As the Bay Area continues to shelter in place to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, many restaurants, cafes and catering companies, providing services classified as “essential,” remain open to provide food to the public. Michelin-starred kitchens and neighborhood sandwich shops alike have transitioned to this new reality and the photographs of the line cook and delivery driver in semi-surgical gear have become iconic images of the outbreak.

In response, we’ve lauded their resilience and called them heroic, rallying behind their efforts by ordering takeout, buying gift cards and sharing links to GoFundMe campaigns for laid-off staff. Indeed, many of these businesses are doing commendable work, including pivoting to provide wholesome meals to medical professionals and people facing food insecurity.

But, ultimately, if we’re serious about flattening the curve of infections, we need to allow restaurants, cafes and other food businesses to do what governments have asked so many other industries to do: close to the public.

The fact that many haven’t been able to do so is an indictment of an economic system that gives them no financial incentive to keep their employees home.

Food businesses shouldn’t have to balance the fates of their employees with public safety. That’s an inhuman moral dilemma and a completely capitalist fabrication. A choice you make because, if you choose otherwise, people in your employ will lose life-saving health coverage or stable housing. What is the point of preserving someone’s life while also ruining it?

To close temporarily, even for a week, is incredibly punishing to the vast majority of food businesses. They are still on the hook for rent, utilities, sales taxes, benefits and payroll taxes.

Closing would be even more punishing for those who work at those businesses: members of the working class who still need to pay for rent, health care and various debts. Unemployment benefits can help allay some of those costs. But many food industry workers make the majority of their income from tips, and these are not counted when determining benefits. And according to a 2008 report by the Pew Hispanic Center, 20% of restaurant workers are undocumented but, despite paying into that system, they are ineligible for those payments.

The coronavirus outbreak is revealing the seams of the system that we have for so long pretended was normal. Does it make sense that restaurants are a cash industry, making barely enough to pay workers and their purveyors even in good times? Does it make sense that so many of these restaurants have had to lay off their employees in order to comply with public health orders, severing them from health insurance?

In a series of Instagram essays, chef Tunde Wey writes: “Without additional intervention it seems many restaurants will die. But what exactly will die?” He lists the many fractures of the food service model: its de facto racial and gender segregation and its propensity to solidify class differences.

What we’ve seen so far from the federal government has not made the decision to close easier. According to the Small Business Administration’s guidelines for the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), issued April 2, what was pitched as a forgiveable business loan with a 10-year repayment plan has morphed into one that must be repaid in 2 years with 1% interest.

If a business doesn’t rehire all of its staff by June 30, a large chunk of that loan will qualify as non-forgiveable. It’s unimaginable that restaurants will recover enough to rehire their entire pre-coronavirus staffs even by the end of 2020.

Another restriction requires recipients to use 75% of the forgiveable portion of the loan on payroll, while the remaining 25% can go to utilities, rent and other overhead costs. In San Francisco, where the skyrocketing costs of commercial rent have already chased many businesses out of the city, that proportion makes no sense.

And while we think of the restaurant business as one that is a welcome home to people who have had interactions with the criminal justice system, many of them racial and economic minorities, PPP excludes such people from qualifying for those loans at all.

Not that anyone is having an easy time even applying for the PPP, which is handled by banks, credit unions and other lending instutitions. Restaurant owners like Stevie Stacionis, co-owner of Bay Grape and Mama in Oakland, have reported that applications were inaccessible at banking websites at the program’s launch.

And even though evictions have been put on hold by San Francisco, commercial and residential landlords still have the right to demand rent be paid in full in the future. The result is a ticking time bomb: We might see restaurants come back from this in May, only to shutter en masse when they have to start paying back their loans and deferred rent.

Thankfully, we’re seeing groups like the Bay Area Hospitality Coalition, which came together quickly after the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place orders were first announced on March 16, channel frustration into political action. The group has already linked up with coalitions around the country to provide a unified voice for independent food businesses, now and post-coronavirus.

And what is “post-coronavirus”? Will we be prepared for the next time, if and when the virus comes back around? If the food industry only barely makes it through this round, the next will surely be its death knell.

Decisive policy action now will help not only stanch the bleeding but improve the industry’s future ability to take care of its 1.56 million workers. Here’s what needs to happen.

Free and easy-to-access coronavirus testing for food workers. The city of Oakland has already put this measure into place, which will go a long way toward giving food workers peace of mind.

Rent forgiveness, not just deferment. Pushing rent payments a month or two down the line is asking too much of businesses that won’t see pre-coronavirus levels of businesses for much longer than that. A residential rent freeze would also help workers immensely.

Better PPP terms with more realistic terms of forgiveness. PPP should also reward businesses that are operated or staffed primarily by racial and/or sexual minorities and allow owners who have had brushes with the criminal justice system to participate.

Unemployment benefits or grants for undocumented workers and entrepreneurs, who make up 20% of restaurant labor. And for those who seek help, protection from detention by ICE.

Insurance coverage for losses due to coronavirus. Across the food industry, claims are being rejected by insurance companies because they’re not due to “physical damage.”

Health care for all. Finally, employers face a particular moral crisis: Laying off workers would mean severing their connection to health care during this crisis. By disentangling health insurance from employment, that dilemma dissipates.

With all of this in place, restaurants and other food business could freely close, protecting workers and staying out of debilitating debt. And then, in the future, actually reopen.

Soleil Ho is The San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic. Email: soleil@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hooleil