Restaurant Grants and Funding for Independent Restaurants 2026

132 US funding programs reach restaurants and food businesses — and 18 open grants

This slice is 132 of the 736 programs in the GrantCompass catalog, computed on August 28, 2026. 114 of them list Food & Beverage as an eligible industry outright; the remaining 18 arrive through a tag a restaurant cares about — commercial energy efficiency, equipment rebates, hospitality — and they matter precisely because they never advertise themselves to restaurants. 74 of the 132 have an open window today, 44 are closed, between intakes or discontinued, and 14 have no window at all because their next cycle has no published date; Section 45B, the most valuable item on this page, is permanently claimable with no application deadline, so it is counted among the 74. Every count below is computed from that catalog rather than collected from other funding lists.

Only 18 of the 74 open programs are grants — and 6 of the 18 are city building money

18 of the 74 open food-and-beverage programs are true grants. The other 56 break down as 23 support programs with no cash attached, 18 loans, 13 tax credits and 2 competitions. That ratio — 24% of what is open is a grant — is the single most useful number on this page, because the search term “restaurant grants” returns page after page that counts loans and advisory services as grants. Six of the 18 open grants are municipal storefront, facade or build-out programs: Chicago Neighborhood Opportunity Fund and INVEST South/West (both up to $250,000), Phoenix Business Grant ($25,000), Portland Repair/Restore ($10,000), SF Shines ($10,000) and Baltimore Facade Improvement ($5,000). City money for the building is what a restaurant can actually win today, and it is nobody’s idea of a headline. The dated row-by-row list of every open program lives on our companion page, restaurant and food business grants open now; this page owns the durable structure behind it.

Funding-type mix: 62 grants, but a third of them are USDA production money

Who runs restaurant funding: federal is the biggest layer, and almost none of it is a grant

48 of the 132 programs are federal, 36 private, 35 state, 11 municipal and 2 foundation-run. The federal layer is the largest by count and the least grant-like by content: it is 10 tax provisions, 12 SBA and USDA loan programs, 11 advisory networks such as the SBDC network and SCORE, and 13 USDA production grants aimed at farmers and processors. The 11 municipal programs are the smallest layer and, for a brick-and-mortar restaurant, the most winnable — they are geographically gated to a corridor or district, which cuts the applicant pool to businesses on a handful of streets.

72 of the 132 (55%) are available in all 50 states rather than gated to one state — almost all of the federal tax credits, SBA and USDA loan programs, and the national corporate grants such as Toast Changemakers and the DoorDash Restaurant Disaster Relief Fund.

Award sizes: 56% of published ceilings are under $100,000, and the biggest are loan guarantees

93 of the 132 programs publish a dollar ceiling. The median is $50,000 and 52 of the 93 — 56% — top out under $100,000, which is the honest range for an independent restaurant. The four ceilings above $10 million are not grants at anyone’s reading: the USDA Business & Industry Loan Guarantee ($25 million of guaranteed bank debt), the Next New Jersey Manufacturing Tax Credit ($150 million against a $10 million-plus capital investment), and two large state incentive packages. Reading a catalog maximum as an available award is the most common way restaurant funding lists mislead people, which is why the histogram below is drawn on published ceilings and says so.

Distribution of the 93 published ceilings in the 132-program slice. The 39 programs with no published ceiling are mostly percentage-based: tax credits stated as a rate, utility rebates stated per fixture, and cost-share programs stated as a share of the invoice.

Quick eligibility reference: 10 restaurant funding mechanisms at a glance

Ten mechanisms cover almost every dollar a US restaurant can realistically reach, and they differ far more in how you get them than in how much they pay. Three are entitlements — Section 45B, Section 179 expensing and the Section 44 disabled access credit — meaning you qualify by meeting the statute and claim on a form, with no application, no competition and no deadline beyond your tax return. Four are competitive applications you can lose. Two are loans you repay. One, the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, is an entitlement whose authorisation has lapsed. Sorting funding by that column rather than by dollar amount is the fastest way to stop wasting time: an entitlement worth $20,000 that you claim every year beats a $50,000 grant that 900 restaurants apply for.

The ten mechanisms, side by side

What this page includes, what it leaves out, and the rule that decides

The 132-program slice is a starting point, not a verdict, so this page applies one inclusion rule and states it: a program is linked here if a US restaurant, bar, cafe, bakery, food truck, caterer or small food producer could plausibly be the applicant and would recognize itself in the eligibility — either because the program names food businesses, because it is open to any small business and a restaurant realistically wins it, or because it pays for something a restaurant actually buys: equipment, energy, the storefront, staff training, accessibility work or working capital. 114 of the 132 — 86% — are linked below, grouped by what the money buys rather than by who funds it. A handful of those are linked as named counter-examples rather than recommendations, and the text says so where that is the case.

The 18 programs excluded, and why each group fails the rule

18 of the 132 are not linked anywhere on this page, and they are excluded on the record rather than quietly dropped. They fall into five groups. Export and trade finance — the SBA Export Working Capital Program, the SBA International Trade Loan and the ITA Market Development Cooperator Program — which a dine-in restaurant cannot use, though a packaged producer reaches the two export programs named in the producer section. State research credits in Idaho, Nebraska and Wisconsin, which require qualified research expenditure a restaurant does not generate. Discontinued or superseded federal credits: the Section 48 energy ITC, the Section 30C alternative fuel refueling credit terminated for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, and the Empowerment Zone employment credit, which lapsed at the end of 2025. Discontinued state and private programs: Working Washington grants, the Montana SMART revolving loan and the FedEx Small Business Grant Contest. And programs written for a different applicant entirely: DOE’s Industrial Demonstrations Program at $30 million to $500 million a project, Georgia Quick Start and Idaho Business Advantage for relocating employers, the Texas Music Incubator rebate, SXSW Pitch, and USDA’s Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program, which lends through intermediaries rather than to businesses directly.

Four programs are linked but explicitly not recommended, because naming why a plausible-looking program fails is more useful than omitting it: the Georgia Job Tax Credit, South Carolina Jobs Tax Credit and Mississippi Jobs Tax Credit are job-creation credits written for traded-sector employers, and the Oregon Business Expansion Program requires 50 new jobs at 150% of the county average wage plus 150 existing US employees. Each appears in catalog searches for restaurant funding and none has a restaurant as its intended applicant.

How these numbers were computed

What happened to the Restaurant Revitalization Fund

What the Restaurant Revitalization Fund was, in the SBA’s own numbers

The Restaurant Revitalization Fund was created by the American Rescue Plan Act in March 2021 and funded with $28.6 billion, administered by the US Small Business Administration. It paid genuine grants — not loans, not forgivable debt — of up to $10 million per business and $5 million per physical location, sized to pandemic revenue loss, to restaurants, bars, breweries, bakeries, food trucks and caterers. In its closure announcement the SBA reported funding approximately 101,000 businesses out of more than 278,000 eligible applications requesting $72.2 billion. Demand exceeded the appropriation by roughly two and a half times, and about 64% of eligible applicants received nothing at all.

Why nothing replaced the RRF, and why replenishment keeps failing

Replenishment has been attempted and has failed every time. The House passed H.R. 3807, the Relief for Restaurants and Other Hard Hit Small Businesses Act, on April 7, 2022, which would have added roughly $42 billion to the fund; the Senate did not advance it in May 2022, and every subsequent replenishment bill has died the same way. The structural reason is that the RRF was pandemic relief authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act, not a standing SBA program with an annual appropriation line. Standing programs get renewed by default in appropriations; emergency programs have to be re-enacted from scratch, and the political window for pandemic relief closed in 2022. That distinction is worth internalizing, because it explains why the SBA cannot simply reopen the portal and why no agency has the authority to run a successor without new legislation.

What the RRF’s absence actually changed for restaurants

The RRF was, for one year, the only time a US restaurant could apply for six-figure federal grant money as a restaurant. Its disappearance did not shrink restaurant funding by a percentage — it removed the entire category. What is left is structurally different: permanent tax provisions the restaurant claims rather than wins, city and utility programs that pay for the building and its equipment, mission lenders that price risk differently from banks, and a small, oversubscribed set of corporate grants that open for a few weeks a year. None of them is a substitute at scale, and a 2026 capital plan built on the assumption that a restaurant-specific federal grant will appear is a plan built on a program that has not existed since 2021. The honest planning sequence is: claim the entitlements first, then chase the geographically gated city money, then treat competitive grants as upside rather than budget.

How to recognize a 2026 “the RRF is back” claim

Every 2026 message announcing that the Restaurant Revitalization Fund has reopened, is reopening, or that you can “check your eligibility” for it is either years out of date or is harvesting data. The specific pattern to watch for is a pre-qualification form for a program that does not exist: the form collects your legal business name, EIN, revenue and sometimes bank details, and the data is the product. The RRF portal was restaurants.sba.gov and it stopped accepting applications in 2021; no federal grant program is administered through a .com landing page, a text message, or a Facebook advertisement. Federal grant applications run through Grants.gov or an agency’s own .gov portal, and none of them charges a fee to apply — see the red-flag section for the full pattern.

For the dated list of what is genuinely open to food and beverage businesses this month, rather than the structural answer above, see the companion page: restaurant and food business grants open now. It is rebuilt against the live catalog and labels every row grant, loan, tax credit, competition or support program.

