The partial shutdown of the federal government isn’t just affecting government services in the Charlotte area. It’s also affecting beer and pizza.
Before beer gets to stores or in bars, the federal government must approve the labels on bottles and kegs. With most of the government shutdown, that’s not happening. Todd Ford of Charlotte’s NodDa Brewing Company says thankfully most of the labels for his beer to come out this fall were approved before the shutdown. But he’s worried about the winter.
“A soon as the government starts operating again, they’re going to have a backlog of label approvals to do,” Ford says. “And that’ll probably be about the time we start submitting additional approvals.”
Ford says he’s nervous the typical 30 to 45 days it takes to get a beer label approved might stretch out to several months.
In Fort Mill, Kosta Doulaveris is pushing ahead with the opening of a new Empire Pizza location on Monday. He has two other locations in Rock Hill. Just how long the new location with its 20 employees can stay open is up in the air. Doulaveris says he was counting on a loan from the Small Business Administration to pay some of his expenses. But the SBA has furloughed employees.
“I have to come out of pocket for the first month’s rent, which I wasn’t planning on,” Doulaveris says. “That was going to come out of the loan. As we go, I’m going to have to come out of pocket more and more until the loan comes through.”
Doulaveris says he missed getting the final paperwork approved for the SBA loan by only about a day before the shut down.
