New yr, similar pandemic, and Luis Patiño is doing what he can. Which is all the things he can.

“I’m super-grateful that I’m able to get up each single day and do what I really like — reducing greens and washing dishes,” mentioned Patiño, who owns Café Racer Kitchen in Minneapolis.

Like so many small-business individuals,

tailored to the rolling catastrophes of 2020. He modified his enterprise mannequin, he innovated, he utilized for each grant and grabbed at each lifeline his group tossed him. He had hire to pay, he had payroll to satisfy, he had meals to place in your desk. He had greens to cut.

“The quantity of greens I’ve to chop is the hope I’ve,” Patiño mentioned. “I hope that I promote this a lot meals. I hope that I can put out this a lot product.”

As COVID-19 endangered his employees, his clients and the enterprise he’d constructed up from a meals truck, Patiño tried all the things. He lined up a contract to make faculty lunches for native constitution colleges; he shifted his enterprise to carryout; he supplied heat-and-eat meals so individuals may fill their ovens with pulled pork, arepas or candy fried plantains. The consolation meals of Patiño’s native Colombia, comforting his hometown of Minneapolis.

When Hennepin County threw him a lifeline, he grabbed it. Since Could, the county has given out greater than $46 million in grants — backed by CARES Act {dollars} and state pandemic reduction funds — to assist greater than 4,600 small companies and nonprofits harm by the shutdowns, recession and unrest of the previous yr. Final week, the county started sifting by means of 3,700 functions for a fifth spherical of small-business assist.

Almost half the county’s assist to this point has gone to minority-owned companies. It was a aware resolution by a group with a obtrusive racial wealth gap — and an ugly history of discrimination, racial covenants and ramming highways by means of Black business districts.

Solely 10% of Hennepin County’s companies are minority-owned. Hennepin County was going to save lots of as many because it may.

“The pandemic is already disproportionately affecting communities of shade from a well being perspective,” mentioned Patricia Fitzgerald, group and financial growth supervisor for Hennepin County Housing and Financial Growth. “We wanted to be extraordinarily intentional to ensure these reduction funds can be focused equitably.”

There are small-business reduction applications like this on the federal, state and native ranges, and all of it helps. Purchasing regionally helps. Ordering a meal helps. Sporting a masks. Shopping for a present card.

Each enterprise you save saves others. Eating places, gyms, arts organizations, dry cleaners. These grants helped mom-and-pop outlets pay landlords, pay employees, pay distributors, hold the lights on.

Most small companies have sufficient money reserves to hold them for about two weeks. Minnesota’s first pandemic shutdown order was 43 weeks in the past. Companies shut down and scaled again to save lots of the group. The group owes them.

“Small companies are the spine of our financial system,” Fitzgerald mentioned. “Ninety-six p.c of Hennepin County companies have fewer than 100 staff.”

Because the group gave to Café Racer, Patiño gave again. The restaurant has a longstanding custom of providing free meals to anybody who wants one. Within the pandemic, the restaurant’s Breaking Bread program reworked right into a meals-on-wheels operation, with volunteers delivering to these in want.

He misses the times when he may provide free plates in his restaurant — free to somebody hungry and in want, and free to the client subsequent to them, to allow them to share a meal collectively. Getting Minnesotans to simply accept a free meal was all the time robust, Patiño discovered. This can be a place the place individuals minimize the final brownie into smaller and smaller items, simply so there’s one thing left if somebody hungrier comes alongside.

“Minnesotans suppose they’re taking it from another person,” Patiño mentioned. “When in actuality, what I want you to do is simply sit there and simply break bread with one other individual. It is not a present of a free meal. The present is simply taking commerce out of it.”

The pandemic took shared meals in crowded eating places away from us. However we have not misplaced what issues most.

“The issues that matter are your loved ones and pals and sharing meals with them,” mentioned Patiño. “Something extra difficult than that, you’ve gotten made it up.”

Again at Café Racer, Patiño cuts his greens in the beginning of every workday, and hopes for soiled dishes on the finish.

“The dishes characterize the precise completion of with the ability to present meals for my group. Good, wholesome, nourishing meals,” he mentioned. “How fortunate we’re to serve the aim that we serve.”

For extra details about Café Racer and its Breaking Bread free meal program, visitcaferacermn.com.

jennifer.brooks@startribune.com • 612-673-4008

Comply with Jennifer on Twitter: @stribrooks