The honest restaurant funding landscape in 2026

US restaurant funding in 2026 has three layers and no federal grant layer. The first is permanent federal tax provisions that a qualifying restaurant claims on a form rather than wins in a competition — the largest source of real dollars for a full-service operator, and the one most independents leave partly on the table. The second is competitive cash grants, almost entirely private and foundation money, typically $5,000 to $50,000, open for a few weeks a year and heavily oversubscribed. The third is place-based city and state money that pays for the building, the storefront and the equipment, gated by address rather than by industry. Understanding which layer you are dealing with tells you what to expect: layer one is arithmetic, layer two is a lottery you can improve your odds in, layer three is a question about your address.

Layer one: federal tax provisions a restaurant claims rather than wins

Six federal tax provisions in the catalog apply to ordinary restaurant operations, and none of them requires an application, a competition or a deadline beyond the tax return. Section 45B returns 7.65% of creditable tips to food and beverage employers and is permanent law. Section 179 expensing writes off up to $2.5 million of equipment in the year of purchase, which for a restaurant means the line, the walk-in and the POS system in one tax year rather than seven. Section 45R pays up to 50% of small-employer health premiums bought through the SHOP marketplace. Section 45S, made permanent by the July 2025 tax act, pays 12.5% to 25% of wages during family and medical leave. The Section 44 disabled access credit and Section 190 barrier-removal deduction cover accessibility work — both detailed in the section below. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit belongs in this layer too, and is currently lapsed.

Layer two: competitive cash grants, mostly private and mostly small

Genuine cash grants a restaurant can apply for as a restaurant are private-sector money. Backing Historic Small Restaurants pays $50,000 to 50 historic independent restaurants a year, mostly for exterior work. NGLCC–Grubhub pays $5,000 to $25,000 to LGBTQ+-owned and ally restaurants. Toast Changemakers pays $10,000 to independent restaurants working on food insecurity. DoorDash Restaurant Disaster Relief pays $5,000 to $10,000 after a declared disaster. Restaurants Care pays $5,000 to California independents. The pattern across all of them is the same and worth stating plainly: annual or occasional cycles measured in weeks, awards in the low five figures, and application volumes that make any single application a long shot. They are worth entering and they are not a funding strategy.

Layer three: place-based money that pays for the building

City and state programs are where a restaurant’s largest realistic grant lives, and eligibility turns on the address rather than the industry. Chicago’s Neighborhood Opportunity Fund reimburses up to $250,000 of commercial build-out on the South, Southwest and West Sides. Detroit Motor City Match awards up to $100,000 in quarterly cohorts. DC Great Streets pays up to $90,000 on 13 designated corridors. New Orleans Façade RENEW Plus reimburses 85% of storefront cost up to $50,000 per 50 linear feet on specified corridors. The gate is the same everywhere: your business must sit inside a designated district, which is why the first call worth making is to your city’s economic development office to ask whether your address qualifies for anything at all. The full list is in the state and local section, and rural downtowns have a state analog in Georgia’s Rural Zone Tax Credits — three stackable credits worth up to $125,000 in property investment, $150,000 in rehabilitation and $2,000 per job per year for a small business inside a designated rural downtown.

The 2026 reality map: what each source pays and how you reach it

The table below compares the seven mechanisms that account for most restaurant funding dollars, on the two axes that decide whether you should spend time on one: typical value, and the access path. Note how few of them involve an application at all — four of the seven are claimed on a tax return or through a lender, not won.

What a restaurant is not eligible for, stated plainly

Three whole categories of US small business funding do not reach a dine-in restaurant, and knowing that in advance saves weeks. Federal research grants — SBIR and STTR — fund technical research and development; a restaurant has no qualifying research, though a packaged-food producer developing a shelf-stable process sometimes does, through USDA’s SBIR Phase I at up to $175,000. Job-creation tax credits in most states are written for manufacturing, distribution, processing and other traded-sector employers, and restaurants are commonly excluded by statute or by the wage floor even where the summary does not say so. USDA production grants fund growing, processing and aggregating food; a restaurant that buys ingredients is not the applicant, though a restaurant that also farms or manufactures a retail product can be — see which food businesses are served better than restaurants. Restaurants also sit outside most federal contracting set-asides in practice, with the exception of operators bidding on institutional food service contracts.

How to spot a fake restaurant grant offer

“Restaurant grants” is a search term with a large gap between what people hope exists and what does, and that gap is where fraud lives. Restaurant owners report a steady stream of Facebook and TikTok advertisements, unsolicited texts and cold calls promising “free government grant money” for restaurants — almost always a variation on the pattern the Federal Trade Commission has documented for years under government grant scams: an advertisement promises thousands in free money, then charges a processing fee, sells a worthless grant guide, or harvests a Social Security number and bank details under the guise of checking eligibility. The Restaurant Revitalization Fund makes restaurants an unusually good target, because a real $28.6 billion federal restaurant grant program did exist for one year and many owners remember it. None of the real programs on this page work the way the scam does, and the differences are mechanical enough to check in under a minute.

Five red flags, and the one thing they all have in common

Every red flag below reduces to a single structural test: a real funder tells you about itself in public and asks you to come to it; a scam comes to you and asks for something first. Real programs publish eligibility rules, an application window and a named administering body on their own domain, and they are indifferent to whether you apply today. Scams manufacture a deadline, arrive unprompted, and need a payment or an identifier before anything else happens. Apply that test to each of the five patterns below.

Two more red flags, the RRF version of the pitch, and what to do instead

The last two patterns are the ones that most often reach restaurant owners specifically, because they use a real program’s name. Both are worth recognizing by shape rather than by wording, since the wording changes every quarter.

The honest exception: a real grant on this page that charges $19 to enter

“Never pay to apply” is the right instinct and it has one documented exception in this catalog, which is worth naming rather than papering over. The Freed Fellowship Grant — $500 a month to one US small business owner, plus a $2,500 year-end award — charges a $19 submission fee per monthly cycle. That is a small private fellowship funding its own review process, not a scam, and it differs from the fraud pattern on every axis that matters: the fee is disclosed on the funder’s own site before you start, it is $19 rather than a percentage of a promised award, no government program is invoked, and nobody asks for a Social Security number or bank credentials to “release” funds. The distinction to hold onto is not fee versus no fee. It is a disclosed entry cost for a competition you can see, versus a payment demanded to unlock money that was never real. Every government program on this page — federal, state and municipal — is free to apply for without exception.

What to do if you have already paid or shared details

If you have already sent money or handed over identifiers to a supposed restaurant grant program, three steps matter and the order matters. First, report it to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov, which is the federal intake point and feeds enforcement referrals. Second, contact your bank or card issuer immediately — a card payment can often be charged back, and an ACH debit authorized from your business operating account is far harder to reverse after 60 days, so speed is the whole game. Third, if you gave an EIN, a Social Security number or bank account and routing numbers, treat it as an identity exposure: place a fraud alert, watch for unfamiliar credit inquiries against the business, and tell your bookkeeper what was disclosed so unusual debits get flagged rather than reconciled. None of this recovers the fee reliably, which is why the one-minute check above is worth more than any remedy after the fact.

Section 45B FICA tip credit: the most underclaimed restaurant benefit

Section 45B of the Internal Revenue Code is a federal income tax credit for food and beverage employers, equal to the employer’s share of Social Security and Medicare tax — 7.65% — on creditable employee tips. It has been permanent law since 1993, it requires no application, and it is claimed on IRS Form 8846 as part of the general business credit. For a full-service restaurant it is almost certainly the largest single funding item available: a restaurant with $500,000 in annual tips claims roughly $33,000 a year, every year, which no competitive restaurant grant in this catalog matches even once. Two things go wrong with it in practice. Many independent operators never claim it at all because their tax preparer does not know it exists. Many who do claim it compute it against the wrong wage floor, because almost every article written about Section 45B — including, until this update, ours — uses the current $7.25 federal minimum wage instead of the figure the statute actually names.

How the credit is computed: the $5.15 floor, not the $7.25 minimum wage

Section 45B does not use the current federal minimum wage. For food and beverage employers it uses the federal minimum wage as it stood on January 1, 2007, which was $5.15 an hour, and that figure is frozen in the statute. The credit base is total tips on which the employer paid FICA, reduced, for each employee for each month, by the amount by which wages payable at $5.15 an hour would exceed the cash wages (excluding tips) the employer actually paid. The practical consequence is precise: an employer paying the federal tipped cash wage of $2.13 an hour loses $3.02 an hour of tip base — about $5,798 a year per full-time tipped employee, or roughly $444 of credit each. An employer paying $5.15 an hour or more in cash wages loses nothing at all.

The IRS’s own worked example, in the agency’s numbers

The instructions to Form 8846 carry a worked example that settles the arithmetic better than any explanation. A food or beverage employee works 100 hours in October 2025 and receives $450 in tips. The employer pays $375 in cash wages, a rate of $3.75 an hour. At $5.15 an hour the employee would have received $515 in wages excluding tips. The shortfall — $515 minus $375, or $140 — is subtracted from the tips, so $310 of the $450 is creditable and the credit for that employee that month is $310 × 7.65% = $23.72. Two features of that example matter for a real restaurant. The computation is per employee, per month, not annual and not pooled, so payroll records rather than a year-end tip total are the working document. And the higher your cash wage, the smaller the subtraction: at $3.75 an hour the employee loses $140 of base, at the federal $2.13 they would lose $302, and at $5.15 or above they lose nothing.

