One Restaurant Owner's Response To Minimum Wage Increase: Screw The Waitstaff

One restaurant chain's solution
to a minimum wage increase?
Stiff the waitstaff.  

Out in Minnesota, they've just increased the minimum wage to $8 an hour.  That's a good thing. Minimum wages have scarcely gone up over the past decade, and why should workers live in poverty?

And why should we taxpayers pay for their public assistance when their employers should be paying them, not us?

However, some business owners, especially some people who operate restaurants, are not thrilled by this.

Of course, they're passing along the added cost to consumers, which is what a business owner normally does when expenses go up.

The worst response to the price increase came from the owner of a chain of eight Minneapolis-area restaurants who will put a fee on credit card payments by customers that would deduct about 2 percent of a server's tip.

I know that's not much, but imagine what it's doing for morale. Hey the waitstaff gets a government mandated pay raise? Let's just take it away by imposing this fee and essentially deducting your pay.

As Consumerist notes, this is all perfectly legal, but I wouldn't want to work for the loser who decided to do this.  Probably good wait staff will seek employment elsewhere, leaving the incompetent ones at this chain of restaurants. I wouldn't want to eat there.

Another restaurant is  being criticized for putting a "minimum wage fee" on the bottom of each bill a customer gets.

Yeah, it reflects a bit of a pissy attitude. He could have just increased the price of some of the restaurant's offerings a little bit. But, again, he's just passing the added cost on to the consumer, and making them aware of why there is a price increase.

It's certainly not as bad as taking away a little bit of the wait staff's tips because you're pissed off at the government for increasing the minimum wage.

However, I would have just upped the price of entrees and put a sign in the restaurant or in the menu explaining why.

Maybe some customers would be happy to see their waiter getting paid enough to live on.