A restaurant in Stillwater, Minn. has started charging patrons a 35 cent “minimum wage fee” now that the state has raised the minimum wage, according to the Star Tribune.
The wage jumped from $7.25 to $8 an hour on Aug. 1, and Oasis Cafe owner Craig Beemer said he needs the fee to offset the wage increase.
Beemer told the Start Tribune that it will cost him an extra $10,000 per year to pay his six servers a higher wage.
Some customers were upset by the fee, and few started organizing a boycott of the restaurant on Facebook.
Colin Orcutt, the restaurant’s manager, told the Star Tribune that he was “shocked” by the customer response to the fee.
“We’re all appalled at the response for just protecting his employees. We’re just doing what we have to do,” he said.
Blue Plate Co., which owns multiple restaurants in Minnesota, told the Tribune that it raised prices in its restaurants due to the wage increase and higher costs due to Obamacare.
A restaurant in Florida started charging customers an Obamacare surcharge to help pay for costs associated with Affordable Care Act compliance in February.
H/t Washington Post
What asses!
A 35 cent surcharge just shows how trivial it is to overall costs to pay employees something closer to a living wage.
What mean-spirited cheapskates they must consider their customers to be!
Yes, prices will have to rise in order to provide a living wage and health care for restaurant workers. Consumers can’t expect a Dollar Menu and decently-paid happy workers-the numbers don’t add up. That said, this “fee” is a silly way to do that. Just raise prices and if you feel you need to explain why, just do so. Also, be prepared to open your books and show that the additional revenue is going to the workers and not into your own pocket.
If he’d just raised the base prices of his food items just a little, it wouldn’t have been a big deal and most people wouldn’t have noticed or cared. But I suspect that this “surcharge” was a way of trying to push the blame for the price increase off on his employees [or the government], fortunately it seems to have backfired.
If his cost for of an ingredient on an item in the menu goes up, will he add an extra fee for that, or just raise the price? What about his rent?
The guy could have slightly raised prices and no one would have noticed. Instead he had to be a d-bag and let the world know that he thinks he is really the victim here.
“We’re all appalled at the response for just protecting his employees. We’re just doing what we have to do,” he said.
Uh… You are serving the public. Whatever happened to “the customer is always right?”