Why a no-tip-credit state produces a larger Section 45B credit, not a smaller one

Seven states — Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — require employers to pay tipped employees the full state minimum cash wage with no tip credit against it. Every one of those state minimums is far above $5.15 an hour, so line 2 of Form 8846 is zero and 100% of reported tips are creditable. A California restaurant paying $16-plus an hour in cash wages claims 7.65% of every tip dollar; a Texas restaurant paying the federal $2.13 claims 7.65% of tips minus roughly $5,798 per full-time tipped employee. On $500,000 of tips across 12 full-time-equivalent tipped staff, that is about $38,250 in the no-tip-credit state against about $32,900 in the federal-tipped-wage state — a $5,300 annual difference in the same tip volume. This is the opposite of what most guidance says, including the earlier version of this page, which claimed higher state minimum wages shrink the credit. They do not. Higher cash wages enlarge it.

What a typical restaurant can expect from Section 45B

The table below sets the ceiling against the realistic figure for four restaurant profiles. The ceiling column is 7.65% of all reported tips — what you get if your tipped cash wage is at or above $5.15 an hour. The realistic column applies the $5.15 floor at the federal $2.13 tipped cash wage, assuming each full-time-equivalent tipped employee works 160 hours a month. Your own number sits between the two and depends only on your cash wage rate, which makes it computable from payroll rather than estimated.

Computed by GrantCompass from the Form 8846 method: creditable tips = reported tips − ($5.15 − cash wage rate) × hours, per employee per month, × 7.65%. Assumes 160 hours per month per full-time-equivalent tipped employee. These are illustrative profiles, not published IRS averages — the IRS does not publish credit amounts by restaurant type.

Claiming the credit: IRS Form 8846 and the general business credit

Section 45B is claimed on IRS Form 8846, attached to the employer’s federal income tax return. Line 1 is tips on which you paid employer Social Security and Medicare tax; line 2 is the non-creditable portion computed against the $5.15 floor; line 3 is creditable tips; line 4 multiplies by 7.65%. The result carries to Form 3800, Part III, line 4f as part of the general business credit, and for partnerships and S corporations it goes on Schedule K and flows through to the owners’ returns. One threshold catches larger operators: if any tipped employee’s wages and tips exceeded the Social Security wage base — $176,100 for 2025, rising to $184,500 for 2026 — you check the box on line 4 and compute the excess at the 1.45% Medicare rate instead of 7.65%. Because it is a general business credit, an unused amount is not lost: it carries back one year and forward twenty.

Amending prior returns: the three-year window the instructions grant

A restaurant that has never claimed Section 45B is not limited to the current year. The Form 8846 instructions state that you can claim or elect not to claim the credit “any time within 3 years from the due date of your return on either your original return or on an amended return.” For an operator with steady tip volume, that turns a missed credit into a recoverable one: three years of unclaimed credit at $400,000 in annual tips is roughly $85,000 to $92,000 depending on your cash wage rate. The procedural step is specific enough to hand to a preparer — amend each open year’s business return with Form 8846 attached, carry the result to Form 3800, and for a pass-through entity reissue the K-1s so the credit reaches the owners’ personal returns. Ask the question in exactly these words: “Did we file Form 8846 for each of the last three years, and if not, are those years still open to amendment?”

Service charges are not tips, and a no-tipping model forfeits the credit

Mandatory service charges are not tips for Section 45B purposes. An automatic gratuity on large parties, a fixed service fee added to every check, or a kitchen-appreciation surcharge is a wage paid by the employer: fully subject to FICA, fully deductible as compensation, and entirely outside the credit base. Only voluntary amounts a customer chooses to leave qualify. The IRS draws this line in Revenue Ruling 2012-18, which the Form 8846 instructions cite directly for the difference between tips and service charges. The consequence is a real economic trade-off that operators rarely model before switching: a restaurant that replaces tipping with a 20% service charge keeps the same revenue, pays the same FICA, and loses 7.65% of that entire amount in annual credit — on $500,000 of former tip volume, about $33,000 a year, permanently. That does not make service-charge models wrong. It makes them more expensive than the menu-price arithmetic suggests.

Section 45B compliance: pass-through entities and prior-year filings

Section 45B compliance: tip reporting and the no-double-dip rule

How much Section 45B is worth against everything else on this page

Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC): $1,200 to $9,600 per qualifying hire -- currently lapsed

Why restaurants are among the largest WOTC claimants in the country

The Work Opportunity Tax Credit is a federal income tax credit available to employers who hire from specific target groups -- people who face documented barriers to employment. Restaurants are among the most active WOTC claimants in the country because their hiring patterns align naturally with the target-group population: high-volume, entry-level hiring with turnover rates that generate new credit opportunities frequently. The amounts below describe what the credit pays when it is active — confirm current authorization status before building it into a 2026 tax projection. The scale of the fit is worth naming: a mid-size independent restaurant turning over 60 employees a year commonly has 15 to 25 hires from the ten target groups, which at an average $2,400 credit is $36,000 to $60,000 a year of credit in a functioning WOTC regime.

WOTC target groups and credit amounts

The 28-day rule is where restaurants lose WOTC they have already earned

WOTC for restaurants: the volume opportunity, once reauthorized

A restaurant with annual turnover of 60 employees -- common for a mid-size independent operator -- might have 15 to 25 employees from WOTC target groups in any given year. At an average credit of $2,400 per qualifying hire, that's $36,000 to $60,000 in annual WOTC credit when the program is authorized. The credit is claimed on IRS Form 5884 and flows through the employer's tax return like Section 45B. Stack both on the same return for the full combined benefit. During the current lapse, those dollars are on hold, not gone -- keep screening and filing Form 8850 for every new hire so that a retroactive reauthorization (the pattern after every past WOTC lapse) can be claimed for hires made throughout 2026.

How WOTC compares to Section 45B for a restaurant employer

Section 45B and the Work Opportunity Tax Credit are both employer-side federal credits claimed on the same return, and they behave in opposite ways. Section 45B is permanent, automatic and proportional to tip volume: a full-service restaurant with steady sales claims a similar amount every year regardless of hiring. WOTC is temporary, paperwork-gated and proportional to hiring from ten defined target groups: it pays nothing in a year with no qualifying hires, pays $1,200 to $9,600 per qualifying hire when it does, and pays nothing at all right now because the authorisation lapsed on January 1, 2026. For a counter-service concept with high turnover and little tip volume, WOTC is the larger of the two once reauthorized. For a full-service dining room with modest turnover, Section 45B is larger and more reliable. Most operators should be running both, and the sequencing matters: 45B needs nothing but a preparer who knows the form, while WOTC needs a hiring process change today to be claimable later.

Federal energy tax credits for restaurant buildings and equipment

Commercial kitchens are among the most energy-intensive spaces per square foot in any building category, which historically made federal energy tax provisions unusually valuable to restaurants that own their building. Two things changed that in 2026, and any restaurant guide still presenting these as open-ended opportunities is out of date. The Section 179D commercial building energy deduction is closed to projects whose construction begins after June 30, 2026 — a date that has already passed. And the Section 48E clean electricity credit now imposes a hard placed-in-service deadline of December 31, 2027 on solar projects that began construction after July 4, 2026, which is every restaurant solar project being contemplated today. Both changes came from the tax act signed July 4, 2025. What survives for restaurants is real but narrower, and the practical center of gravity has shifted from federal tax provisions to utility rebate programs, which pay cash on the equipment invoice regardless of who owns the roof.

Section 179D closed to new restaurant projects on June 30, 2026

Section 179D allowed a deduction of up to $5.81 per square foot (2025 tax year; $2.90 without prevailing-wage compliance) for commercial buildings achieving at least 25% energy savings against the ASHRAE 90.1 baseline — qualifying HVAC replacement, commercial LED lighting and building envelope work. For a 4,000-square-foot restaurant meeting the full rate, that was a deduction of roughly $23,240, worth about $4,880 in reduced federal tax at a 21% rate. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Public Law 119-21) terminated it prospectively.

Eligibility turns on when construction began, not when the work is finished. A restaurant that began qualifying construction on or before June 30, 2026 can still claim the deduction even if the project is placed in service in 2027 or 2028 — so if you started an HVAC or lighting retrofit in the first half of 2026, raise Section 179D with your preparer before writing it off as gone. A project starting today does not qualify at all.

Section 48E: for a restaurant starting solar now, the deadline is December 31, 2027

The Section 48E Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit pays a credit against the cost of qualifying clean energy property at a commercial site, including a restaurant building — rooftop solar, battery storage for demand-charge management, geothermal heat pumps and fuel cells. The base rate is 6%, rising to 30% where prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements are met; projects under 1 MW, which is essentially every restaurant installation, qualify for the 30% rate without meeting those requirements. The July 2025 tax act then added an accelerated cutoff for wind and solar specifically: a solar facility that begins construction after July 4, 2026 is ineligible for the credit if it is placed in service after December 31, 2027. Because that construction-start window has now closed, a restaurant commissioning rooftop solar today must have the system operating by the end of 2027 to claim anything — a real constraint on a project with permitting, interconnection and utility approval in front of it. The same deadline does not apply to energy storage technology, which remains eligible under Section 48E without the 2027 placed-in-service cutoff.

What Section 48E covers for a restaurant, system by system

The table below sets out the four clean energy systems most relevant to a restaurant building, with the credit rate and a typical project range. Read it alongside the deadline above: for solar, the December 31, 2027 placed-in-service date is now the binding constraint rather than the credit rate, while storage is not subject to it.

