Posted on 03/09/2017 12:25:34 PM PST by C19fan
Restaurant diners are footing the bill for rising minimum wages.
In lieu of steep menu price increases, many independent and regional chain restaurants in states including Arizona, California, Colorado and New York are adding surcharges of 3% to 4% to help offset rising labor costs. Industry analysts expect the practice to become widespread as more cities and states increase minimum wages.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Try this Bullsh-t, and I will eat at home every day, bedsides grilling time is nearing and I rather eat at home than go out.
Who do you thing pays their labor costs now?
But it’s not the fault of the restaurants. That’s a risky business from the start. More restaurants fail than succeed. It’s usually some guy or gal that loves to cook and feed people who hock everything they own to open a restaurant. Along comes Uncle Sam and raises the minimum wage and that throws their dreams under a bus.
We do, as part of the food bill. If the food price goes down 4% in lieu of the random surcharge, so be it, but if the restaurant is charging the same $10 for a burger as the place down the road that doesn’t charge extra for labor, guess where I’m going.
“But it’s not the fault of the restaurants. That’s a risky business from the start. More restaurants fail than succeed. It’s usually some guy or gal that loves to cook and feed people who hock everything they own to open a restaurant.”
For the Ma and Pa restaurants, you are exactly right. I have firsthand knowledge of this in my own family’s experience. So many restaurants start out on a shoestring, and gov’t rules and regs, be they federal, state, or local (many are local) just add insult to injury and make restaurant ownership turn into the impossible dream.
That is our “new normal” as well (for several years now). If I eat out at all, it is dollar-menu fast-food junk - and that is RARE.
Occasionally (once a year or so) I get a burger deluxe in a diner, and it is a real treat.
Same here. When the NYC area had the $15/hour strike months ago, I have no idea how it went but I suspect a lot of non-white workers stayed home or demonstrated, leaving a lot of non-white customers POed because they eat that crap all the time (literally every day).
I got the death glare opening a door for a woman at lunch today. She didn’t say thank you. Looked and acted like a miserable human being, but hey, at least she’s a liberated woman.
Lower income for the wait staff and constant whiney stories about how Americans are cheap and don’t tip enough.
Post of the day
I have a really hard time eating out these days. The only place I willingly go is my favorite Chinese restaurant - outstanding food prepared fresh, reasonable prices & good portions. Lucky for me they are in a neighboring county (we live near the county line) that does not have a “meals” tax on prepared food like the county where I live. If you buy a roasted chicken at the grocery, that’s a 5% tax added on because it’s “prepared” .... what a racket. I drive to the neighboring county to avoid the tax whenever I can.
That being said, my dad wanted a steak the other day (he’d had a medical procedure & was rewarding himself for getting through it) & we missed the lunch hour specials. I absolutely could not make myself order an $11-14 burger or pay even more for something else (he was paying, too). I ended up getting a couple of chicken chunks in sauce for $5.49 (appetizer item). Don’t even get me started on the price of drinks like $3 for a glass of tea. I always get water, never order wine or dessert.
Knowing what food costs & loving to cook makes paying exorbitant prices something I can’t deal with, especially when the food isn’t well-prepared and service is lackluster or worse. If I want crappy food and service, I can provide that for myself, at home, for a much cheaper price.
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