Hawaii has just launched a program to put millions of dollars in cash in the hands of state residents to spend on local dining. Guam's similarly struggling restaurant could certainly benefit from such a program, and local officials may already be working on it.

The Aloha State on Saturday sent out more than 100,000 debit cards loaded with $500 for use in local eateries. Gwen Yamamoto Lau is the administrator of the Hawai'i Restaurant Card Program, and told KUAM News, "The primary purpose of this program is to inject $75 million into our very struggling restaurant industry and the entire food supply chain. And when the state was looking at how we might deploy the funds, it could've been done in a number of ways.

"However, we wanted to impact as many people as possible so we decided to deploy the funds through our displaced workers."

The state government set aside cares act money for this latest economic stimulus program, and so only those who are unemployed because of the pandemic are eligible.

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Meanwhile, Guam governor Lou Leon Guerrero said at a news conference last Thursday that she was to meet soon with officials from the chamber and the Guam Women's Chamber of Commerce about the possibility of a similar program for the territory.

"There's some idea about working with the Guam Hotel & Restaurant Association to provide some grant to individuals. It can be in the form of coupons, it can be in other forms, but definitely the concept there is to help stimulate the economy by providing some means of cash to individuals so that they can go and spend those in their various restaurants and so forth," said Leon Guerrero.

Sarah Nguyen is the owner of Pizza Press, and a director of the Hawaii Restaurant Association. She says the pandemic closures have been brutal on her business, saying, "The second shutdown it was back again, same thing, we got back to maybe half and so it was pretty scary, and as far as with the support, it couldn't have come at a better time."

You can catch the full interviews on the Hawaii Restaurant Card program on Wednesday's episode of "In Full Zoom."