Credit rates are the 30% bonus rate available to sub-1 MW projects. Confirm the placed-in-service treatment of geothermal and fuel cell property with a tax adviser — the accelerated cutoff enacted in July 2025 is written for wind and solar facilities, and the treatment of other technologies is a question we did not resolve to a level worth publishing as definitive.

Leased restaurants and the ownership gate on every energy credit

That ownership gate is why the federal energy tax route is the wrong first stop for most independent restaurants. Roughly speaking, a restaurant that leases its space cannot use Section 48E on the building, could never use Section 179D on the envelope, and has no path to either credit without a cooperative landlord. What a tenant can use is the equipment layer: Section 179 expensing writes off up to $2.5 million of equipment the tenant owns in the year of purchase, and utility rebate programs pay cash on efficient kitchen and refrigeration equipment regardless of who holds the deed. That is the subject of the next section, and for a leased restaurant it is where the money actually is.

Where restaurant money actually comes from

The reason a restaurant operator searching “restaurant grants” finds almost nothing is that most of the money a restaurant can get does not carry the word restaurant anywhere in its name. It is filed under commercial energy efficiency, accessibility compliance, commercial corridor revitalization, workforce development and community development finance. A utility rebate program does not know it is funding a restaurant; it knows it is rebating a high-efficiency walk-in cooler. A city facade grant does not know it is funding a cafe; it knows it is improving a designated corridor. This section is the map of that money, organized by what the money buys rather than by who funds it, because that is how it is actually indexed. Every program named below is in the catalog slice, and every one is reachable by a restaurant that knows it exists.

Utility equipment and energy-efficiency rebates: cash on the invoice

Electric utilities run commercial efficiency programs that pay cash rebates on exactly the equipment a restaurant buys: refrigeration, HVAC, commercial cooking equipment, lighting and variable-frequency drives. They are the most underused funding source in food service because nobody files them under grants, and unlike Section 48E they do not require you to own the building — they require you to be the account holder on the meter. ComEd’s business program in northern Illinois caps its small-business track at $20,000 to $30,000 with bonus incentives. Con Edison’s C&I program in New York City and Westchester runs prescriptive and custom tracks reaching $500,000 for custom projects. PG&E and Southern California Edison cover California, FPL pays up to $40 per LED fixture in Florida with cooling projects averaging about $5,000, and Xcel Energy runs equipment rebates across eight states and covers up to 75% of an energy study.

The eight utility and state efficiency programs in this catalog

Utility programs are keyed to the meter, not the deed — a leased restaurant that holds the commercial electricity account is the eligible applicant. Most run first-come, first-served against an annual budget rather than on a competitive cycle.

Energy studies, state efficiency grants and the pattern to look for

Two programs sit above the rebate layer and pay for the analysis rather than the equipment. NYSERDA FlexTech pays 50% to 75% of a professional energy study for any New York commercial facility paying the system benefits charge, up to $1 million — a genuinely open door for a New York restaurant with high energy cost and no idea where it goes. Pennsylvania’s Small Business Advantage Grant reimburses 50% to 80% of energy-efficiency or pollution-reduction equipment up to $7,500, or $12,000 in an Environmental Justice Area. Federally, the DOE Better Buildings Alliance and EPA’s state-delivered Pollution Prevention program provide free technical assistance rather than cash. The pattern worth internalizing: start with your own utility’s commercial program page, because the rebate is almost always larger and far faster than any grant you could apply for, and it is paid against an invoice you were going to generate anyway.

The Section 44 disabled access credit: $5,000 a year almost no restaurant claims

The Disabled Access Credit under Internal Revenue Code Section 44 pays 50% of eligible access expenditures between $250 and $10,250 in a tax year, for a maximum credit of $5,000, claimed on IRS Form 8826. An eligible small business, per the form’s own definition, is one that “had gross receipts … for the preceding tax year that did not exceed $1 million or had no more than 30 full-time employees during the preceding tax year” — a threshold the overwhelming majority of independent restaurants clear on at least one of the two tests. Eligible expenditures are amounts paid to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act: removing architectural barriers, widening a doorway or an aisle, an accessible restroom, a ramp, accessible signage, menus in accessible formats, and qualified interpreter or reader services. One limit matters and is easy to miss: barrier-removal expenditures do not qualify for a facility first placed in service after November 5, 1990, so the credit is aimed squarely at older buildings — which is most of the independent restaurant stock in most American downtowns. A $10,250 accessible-restroom or ramp project returns the full $5,000 credit; a $3,000 doorway widening returns $1,375, being 50% of the amount above the $250 floor.

Section 190 barrier removal, and how it stacks with the Section 44 credit

Section 190 is the deduction that sits alongside the Section 44 credit. The IRS states that businesses “may claim a deduction of up to $15,000 a year for qualified expenses for items that normally must be capitalized” — meaning accessibility work that would otherwise be depreciated over years can be expensed immediately. The two provisions are designed to be used together, and the IRS says so explicitly: a business can use both the deduction and the Disabled Access Credit in the same tax year, provided the expenses meet the requirements of each. The sequence for a restaurant doing a $12,000 accessible-restroom project is therefore: take the Section 44 credit on the first $10,250 of qualifying expenditure (a $5,000 credit), then take the Section 190 deduction on the remaining qualified capitalizable cost. Neither is a grant, neither requires an application, and together they cover a meaningful share of the compliance work a health department or an ADA complaint is going to require anyway.

Storefront, facade and streetscape grants: the largest grant a restaurant realistically wins

City money for the building is the single most winnable grant category for a brick-and-mortar restaurant, and it is gated by address rather than by industry — which is precisely why it is winnable. The applicant pool for a corridor program is every business on a few designated streets, not every restaurant in America. Eleven municipal programs sit in this slice, from Baltimore’s $5,000 facade grant at the small end to Chicago’s Neighborhood Opportunity Fund at up to $250,000 for commercial build-out. Most are reimbursement programs, most require approval before work begins, and several — Michigan Match on Main, for one — are applied for through a local downtown organization rather than directly. The full list with amounts is in the state and local section. The action that unlocks all of it is one phone call to your city’s economic development office asking whether your address sits inside a designated commercial district.

Workforce training reimbursement: real money, usually gated to other industries

Most states operate a program that reimburses employers for a share of employee training cost, and the honest position on them for restaurants is mixed rather than encouraging. Illinois ETIP reimburses up to 50% of training cost, Washington’s Customized Training Program subsidizes training delivered through community colleges, and EARN Maryland funds industry-led partnerships up to $500,000. The gate that catches restaurants is that these programs are frequently written for traded-sector employers — manufacturing, logistics, technology, businesses that export from the state — and a restaurant qualifies only where the program is genuinely open to any employer. New Mexico’s JTIP, for example, states plainly that it serves manufacturers and traded-sector businesses. Read the eligible-business definition before planning around any of them, and treat a restaurant’s odds here as materially worse than in the equipment or storefront lanes.

CDFI and mission lending: the capital lane food businesses are actually served by

Community development financial institutions are the part of the capital market that consistently lends to restaurants, because they underwrite differently from banks: character, community impact and cash flow rather than three years of clean returns and heavy collateral. Accompany Capital lends $1,000 to $350,000 across all five New York boroughs to immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs with no credit score minimum and free coaching attached. The South Carolina Community Loan Fund lends roughly $5,000 to $1 million below market. Nimiipuu Community Development Fund, a certified Native CDFI, lends up to $35,000 across Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Washington’s Revenue-Based Financing Fund flexes repayment to monthly revenue, which fits a seasonal restaurant far better than a fixed amortization. Nationally, the SBA Microloan (average loan about $13,000) and USDA’s Intermediary Relending Program (up to $400,000 rurally) both run through the same nonprofit intermediaries.

Employee-benefit credits: Section 45R and Section 45S

Two federal credits pay restaurants for things they may already be doing for staff, and both are claimed rather than won. Section 45R, the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit, pays up to 50% of employer-paid health insurance premiums, with maximum value at ten or fewer full-time-equivalent employees and average wages at or below roughly $33,000; the catch is that coverage must be purchased through the SHOP marketplace each year the credit is claimed, which rules out most restaurants using a broker-placed group plan. Section 45S, the credit for paid family and medical leave, pays 12.5% to 25% of wages paid during qualifying leave for employees earning under roughly $81,000, with the rate scaling to the generosity of the written policy; it was made permanent by the July 2025 tax act after years of annual extensions. Neither is large enough to change a business, and both are large enough to be worth a conversation with a preparer that most restaurants never have.

Tourism and visitor-economy marketing grants

A restaurant in a tourism economy is often eligible for state marketing money that has nothing to do with small business programs and everything to do with visitor spending. The Iowa Tourism Marketing Grant pays $2,500 to $10,000 to for-profit restaurants, hotels and attractions with a 20% cash match. Virginia’s Microbusiness Marketing Leverage Program names restaurants, breweries, food trucks and wineries with 20 or fewer full-time employees explicitly, paying up to $5,000 on a 1:1 match, with a larger Marketing Leverage Program up to $30,000 on a 2:1 match. Colorado’s Tourism Marketing Matching Grant pays $2,500 to $49,000 on a 2:1 match to for-profit tourism businesses, and Montana’s Tribal Tourism Small Business Grant pays up to $10,000 with no match required. All of them are matching programs, which means they fund marketing you were going to buy rather than marketing you would not otherwise afford.

