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“The cruel irony is who bore that cost most quietly: not the servers and bartenders whose base wages were rising automatically by law, and who routinely took home $40 to $50 an hour with tips — well above Denver’s minimum wage, and well above the wages of entry-level workers earn in any industry. It was the cooks. The dishwashers. The people working the hardest jobs in the building, with the fewest options and the least leverage saw the smallest gains during the years that Denver’s wage policy was celebrated as a victory for workers.”
-Delores Tronco, restaurant operator
“If restaurants realize that they cannot afford the increase in minimum wage and $25 an hour, they will look elsewhere to open their doors…So we will have restaurants closing in D.C. that can’t afford it, and we will also have restaurants who are interested in being in the region not looking to expand in D.C. proper.”
-Shawn Townsend, president and CEO of the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington
"There is no world where you'd project a 95% increase in the tipped minimum wage when you're writing a business plan or financial projections. It simply defies the imagination and flies in the face of reason."
-Independent full-service restaurant operator