Rep. Kilmer Speaks with Hama Hama Oysters About their Paycheck Protection Program

Hey everybody. Derek Kilmer here I am here today with Lissa Monberg who is one of my favorite proprietors of deliciousness in Washingtons Sixth Congressional District. Lissa is with Hama Hama and maybe just start off with let's tell folks about what Hama Hama is. Yeah, we are an oyster and tree farm on the peninsula Pretty classic Mason County industry. We got our, We're now in our fifth generation of family management, so we got our start - started moving out here in the eighteen nineties and start our tree farm in the nineteen twenties got into oysters in the nineteen fifties and I've just been just been loving living here and learning from the land and trying to invest in our community as best we can kind of ever since then. I know you're in an industry that frankly we started hearing from even before we started seeing cases diagnosed in the state of Washington because a lot of shellfish gets exported to China to Asia and we were starting to hear about ports being shut down even before cases got diagnosed, you know. since then we've seen even more disruption to our economy and a lot of my focus has been making sure we're helping our local employers and areas urban rural suburban and otherwise one of the big ways in which assistance is currently being provided is through that paycheck protection program and I know that that you and the Hama Hama team have applied for that. Maybe just talk about why you did that and what your experience was. Yeah we had our application ready on April third so right when the program opened and I'm gonna thank my sister-in-law who's our President for that cuz she was. She really worked hard on that and we saw it as a crucial opportunity to keep our people employed and make up some of the losses we were anticipating to see at the end of March, the we're we're not much of a wholesaler so I mean to me we don't really sell much internationally, but we what we were wholesale a whole lot, so we weren't impacted in the kind of the early moments when it was really hitting China, I didn't really impact us, although it certainly did others in the industry. But when the restaurants shut down, that's when it really impacted our business because 80 to 90 percent of our sales were to restaurants. so we were totally scrambling and and we're really really grateful for for this lifeline. just to kinda you know, keep our people around those those who wanted to stay. So what's it meant in terms of your business? Is it meant being able to keep people on the payroll? Yep totally we you know we kind of pivoted to focus on our retail store, which is open as a grocery store and then also to our online store, which thankfully we had an online store up and running, but it was a very small part of our business and so the ability to keep people - also in the customer service realm for the online store just because you know you're kinda oysters and the hard way because you're shipping them in really tiny increments to people's houses instead of putting them on on a pallet and shifting into a restaurant so allowed us to pivot our or some of our workforce and and maybe working remotely but doing something that a job that haven't existed in the company prior to this, but also let us pay hazard pay for those people who are showing up and selling stuff out of the retail store, which has been amazing Just because you know as you know retail employees tend to be some of the lowest paid employees in this country and they're here on the front lines interacting with the public. so I felt really good to us as well. To take care of your workers. Thanks for doing that. Yeah, the part of the reason that we're doing a video like this is to sort of demystify the process of application and make sure people know about this resource. Obviously it's hard for our local employers to use resources they don't know about or might be sort of intimidated by the process any any lessons of going through the process that you wanna share? Yeah, we're really we just we wanna give a a shout out to the Washington Contract Loggers Association because they run a credit union that we bank with and made the process really amazing for us because there there has been a lot of changes a lot of uncertainty. I think that's the Nature of this unknown disease, the just the era we live in is uncertainty, but they've been really communicative and that's kind of helped us through this process. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, you know certainly you've seen bipartisan support for this this program. We've got a bill that I'm a lead sponsor of to kinda put it on on steroids to get more funds into the program and to extend the payback period for small businesses. We're really seeing ideas like that pick up some steam and we're also pushing a bill called the Restore America's Main Street Act to get those those really smaller businesses able to keep their employees on the payroll and keep the lights on so we're pushing for that. I also know you know how impacted our shellfish growers have been. Part of our outreach has been focused on things like you know having the Department of Agriculture purchased some of the harvested and processed seafood in this in this company and this excuse me in this country and help provide food to Americans who might be hungry right now who are increasingly showing up at our our food banks and in need of nutrition assistance. so we're working on that as well in hopes that it can be a win-win, both providing seafood to to folks who are hungry and also providing some market opportunities at a time where you're industries impacted negatively. Yeah well. Thank you. We really appreciate that. I think I can speak for the entire shellfish industry and just say that we're really proud of the food that we grow and we're proud to do where we do it. You know we're rural businesses kind of in our very nature and and we want people to eat this delicious and really healthy and really sustainable food. So thank you awesome. Lissa. Thank you for being with us. Thank you to Hama Hama for being responsible stewards and employers in Washington Sixth Congressional District and for having amazing deliciousness every time I drive by! Thank you, Congressman Kilmer. You bet.