Free advisory capacity, which is worth more than “free advice” sounds

Twenty-three of the 74 open programs in this slice are support programs with no cash attached, and dismissing them is a mistake for one specific reason: several of them exist to package the applications and loan files that the cash programs require. The SBDC network runs roughly 1,000 US locations offering free one-on-one counselling including loan packaging — the exact document set an SBA 7(a) lender demands. SCORE provides free mentoring, Women’s Business Centers run about 150 centers focused on capital access for women entrepreneurs, and Veterans Business Outreach Centers do the same for veteran owners. A restaurant making a retail product also qualifies for NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which delivers subsidized operations consulting to small manufacturers, and for DOE’s Better Plants Program if it runs a production facility. Veteran owners have Boots to Business free on the same terms. None of these pays you. All of them reduce the cost of reaching the programs that do — and at 23 of the 74 open programs, they are 31% of everything currently available to a food business.

Which food businesses are served better than restaurants

Here is the structural fact behind most restaurant funding disappointment: the United States funds food production generously and food service barely at all. A farmer who turns milk into cheese, a producer who bottles a sauce for retail, a co-packer who processes local meat — each has a genuine federal grant lane worth six figures, administered by the USDA, with published deadlines and repeat cycles. A dine-in restaurant that buys the same cheese and serves it has none. The logic is agricultural policy, not hostility: the money exists to strengthen the food supply chain and rural economies, and a restaurant is treated as a retail purchaser at the end of it. If your business has any production side — a retail line, a wholesale account, a farm, a bakery selling to grocers — the programs below are a materially better door than anything in the first half of this page, and the eligibility usually turns on whether you produce a product, not on what your signage says.

USDA value-added and local-food grants: the real federal grant lane

The USDA Value-Added Producer Grant pays up to $250,000 in working capital to producers turning a raw commodity into a higher-value product, with a 1:1 match required — the canonical example being a farm that starts bottling, canning or curing what it grows. The Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program runs two tracks up to $500,000, one for direct-to-consumer market channels and one for local food supply chains including food hubs and aggregators. USDA SARE Farmer/Rancher Grants pay $7,500 to $35,000 depending on region for a producer to test a sustainable practice on their own operation, with deadlines set regionally. The Specialty Crop Block Grant Program reaches growers through state departments of agriculture rather than USDA directly — a distinction that costs applicants time every year. These are competitive, paperwork-heavy and genuinely funded.

The USDA and food-system programs in this catalog, by ceiling

Several of these run on annual cycles and are between intakes at any given moment; REAP is recorded as paused in the catalog as of August 2026. Ceilings are program maxima, not typical awards — a first-time Value-Added Producer Grant applicant should plan around the working-capital track, not the $250,000 headline.

Meat, poultry and food-access processing: the largest food grants in the catalog

Processing capacity is where the biggest food-sector grant figures sit. The USDA Local Meat Capacity Grant ranges from $10,000 to $5 million for for-profit local meat and poultry processors expanding capacity, with a 50% match, and the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program reaches $2 million for FSIS-inspected facilities. America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative FARE Fund pays $20,000 to $250,000 plus technical assistance to food retailers and supply-chain businesses expanding healthy food access in underserved areas — the one program in this group a food retailer rather than a producer can win. All three run on defined cycles and several are between intakes at any given moment; the reason to know them is that a restaurant group that opens a commissary, a butchery or a wholesale kitchen crosses into this category and stops being ineligible for federal grant money overnight.

Small-farm, organic and beginning-producer programs

A restaurant that farms — and farm-to-table operations increasingly do — reaches a set of small programs with unusually light applications. The USDA Organic Certification Cost Share Program reimburses 75% of organic certification fees up to $750 per certification scope, administered through state agriculture departments, and is one of the few genuinely simple federal programs in existence. Minnesota’s Beginning Farmer Equipment and Infrastructure Grant reimburses $1,000 to $10,000 for equipment and farm infrastructure. California’s Underserved and Small Producer Program pays up to $20,000 each for drought and extreme-weather relief through nonprofit technical assistance providers. The FruitGuys Community Fund pays up to $5,000 nationally to farms of 250 acres or fewer for a specific sustainability project, and the Farmer Veteran Fellowship Fund pays $1,000 to $5,000 in equipment, paid to vendors rather than to the veteran, and the American Farmland Trust National Farm Viability Grant pays up to $10,000 toward farm business viability.

State agricultural product programs, which restaurants overlook entirely

Several states run their own value-added agriculture programs that are open to food businesses and rarely appear on restaurant funding lists. North Dakota’s Agricultural Products Utilization Commission awards quarterly across six categories to companies adding value to North Dakota agriculture, with recent maxima around $115,000 and deadlines on the first of January, April, July and October. Montana Growth Through Agriculture pays grants up to $50,000 and loans up to $100,000 for new agricultural products and processes on a dollar-for-dollar match. New York’s Craft Beverage Micro Grant pays $25,000 to $50,000 in matching funds to licensed breweries, wineries, distilleries, cideries and meaderies for equipment and facility upgrades — which is the closest thing in this catalog to a capital grant for a beverage-forward hospitality business. Whole Foods Market’s Local Producer Loan Program lends $1,000 to $100,000 at low interest to small food and beverage producers nationally. Conservation practice payments and easements reach farm-side operations through USDA NRCS’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program, and a packaged producer selling abroad reaches two export programs a dine-in restaurant cannot use: SBA STEP at $2,500 to $15,000 typical and New York’s Global NY Fund at up to $25,000.

Where the line falls between a restaurant and a producer

The line that decides eligibility is not the shape of your business but the shape of the specific project. USDA and state agricultural programs fund producing, processing or aggregating a food product; they do not fund preparing and serving meals. A restaurant that bottles its hot sauce for retail sale is a producer for that project. A restaurant that opens a commissary supplying three other kitchens is a processor. A restaurant that runs a market garden and sells the surplus is a producer at the farm gate. In each case the application describes the production activity, the equipment it needs and the market it reaches — and the dining room is context rather than subject. The prize for crossing that line is real: $250,000 under a Value-Added Producer Grant, up to $500,000 under Local Food Promotion, $5,000,000 for meat and poultry capacity. The practical test before you spend 40 hours on a USDA application: can you write the project narrative without the words “our customers order”? If not, you are in the restaurant lane, and the storefront, utility and tax-credit routes above are the honest place to spend your time.

Corporate restaurant grant programs: the realistic sources of cash grants

With no federal restaurant grant in existence, the competitive cash grants a restaurant can apply for as a restaurant are private-sector money: delivery platforms, point-of-sale companies, food manufacturers, insurers and industry foundations. This is a real category and a small one. Awards cluster between $5,000 and $50,000, cycles are annual or occasional and open for a few weeks, and the same handful of programs absorbs applications from independent restaurants across the entire country. The table below is drawn from the GrantCompass catalog rather than from reputation, so the amounts and the ownership gates are the ones the funders actually publish — useful both for deciding what to enter and for comparing against anything that lands in your inbox claiming to be a restaurant grant.

Named corporate and foundation restaurant grants in the catalog

Twelve of the 36 private and foundation programs in this slice fund restaurants and food businesses directly, and they are listed below with the amounts and gates their funders publish. Read the gate column as carefully as the amount, because it is where most of these are decided: five of the twelve are gated on ownership category — LGBTQ+, Black-owned, women-founded — three are limited to a single state or region, and two pay in services rather than cash. The cash range across all twelve runs from $5,000 to $50,000, with $10,000 the most common single figure. Only one, Backing Historic Small Restaurants at $50,000 to 50 restaurants a year, reaches the median ceiling of the wider catalog.

Twelve private and foundation programs, with amounts and gates

Every one of these has a public application on the funder’s own domain, with no processing fee and no unsolicited outreach — the practical test described in the scam-alert section above.

The cycle problem: most restaurant grants are closed most of the time

The honest weakness of this whole category is availability. Of the 36 private programs in the slice, most sit between intakes on any given day, because a corporate grant program typically opens once a year for four to six weeks. Toast Changemakers anticipates its next call in late 2026. NGLCC–Grubhub opens in spring or summer. Backing Historic Small Restaurants opened in mid-May with an early-June deadline in its most recent cycle. DoorDash’s disaster fund activates only after a federal disaster declaration, with rounds running four to six weeks. The practical consequence is that “is there a grant for my restaurant?” has a different answer in March than in September, which is why the dated companion page exists and why a watch on the specific programs that fit you is worth more than another search. Three national programs run continuously and are the exception: the NASE Growth Grant picks a member winner monthly, the Breva Thrive Grant awards $5,000 to one community-impact business each quarter, and IFundWomen’s Universal Grant Application keeps one profile in front of rotating corporate sponsors.

James Beard Foundation: the highest-prestige route, and what we can verify

The James Beard Foundation operates grant, scholarship and industry-support programs for restaurant professionals and independent operators, funded through private contributions and corporate partnerships, with applications on the Foundation’s own site at jamesbeard.org. It is, as of 2026, the most prestigious non-governmental funder in American food, and its programs are narrative and portfolio-based: culinary vision, community impact and business viability rather than financial ratios. Two honest caveats. First, the Foundation’s programs are not in the GrantCompass catalog, so nothing on this page about its current award amounts or cycle dates is verified against the catalog — check jamesbeard.org directly rather than relying on any third-party figure, including ours. Second, its selection strongly favors operators with an established culinary reputation and documented community engagement; a first-year restaurant without a public profile in the culinary community is unlikely to be competitive, and time is better spent on the municipal and utility routes above.

