HELP SAVE Mr. Gus, Ristorante

Hello, my name is Michael Passineau. This story begins when my good friend, Dimitri Polizos, was goimg to close this loved local establishment,  Mr. Gus' Ristorante. I had previous worked for Dimitri, and when he told me he was going to close the the doors, I was shocked. I wanted to save this restaurant from being closed. I asked about purchasing the business. He was excited and was looking forward to helping me learn all the ins and outs of the restaurant. The closing was scheduled for March 29, 2019. Sadly that was two to late, my friend would pass away from a heartattack, on March 27, 2019. I was fortunate the the family wanted to honor Dimitri's wishes for the restaurant, and I ran the restaurant for for the family, until we could close and transition owner ship on October 1, 2019.

During this time I was also working full time, and my wife had kidney failure in 2018 and was on dialysis. We were so blessed to have people offer to donate a kidney to Jennifer. But it was her friend Rhonda from her college days at Auburn, that was a perfect match, so on October 10, 2019, her transplant was done. Both are do very well, with no rejection or donor issues. This kept me running from Montgomery, AL to Birmingham, AL to see her and be there for her, during the 30 recovery. We get her home and things are well, she is healing and no rejection or major issues. Now, we get to January. My friend and business partner in another endeavor that was providing me insurance and a salary while we really learned the restaurant, passes away suddenly on January 7, 2020. Leaving me without a steady income and health insurance.

In mid-march, the Covid-19 pandemic forces to only do take-out by government mandate and causing a drastic decrease in revenue. It is November of 2020, before business starts to really come back in the door, and sales increase. While we are open for dine in, it was at reduced capacity of 50%. It was not until February or March that we would be allowed to get back to 100% capacity, with some additional cost to modify booths, and add dividers. While sales were increasing, the cost food and supplies was increasing and continues to do so. Of course, the labor shortage also takes me away from maintaining accounting on a regular basis and the back office things, due to having to spend long hours working in the kitchen. There were 20 plus employees, between the kitchen and the servers employed, when all this started, and at our lowest we were down to about 8, I was very fortunate to get most of them back but lost some key people to other careers. The restaurant has a lot of high school and college students working their way through school.

The worst part is the debt, the debt at the end of March 2020 was only $10,000.00 ( Ten Thousand dollars), with the lost revenue came the need to borrow money, and now the debt is over $100,000.00. Please help save Mr. Gus', I want to be here for years to come to serve the the community wonderful Greek and Italian food.

Thank you,

Michael Passineau

#SmallBusinessRelief