STILLWATER, MN – A hike in the Minnesota minimum wage that kicked in on Friday, August 1 has prompted a suburban Twin Cities cafe to whack its customers with a “minimum wage fee”.
The Oasis Cafe in the picturesque town of Stillwater, Minnesota has become a lightning rod in the battle of pay for so-called unskilled workers who make the smallest salaries. This week, owners of the eatery have fought back in the wake of new state laws that mandate what a small business (annual gross volume of sales made or business done is less than $625,000) must pay its employees. In Minnesota, no employer may take a tip credit against minimum wages. An employee must be paid at least the minimum wage per hour ($6.50 an hour now, and bumps up again next year to $7.25 and then $7.75 in 2016) plus any tips the employee might earn.
According to reports, Oasis Cafe owners say a newly-imposed 35 cent fee on each customer bill “offsets the cost of an increased minimum wage for tipped employees” and the business may lose $10,000 a year due to the wage hike.
As customers got their bills this week, the reaction has been swift… and brutal.
Among the comments left on the Oasis Cafe Facebook page:
“Raise the prices if needed. Don’t play this game. People too cheap to care about workers getting a fair wage should stay home.”
“Talk about cheapskates. How embarrassing for the waitstaff.”
“If you were any good at math you could probably raise many of your menu items by a mere .10 and pretty much no one would notice or complain and get some extra cash to offset the wage increase.”
In support of the fee and the cafe owners, one man said “I think it is about time somebody demonstrated that these market manipulations imposed on businesses by overzealous government bureaucrats have very real impacts on the owners and operators of small businesses. Simple economics dictate that when government mandates an increase in the cost of doing business that increase is going to be passed on to the consumer.”
Another woman said “We will be making the drive to come and support your business. Bravo for pointing out where the price increase is coming from.”
Still another man said “when the government creates a new mandate, we all pay. Hiding it in a price increase does not change things. I think it is an honest way to bring this up.”
The Oasis Cafe is located at 806 Main Street S. in Stillwater, Minnesota.
https://twitter.com/exposeliberals/status/497123798663970816
This is a great example of how the $ .35 put on the receipt was necessary because he couldn’t put the additional costs for wages in the menu price to compete in the marketplace. Higher costs have forced many a business’s to close their doors.
Mandates are a slippery slope that lowers our standard of living.
Government mandates cause higher prices or “inflation”, less quality, and can force business to close resulting in less competition.
Bad deal all the way around.
Great idea. We all pay for the government legislated fees anyway. Why not have the consumer made aware of it? I would take it one step further.
There should be a line on every receipt that sets out the amount on the bill that is due to taxes too. Maybe if people truly understood how much money they were made to pay for everything they purchases was due to taxes, they would consider making the government more thrifty.
Nothing wrong with this at all. Show the people where the real cost is and let them decide if they want to pay for it.
If you can afford to go out and eat, you can afford .35 cents to help somebody make a decent living. I agree that government shouldn’t mandate wages, but if they didn’t, who would. Business owners want to have a decent living to, but sometimes they go overboard at the expense of their workers. It’s to bad that government doesn’t mandate to big business that they pay their CEO’S etc. way to much, off the backs of tax paying citizens.
It is his way to call attention, but it is the wrong message. Just jack up the price of the french fries, by a dime, hamburger by a dime and daily special by 15 Cents. Done– nobody would say a thing…
There are better ways to accomplish this than spit in the face of their own servers…
Wow, what a telling comment.
See how cunning a liberal socialist Demorat is. They would rather keep you in the dark so you don’t focus on how much the Demorats are really taking from your hard earned money.