National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation and industry associations

The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF) funds workforce development rather than businesses. Its output is scholarship support for food service workers pursuing culinary and hospitality education, plus the ProStart program in high schools — valuable to an operator as a retention and recruitment tool, and not a grant to the restaurant. State and metropolitan restaurant associations run their own occasional grant programs funded by membership dues and private contributions, and they behave differently from national programs in one useful way: they are announced through membership channels rather than public outreach, so the applicant pool is smaller and the odds are better. The New York City Hospitality Alliance has administered city-funded programs targeting BIPOC-owned restaurants; the Illinois Restaurant Association has run grant programs alongside state economic development funding; the California Restaurant Association Foundation runs the Restaurants Care Resilience Fund. Association dues are commonly under $500 a year, which is a low price for access to a smaller pool.

Delivery platform and point-of-sale grants: what partnership actually requires

Several of the most-searched restaurant grants are run by the platforms restaurants already pay: Grubhub, DoorDash and Toast. It is worth being precise about what partnership requires, because the assumption cuts both ways. The NGLCC–Grubhub Community Impact Grant does not require NGLCC certification, though it does target LGBTQ+-owned and ally restaurants. The DoorDash Restaurant Disaster Relief Fund and the discontinued Main Street Strong Grant have historically been open to independent restaurants whether or not they are on the DoorDash platform. Toast Changemakers is administered through Hello Alice rather than through the Toast product. The pattern: platform grants are marketing programs for the platform, so they are usually broader than operators assume, and the eligibility page rather than the assumption is what to read. The three pay $5,000–$25,000, $10,000 and $5,000–$10,000 respectively. Several are administered by Hello Alice, which means one profile there surfaces multiple restaurant-relevant cycles.

Who the applicant has to be: the ownership-gated programs

A significant share of the restaurant grant money that exists is gated on who owns the business rather than on what the business does. That is not a footnote — for several of the largest awards in this catalog, including the $25,000 NGLCC–Grubhub and $25,000 Power Forward grants, it is the entire eligibility test, and it means two restaurants with identical financials have materially different funding options. The gates in this slice are: women-founded, Black-owned, LGBTQ+-owned, veteran-owned, immigrant or refugee-owned, tribal, and located in a designated underserved area. None of them requires a formal certification in the way federal contracting does; most ask you to self-identify on the application and describe the business. This section maps each gate to the specific programs behind it, so you can tell in a minute whether a category applies to you and what it unlocks. The awards behind these gates run from $3,000 to $50,000, and roughly 40% of the private grants in this catalog carry one.

Women-owned and women-founded food businesses

Four programs in this slice gate on women founders, and food and beverage is unusually well served among them. Stacy’s Rise Project pays $25,000 to women-founded food and beverage businesses with $25,000 to $1 million in revenue. The Enthuse Foundation Pitch Competition awards $3,000 to $15,000 in cash plus in-kind prizes specifically to women-led food, beverage and consumer-packaged-goods brands. IFundWomen’s Universal Grant Application is a single profile matched to rotating corporate grants for women-owned businesses, most awards $10,000 to $25,000. The Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program is a fellowship rather than a cash grant — education, coaching and network for women entrepreneurs above $75,000 in revenue. The free SBA Women’s Business Centers network sits underneath all of it, with roughly 150 centers focused on capital access.

Black-owned and minority-owned restaurants

The Black Kitchen Initiative Grant, run by The LEE Initiative with Kraft Heinz, pays recent awards around $20,000 to $25,000 to independently owned Black food businesses and is the most directly relevant national program in this category. The Power Forward Small Business Grant pays $25,000 to Black-owned small businesses in the six New England states, a Boston Celtics, Vistaprint and NAACP program that has run multiple rounds a year. Beyond named ownership programs, the municipal route is often the larger one: Chicago INVEST South/West and the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund both direct up to $250,000 into historically disinvested corridors, and they are geographic rather than ownership tests that reach many of the same businesses with far more money attached. State MWBE certification is a separate track that opens set-aside procurement — government cafeteria and catering contracts — rather than grant eligibility.

LGBTQ+-owned restaurants, cafes and bars

The NGLCC–Grubhub Community Impact Grant Program is the clearest single answer in this category: $5,000 to $25,000 for LGBTQ+-owned and ally restaurants, cafes and bars in all 50 states, with funds usable for equipment, staffing, marketing and operations. Two details make it more accessible than operators assume. It does not require NGLCC certification, so the months-long certification process is not a prerequisite to applying. And it explicitly includes ally businesses alongside LGBTQ+-owned ones, which widens eligibility considerably. It runs on an annual cycle that has typically opened in spring or summer, which puts it in the same “closed most of the year” category as every other corporate restaurant grant — worth watching for rather than searching for.

Veteran-owned food businesses

Veteran ownership opens a support-heavy rather than cash-heavy lane, and the support is unusually substantial. The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans is free with travel and housing paid. Warrior Rising runs free training programs with non-dilutive grants awarded to selected participants through its Business Showers. SBA Boots to Business is a free training program, and Veterans Business Outreach Centers provide free counselling nationally. On the cash side, the Farmer Veteran Fellowship Fund pays $1,000 to $5,000 in equipment for veterans launching a farm or ranch, paid directly to vendors. A veteran opening a restaurant should read this lane realistically: it is worth several thousand dollars of free advisory and training capacity, and it is not a grant pipeline.

Immigrant, refugee and tribal food entrepreneurs

Two CDFIs in this slice serve populations that conventional lenders decline, and both lend to food businesses routinely. Accompany Capital is a New York CDFI serving immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs across all five boroughs, lending $1,000 to $75,000 in microloans and $100,000 to $350,000 in SBA loans, with no credit score minimum and free coaching included. Nimiipuu Community Development Fund is a certified Native CDFI serving the Nez Perce community across Idaho, Oregon and Washington, lending $2,500 to $35,000 with counselling attached. On the grant side, Montana’s Tribal Tourism Small Business Grant pays up to $10,000 to tribal entrepreneurs in hospitality and cultural experiences with no match required. New York food entrepreneurs should also know Hot Bread Kitchen’s HBK Incubates, a free food-business incubator with kitchen space and capital connections, focused on women of color and immigrant women.

What ownership certification does and does not do

Formal certification — MWBE at state level, WOSB or 8(a) at federal level, NGLCC or NMSDC in the private sector — is frequently recommended to restaurant owners and is frequently the wrong first step. Certification is built for procurement: it makes you eligible for set-aside contracts, and for a restaurant that means institutional food service, government cafeteria operations and catering contracts, which is a real but specific line of business. Almost none of the ownership-gated grants on this page requires certification; NGLCC–Grubhub says so explicitly, and the Hello Alice-administered programs ask you to self-identify. So the sequence matters: if you want grant access, apply to the programs directly and skip the paperwork; if you want a predictable revenue contract feeding a catering or commissary operation, certification is the point of entry and the months it takes are the cost of admission.

State and local grant programs restaurants can access

State and local grant money reaches restaurants in two very different ways, and confusing them wastes months. State programs are almost always general-purpose small business or economic development grants where a restaurant competes against every other industry and enjoys no advantage; industry-specific state restaurant programs barely exist outside tourism marketing. Local programs are the opposite: they are gated by address, they are usually about the physical premises, and the applicant pool is limited to businesses inside a designated district — which is exactly what makes them winnable. Eleven municipal programs sit in this catalog slice, ranging from $5,000 to $250,000, and they are the largest grants an ordinary independent restaurant realistically wins. The single highest-value action on this entire page costs one phone call: ask your city’s economic development office whether your address falls inside any designated commercial improvement area.

Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) for commercial districts

CDBG funds administered by local governments often include commercial facade improvement programs, small business loan pools, and in some jurisdictions, operating capital grants for businesses in designated commercial corridors. Restaurants located in CDBG-eligible commercial districts -- typically lower-income or distressed commercial areas -- can access these programs for building improvements, equipment, and signage. Contact your city or county economic development office to ask whether your address falls within a CDBG-funded commercial improvement area and what programs are currently active. Because CDBG money is allocated to jurisdictions rather than to businesses, the program names differ everywhere and none of them contains the word grant reliably — look for facade, storefront, corridor, main street, or commercial revitalization in the title. In this catalog the CDBG-descended programs range from $5,000 in Baltimore to $250,000 in Chicago, and 6 of the 11 were open on August 28, 2026.

The 11 municipal storefront and build-out programs in this catalog

These are specific, currently-tracked city programs rather than examples of a category, and the range between them is enormous. Amounts vary by a factor of 50, from Baltimore’s $5,000 facade grant to the $250,000 ceilings in Chicago, and so does the effort: the Baltimore program is a site meeting with the Baltimore Development Corporation and a form, roughly 10 hours of work, while Chicago’s Neighborhood Opportunity Fund is a quarterly review cycle with about 19 hours of application behind it and a 75% reimbursement structure. Six of the eleven municipal programs were open on August 28, 2026; the rest run annual windows, several of which fall between December and April. Read the shape column before the amount — a $90,000 reimbursement you must fund upfront is a different proposition from a $25,000 grant paid on approval.

Twelve city programs, by amount

Twelve rows covering the 11 municipal programs in the slice plus Michigan Match on Main, which is state-administered through local downtown organizations. Every state hub on GrantCompass surfaces the programs active in that state, including facade and commercial-district grants like these.

