More than 500 bars in western Jamaica are set to be resuscitated from the COVID-19 slump in fortunes as Campari’s J. Wray and Nephew (JWN) pumps $35 million into a ‘Restart Pack’ initiative aimed at having an islandwide impact.

The initiative is geared at assisting 2,000 bar owners nationwide with the restocking and the reopening of their businesses, months after they were locked down as a result of measures to reduce exposure to coronavirus.

“The initiative is intended to assist in the recovery of small retail businesses and the Jamaican economy in general,” JWN’s commercial director for Jamaica & the Caribbean, Michelle Brown-Sinclair, told The Gleaner, hours after her team handed over boxes of products to bar owners in the county of Cornwall.

Another bar owner, Paul Graham, operator of Bonafide, Lawrence Lane, Montego Bay, whose relationship with the rum company spans 40 years, said that he was hit hard when he was forced to shutter his business.

The organisation’s president, Keith Duncan, described the move as “a considerable effort by JWN to support bar owners and an example of business partnership for economic recovery”.