The Consumer Bankers Association urged the SBA and the Treasury Department to issue guidance that would allow banks to continue processing loans in the SBA's "E-Tran" system until lawmakers and the administration agree on the next round of funding. Entering loans into the system would ensure small businesses would be able to receive money without being subject to a further backlog, CBA president and CEO Richard Hunt said.

"We are trying to help as many businesses as possible, but we know the window is closing," Tioga State Bank President and CEO Robert Fisher said.

Restaurants have been among the hardest hit businesses during the Covid-19 outbreak because of shutdown orders nationwide. They have been forced to depend on delivery and takeout orders to keep the lights on.

Potbelly and Ruth's disclosed their loans in SEC filings.

Potbelly told investors that a subsidiary was granted a $10 million loan by JPMorgan Chase under the Paycheck Protection Program on Friday. Ruth's said in its SEC filing that two of its subsidiaries were granted loans on April 7 by JPMorgan for a total of $20 million and that the company will use the proceeds primarily for payroll costs. The maximum loan amount a company can receive under the Paycheck Protection Program is $10 million.

The loans were among the 3,273 that the SBA and banks had approved for $5 million or more as of Monday, according to the agency's data. The total amount of loans approved for at least $5 million totaled $22.8 billion — or 9 percent of all those approved.

Potbelly and Ruth's did not respond to requests for further comment.

Amanda Fischer, policy director at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, said the Small Business Administration definition of what qualifies as a "small business" has made funding constraints more pressing.

"If policymakers’ responses to the coronavirus recession reinforce rather than mitigate the trend toward the increasing concentration among large firms and declining small business dynamism, then our country will emerge more fragile, more concentrated and less equitable than it was before," she wrote Tuesday.