How a city storefront grant actually works: reimbursement, pre-approval, match

Municipal storefront grants share three mechanics that catch first-time applicants, and all three are about timing rather than eligibility. First, most are reimbursement programs: you pay the contractor and the city repays you afterwards, so you need the cash or a bridge, and a grant of $50,000 does not remove the need for $50,000 today. Second, nearly all require approval before work begins — Baltimore’s program states that grants must be approved before work starts, and starting early disqualifies the expense entirely. Third, many require a match: Baltimore is 1:1, Michigan Match on Main is 10%, New Orleans RENEW Plus reimburses 85% and leaves 15% with you. The correct sequence is therefore: confirm your district, get approval in writing, then sign the contractor — not the other way round, which is how most of this money is lost.

State economic development grant programs

Most states run small business grant programs through their economic development agency, department of commerce, or a designated small business development organization. These typically award $5,000 to $100,000, are competitive, and do not restrict eligibility by industry — a restaurant competes alongside retail, professional services and light manufacturing with no advantage and no penalty. Priority criteria vary and are where the real differentiation lies: some states prioritize rural businesses, others women- and minority-owned businesses, others businesses inside enterprise zones, opportunity zones or main street districts. Two structural notes worth knowing. These programs open and close frequently and are often poorly publicized, so a quarterly check of your state agency’s grant calendar beats any search. And several states channel their small business capital through the State Small Business Credit Initiative rather than through grants, which means the money exists but arrives as credit enhancement rather than as an award.

State-level ownership and set-aside programs for food businesses

Three state and federal designations affect restaurant owners from under-represented backgrounds, and they do different things. State MWBE certification — minority- and women-owned business enterprise — opens set-aside state procurement, which for food businesses means government cafeteria operations, institutional catering and event contracts. That is predictable revenue rather than grant money, and it is the strongest reason a restaurant would pursue certification. The SBA 8(a) Business Development Program similarly provides access to sole-source federal contracts, relevant primarily to operators running food service inside federal facilities. USDA socially disadvantaged farmer and rancher status adds scoring preference in USDA grant programs including value-added producer and rural energy awards, which matters if you have a production side. For grant programs gated on ownership rather than procurement, see who the applicant has to be above — almost none of them requires certification at all.

SBA loans for restaurants: the capital access reality

Grants for restaurants are scarce, so the practical capital source for expansion, equipment, renovation or acquisition is SBA-guaranteed lending, which prices a restaurant more favorably than conventional commercial credit does. Eight SBA and USDA loan programs in this slice are open to food businesses, from a $50,000 microloan through a nonprofit intermediary to a $25 million USDA Business & Industry guarantee. The guarantee does not make the money free and it does not make approval automatic — it makes a bank willing to look at a business category it would otherwise decline. What follows is which program fits which need, and an honest correction to the restaurant failure statistic that both lenders and restaurant guides repeat incorrectly.

The restaurant failure rate lenders quote is wrong, and the real number is public

“Sixty percent of restaurants fail in the first year and eighty percent within five” is repeated constantly, including in the previous version of this page, and it is not supported by research. The most-cited empirical study of the question — H.G. Parsa of Ohio State University, published in the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly in 2005 — tracked independent restaurants in Columbus, Ohio between 1996 and 1999 and found 26% failed in the first year, 19% in the second and 14% in the third, for a cumulative three-year failure rate of 59%.

The scope of that data is narrow — one city, one four-year window, independents only — and it remains the best-identified figure in the literature. Two things follow for a restaurant borrower. Restaurants are a genuinely higher-risk category and lenders are right to scrutinise them. And you do not have to accept a quoted 80% five-year failure rate as an unchallengeable fact in a loan conversation, because it is not one.

SBA 7(a): the primary restaurant loan

The SBA 7(a) loan is the broadest federal financing tool for restaurants. Uses include working capital, equipment purchase, kitchen renovation, leasehold improvements, refinancing existing business debt, and business acquisition — the wide use-of-funds is what makes it fit restaurant needs that a fixed-asset-only product cannot. Maximum loan amount: $5 million. Terms run up to 10 years for equipment and working capital and up to 25 years for real estate. For revolving needs rather than a term loan, SBA CAPLines provides guaranteed lines of credit up to $5 million across four tracks including seasonal and contract financing, which suits a restaurant with a genuine seasonal working-capital cycle better than a term loan does. SBA Express caps at $500,000 with a faster SBA turnaround and a lower guarantee percentage.

SBA 504 for restaurants buying their building

The SBA 504/CDC loan is the right instrument for one specific decision: buying the building you operate in, or acquiring heavy equipment with a long useful life. It provides fixed-rate financing up to a $5.5 million SBA debenture with as little as 10% down and 25-year terms, structured across a bank loan, a Certified Development Company debenture and the borrower’s equity. For a restaurant, the strategic case is that ownership removes the single largest uncontrolled cost in the business — the lease renewal — and converts rent into equity. The constraint is that 504 proceeds are restricted to owner-occupied real estate and long-life fixed assets, so it cannot fund working capital, inventory or a marketing launch. Restaurants routinely pair a 504 for the building with a 7(a) for everything else.

SBA Microloan and the mission-lender route

For needs under $50,000 — a used combi oven, a point-of-sale system, first-month inventory for a second location — the SBA Microloan Program is usually the better fit than 7(a). Microloans are made through local nonprofit intermediary lenders rather than banks, the average loan is about $13,000, and the intermediaries are far more accessible to a young restaurant without three years of returns. The SBA Community Advantage SBLC route to $350,000 through mission-based lenders is recorded as paused in the GrantCompass catalog as of August 2026, so confirm its status with a specific lender before planning around it; the underlying CDFIs continue to lend from their own capital either way — see the CDFI section above. See the full SBA microloan guide for terms and intermediary directories.

USDA lending for rural restaurants and food businesses

A restaurant in a rural community has a federal lending lane that urban operators do not. The USDA Business & Industry Loan Guarantee guarantees up to 80% of a commercial loan up to $25 million for rural businesses, covering working capital, equipment, real estate and acquisitions, with no application deadline. The Intermediary Relending Program reaches up to $400,000 per borrower at below-market rates through local nonprofit lenders. Community Facilities grants and loans fund rural community infrastructure — relevant to a food business only where it is genuinely community infrastructure, such as a food bank or a community kitchen, rather than a commercial restaurant. The SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loan remains available up to $2 million after declared disasters, and is a loan rather than the disaster grant many operators expect.

State loan funds, and who they are actually built for

State loan funds sit alongside the federal programs and are worth understanding for what they are not. The Oregon Business Development Fund lends up to $2 million and the JobsOhio Growth Fund $500,000 to $5 million, both aimed at growth-stage employers adding jobs rather than at a single restaurant refinancing a kitchen. Washington’s Revenue-Based Financing Fund is the exception that proves the point: $10,000 to $500,000 with repayments that flex to monthly revenue, built explicitly for underserved and seasonal small businesses, which is a restaurant’s cash-flow shape almost exactly. Most states channel this kind of capital through the State Small Business Credit Initiative, a $10 billion federal program delivered as state loan participation, loan guarantees and equity rather than as grants — so the question to ask a state economic development agency is not “do you have a grant?” but “which lenders do you credit-enhance?”

The sequence that maximizes what a restaurant actually collects

Worked scenario: what a two-location fast-casual restaurant would actually stack

Abstract funding categories are hard to act on, so here is a concrete stack built only from programs named above. Basecamp Bowls is a hypothetical fast-casual concept: two locations, 28 employees combined, leased premises in an older commercial corridor, and no prior claim of any credit below. It is deliberately not a full-service restaurant — the tip volume is small, it does not own its buildings, and it therefore fails the eligibility test for several of the largest items on this page. That is the point. A stack for an operator with real constraints is more useful than a stack for an ideal one, and it shows how the pieces compound: two entitlements the operator claims, one competitive grant worth $5,000 to $25,000, one loan of up to $50,000, and a fifth layer worth $5,000 to $90,000 that depends entirely on the address.

The four programs a two-location fast-casual operator stacks first

The fifth layer: the building, the address and the state

The four programs above are portable — they follow the business regardless of where it sits. The fifth layer is not, and for a leased fast-casual operator it is frequently the largest single item available. Whether Basecamp Bowls can reach $5,000 or $90,000 of storefront money depends entirely on whether either of its two addresses sits inside a designated commercial district, which is a yes-or-no question its owner can answer in one phone call and has probably never asked. The same logic applies to the state layer: a California location reaches Restaurants Care at $5,000 and PG&E or SCE equipment rebates; a Pennsylvania location reaches the Small Business Advantage Grant at up to $7,500; an Illinois location reaches ComEd’s small-business track at up to $30,000. Geography is not a footnote in restaurant funding. It is most of the variance.

What the stack adds up to, and what it deliberately leaves out

None of these four requires winning a national competition or giving up equity. Section 45B is an entitlement claimed on a form, WOTC is a hiring-paperwork credit currently paused rather than gone, the NGLCC–Grubhub grant is a modest competitive application on the funder’s own site, and the SBA Microloan is credit through a nonprofit lender. Every one is free to enter and verifiable on the funder’s own domain — a useful contrast with the scam pattern above. Three things are deliberately excluded from this stack, and their absence is the honest part: Basecamp leases, so Section 48E is unavailable on the roof and Section 179D closed to new starts on June 30, 2026; it is not a food producer, so the entire USDA lane is shut; and no state grant appears, because in most states a fast-casual restaurant competes at no advantage against every other industry. What a leased fast-casual operator can genuinely reach is credits, equipment rebates, a city storefront program and a microloan — which is a smaller and more accurate picture than most restaurant funding lists paint.

