It's Hispanic Heritage Month.
Sites like Yelp and Nextdoor are encouraging people to support Hispanic-owned businesses in their communities.
This week, Yelp launched a tag that allows businesses to mark themselves as Latinx-owned.
Nextdoor is teaming up with the group We Are All Human to provide resources to Hispanic-owned small businesses. They'll also provide free advertising during the month.
The U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce represents more than 4 million Hispanic-owned businesses. It says Latino business owners have been hit particularly hard during the pandemic and need support.
Many have limited relationships with banks and are in neighborhoods considered “challenging” to lend to. Many were left out of the Paycheck Protection Program.
“In round one, we saw many Latino-owned businesses were really largely left out of those opportunities,” said Ramiro Cavazos, President of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “Half of our businesses have banking relationships. If you did not have a bank relationship, many of them were shut out.”
On average, Hispanic-owned businesses only have about 27 days’ worth of capital reserved. A quarter of them have had to close, at least temporarily, since the pandemic began.
“Our Latino-owned businesses provide jobs for our community,” said Cavazos. “They also pay taxes and make investments in their community. And these businesses really are the lifeblood of consumer spending."
According to a study by Stanford University, Latino-owned businesses contributed $500 billion to the U.S. economy in the past decade.