if they don't soon get direct aid.

The question now is if that sort of direct aid will be included in the new stimulus bill.

One template for it could be something called the Restaurants Act, a $120 billion bipartisan bill introduced within both

houses of Congress last month, but which has since languished. It's specifically targeted

at independent restaurants that suffered year-over-year losses in 2020 and specifically

prioritizes those with $1. million dollars or less in annual revenue.

So let's dig in deeper to the state of independent restaurants with two people who have been

actively working to push the restaurants act into law. Ivy Mix, a renowned bartender who co-own

bartender who co-owns Leyenda in Brooklyn, and Steven Soderberg, the Oscar-winning film director who owns Spirit

brand, Singani 63.

We're joined now by Steven Soderberg and Ivy Mix. Ivy, let me start with you. Could you

give me a sense on how the last couple of months have gone for your business. Are you open?

Well, kind of. We were completely shut down for about six weeks. And now in New York City,

we are able to do outdoor dining socially distance. So we're kind of open. Stephen, before we came on,

you were talking about how you just lost a couple accounts for your liquor brand.

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