Your situation, specifically

Restaurant funding advice fails mostly because it is written for a restaurant that does not exist — one that is full-service, owns its building, hires constantly and has a spare 40 hours for an application. The four situations below are the ones that actually determine which half of this page matters to you: whether you have tip volume, whether you hire at volume, whether you want cash for a specific project, and whether you own the premises. Each names the first concrete step rather than a category, because the difference between a restaurant that collects this money and one that does not is almost never knowledge — it is whether a specific question got asked of a specific person. The four questions, in order, are worth roughly $33,000 a year on $500,000 of tips, $2,400 to $9,600 per qualifying hire once WOTC returns, a $5,000 accessibility credit against a $10,250 project, and up to $250,000 of city build-out money in the right corridor.

Decision tree: where do you start?

Four questions sort every restaurant in the United States into the right funding lane, and they are about payroll, hiring, property and purpose — not about cuisine, size or ambition. Work through them in order. The first two decide whether you are leaving federal tax credits on the table, which is where most of the recoverable money is. The third decides whether the energy and building programs apply to you at all. The fourth decides whether a competitive grant is worth your hours, and which one. One caution before you start: the order is not arbitrary. Roughly $33,000 a year of Section 45B credit on $500,000 of tips, plus a $5,000 Section 44 accessibility credit, plus a few thousand in utility rebates, all arrive without competing against anyone — and they add up to more than the $50,000 median grant in this catalog pays once. Operators who work the tree in reverse, starting with grant searches, typically spend 20 to 40 hours on applications before discovering the entitlements they could have claimed in a single conversation with their preparer.

Questions one and two: do you have tips, and do you hire?

Questions three and four: do you control the property, and what do you want the money for?

Common mistakes restaurant owners make with funding

Most of the money left on the table by restaurant operators is not lost to competition or to scams. It is lost to a small set of avoidable errors, each one drawn from a program covered above, and almost all of them are errors of omission rather than judgement — the largest single one, an unclaimed Section 45B, is worth about $33,000 a year to a restaurant with $500,000 in tips — a form not filed, a question not asked of a preparer, a deadline that passed while the operator was reading about a fund that closed in 2021. The first five below concern the tax credits, which is where the largest recoverable amounts sit. The four after that concern grants, loans and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund.

Five tax-credit mistakes that cost the most money

Four mistakes about grants, loans and the RRF

Frequently asked questions

These are the questions restaurant operators actually search, answered against the statute, the form or the catalog rather than against general impression. Where a number is not published anywhere — how many restaurants claim Section 45B, for instance — this page says so instead of estimating. Where an earlier version of this page was wrong, the correction is stated rather than quietly swapped — four such corrections are listed in the method section, including the Section 45B $5.15 wage floor and the restaurant failure rate, which research puts at 26% in year one rather than the 60% commonly quoted. The 14 questions below cover the whole shape of the topic: whether the Restaurant Revitalization Fund is coming back, what Section 45B is really worth, what a new restaurant or a food truck can actually reach, what the largest realistic grant is, and why so little of this money exists in the first place.

Adjacent guides worth reading next

This page owns the durable structure of restaurant funding: what exists, what it pays for, who has to be asking, and the definitive Restaurant Revitalization Fund answer. Four adjacent guides go deeper on individual mechanisms that apply to restaurants alongside every other small business, and one companion page carries the dated list of what is open this month. Each is a genuinely different question, which is why they are separate pages rather than sections here. If you have read this far and want one next step rather than four, it depends on your shape: a full-service operator should read the WOTC guide next and then talk to a preparer about Form 8846 and Form 8850 together; a new or small operator should read the SBA Microloan guide, since $50,000 through a nonprofit intermediary is the most reachable capital in this entire page; and anyone who simply wants the shortest realistic list should start with easiest small business grants.

Guides that go deeper on one mechanism

The dated companion: what is open this month

This page is deliberately structural. Program windows move constantly — a corporate restaurant grant is closed for roughly 46 weeks of the year — so the dated question has its own home: restaurant and food business grants open now, rebuilt against the live catalog and labelling every row as a grant, loan, tax credit, competition or support program. Use this page to decide which lanes apply to your business, and that one to find out which of them has an open window today. If your restaurant is opening a second or third location in one of the country’s biggest restaurant markets, start with your state hub for the full localised incentive stack alongside the federal programs above: Texas, New York and Florida each combine a deep restaurant and hospitality base with their own state grant and loan programs.

How this page was researched, and who wrote it

This page is written and maintained by Khalid Hamadeh, founder of GrantCompass, an independent funding-discovery platform for US small businesses. GrantCompass is not a government agency, is not affiliated with one, and does not charge to apply for anything named here. Program facts come from the GrantCompass catalog of 736 US funding programs, filtered on August 28, 2026 to the 132 that reach food and beverage businesses. Statutory facts — credit rates, wage floors, form numbers, termination dates — were verified first-hand against the agency’s own document rather than against secondary summaries, and each source is listed below with the date it was read. Where a figure is not published anywhere, this page says so rather than estimating.

Primary sources, with read dates

• IRS Form 8846 (2025), Credit for Employer Social Security and Medicare Taxes Paid on Certain Employee Tips, form and general instructions, created 10/30/25 — the $5.15 wage floor, the per-employee monthly computation, the worked example, the $176,100 / $184,500 Social Security wage bases, the three-year amendment window, and the reference to Revenue Ruling 2012-18 on tips versus service charges. Read August 28, 2026.
• IRS Form 8826 (Rev. September 2017), Disabled Access Credit — the $250 minimum, $10,000 maximum, 50% rate, $5,000 credit cap, the eligible small business definition, and the November 5, 1990 facility limitation. Read August 28, 2026.
• IRS, “Tax benefits for businesses who have employees with disabilities,” irs.gov — the $15,000 annual Section 190 barrier-removal deduction and the confirmation that it can be used alongside the Section 44 credit. Read August 28, 2026.

Agency, department and research sources

• US Small Business Administration, “SBA Administrator Announces Closure of Restaurant Revitalization Fund Program,” sba.gov, July 2, 2021 — the $28.6 billion total, approximately 101,000 funded businesses, more than 278,000 eligible applications requesting $72.2 billion, and the quotation from Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman. Read August 28, 2026.
• US Department of Energy, “179D Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings Tax Deduction,” energy.gov — the June 30, 2026 construction-start termination, the $2.90–$5.81 per square foot range for the 2025 tax year, and the 25% energy-savings threshold. Read August 28, 2026.
• H.G. Parsa, Ohio State University, “Restaurant Failure Rate Much Lower Than Commonly Assumed, Study Finds,” news.osu.edu, September 7, 2003, and Parsa, Self, Njite & King, “Why Restaurants Fail,” Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 2005 — the 26% / 19% / 14% annual and 59% cumulative three-year failure rates. Read August 28, 2026.
• Federal Trade Commission, “Government grant scams,” consumer.ftc.gov, and the FTC fraud reporting portal at reportfraud.ftc.gov — the documented advance-fee grant scam pattern.

What we could not verify, stated plainly

Three things on this page are marked as unverified rather than presented as fact, because publishing a confident number that turns out to be wrong is worse than publishing a gap. The number of restaurants claiming Section 45B is not published. An earlier version of this page cited approximately 30,000 Form 8846 filers against 500,000-plus full-service restaurants; that figure could not be traced to any IRS Statistics of Income table and has been removed rather than repeated. James Beard Foundation award amounts and cycles are not in the GrantCompass catalog and are not verified here — check jamesbeard.org directly. And the Section 48E placed-in-service treatment of geothermal and fuel cell property was not resolved to a standard worth publishing; the accelerated 2027 deadline confirmed here is written for wind and solar facilities, and energy storage is confirmed as outside it.

Corrections made in this update

This revision corrects four things the earlier version of this page stated incorrectly, and they are listed here rather than silently changed. Section 45B’s wage floor is $5.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage as of January 1, 2007, not the current $7.25 — the earlier formula overstated the reduction for most employers and misdescribed the mechanism. States requiring full cash wages to tipped employees produce a larger Section 45B credit, not a smaller one; the earlier version said the opposite. Section 179D closed to projects beginning construction after June 30, 2026 and is no longer an option for a new restaurant retrofit. The restaurant failure rate is not 60% in year one; the research figure is 26%. If you find another error on this page, write to us and it will be corrected with the same visibility — GrantCompass is reachable through the contact route on our about page.

Scope, method and what this page is not

The 132-program slice is a broad tag and industry match against the GrantCompass catalog, judged program by program against the inclusion rule stated in the by-the-numbers section: 100 programs are linked, 32 are excluded on the record. Open and closed status is computed from published deadlines as of August 28, 2026 and will drift — the open-now companion page is the dated view. Nothing here is tax, legal or financial advice: Section 45B, Section 44, Section 48E and the Work Opportunity Tax Credit all involve computations specific to your payroll, your entity type and your state, and every one of them should be confirmed with a qualified preparer before it enters a return. Program eligibility, amounts and deadlines are set by the funders and change without notice; always confirm on the funder’s own site before relying on anything here.