From: Martha Hage To: MinWage Subject: Oppose $15 Date: Wednesday, June 21, 2017 11:57:39 PM To whom it may concern: A reasonable minimum wage is $12. The only locations in the United States of America that have a minimum wage of $15 are the East Coast and the West Coast. The cost of living is significantly higher in those areas. The cost of living would increase in Minneapolis and force people out of our city. Businesses would move out of Minneapolis or close. As stated above, a reasonable minimum wage for Minneapolis is $12. Sincerely, Martha M. Hage [email protected] 612.339.4959 Sent from my iPad From: Dahler, Ken on behalf of Council Comment To: MinWage Subject: FW: Minimum Wage To the city council attached document Date: Thursday, June 22, 2017 7:26:10 PM Attachments: To the City Council.docx Ken Dahler l Council Committee Coordinator l City of Minneapolis – Clerk’s Office l 350 S. Fifth St. – Room 304 612-673-2607 l [email protected] From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2017 9:13 PM To: Council Comment Subject: Minimum Wage To the city council attached document Margaret Hastings, MA, LPCC,CEAP,SAP This is confidential information. If received in error, delete and call Margaret Hastings at ph. 952-457-2288 From: JJ Haywood To: Quincy, John Subject: Minneapolis Minimum Wage Date: Monday, June 19, 2017 8:29:03 PM Dear Council Member Quincy: I'm writing you requesting that the Council reconsider the phase in to the $15/hr minimum wage ordinance. There is NO data (because no City has reached $15/hr yet) to support the claims that a $15/hr wage with no acknowledgement of tips is easy and won't result in job losses, business closures and the like. If the Minneapolis $15/hr minimum wage ordinance passes without acknowledging tips as income for restaurant servers/bartenders/delivery drivers, our Minneapolis restaurants will change for the worse. The vibrancy we are seeing with beer halls, neighborhood restaurants, coffee shops, bars, nationally recognized fine dining locations and the like will slow dramatically as full service and delivery restaurants grapple with dramatic wage increases for tipped employees currently paid minimum wage. Its important to note that in a full service restaurant, minimum wage tipped employees make up about 1/2 of the hours worked at the restaurant and with their tips earn among the highest wages in the restaurant - at Pizza Luce in Minneapolis our servers, bartenders and delivery drivers W-2 earnings in 2016 were between $22-30 per hour including the tips they claimed. Looking at the Ordinance as currently proposed with 2 increases in 2018 for "large businesses" we are forecasting picking up an additional $186,000 of wages in 2018 just to for directly tipped servers, bartenders and delivery drivers. This doesn't include the increases we will give to our other employees to keep pace with inflation and remain competitive in a very tight labor market. We will add a similarly large wage cost in 2019 and 2020 and 2021 as the wages continue to go up. Absorbing these costs without making serious changes to our business is impossible we are not alone in this - all restaurants in Minneapolis will need to look closely at what they do to remain in business. It has been infuriating to be shut out of the discussion on the minimum wage, the absolute refusal by the City Council and the Mayor to consider our position has been astonishing. It's as if small businesses don't matter and as if restaurants aren't part of what makes our city vibrant. As you prepare for the Council meeting next week I ask you to consider the following: 1. It is a myth that a table service and delivery restaurants can simply raise prices to cover the cost of bringing tipped employee wages to $15/hr. This is a $5.50 change (nearly 60% increase) in about 1/2 of the workers in a full service restaurant. The half that already earns well over $20/hr including tips. Demand for restaurant food is elastic, we cannot charge what what ever we want for our food and expect to stay in business. Many guests will not pay $30+ for a pizza, $16+ for a burger and $7+ for a local beer that would be required to "cover" this wage increase. 2. This increase will result in tipped (currently earning $20-35/hr) restaurant job losses as businesses manage increased labor costs by introducing tools like iPad ordering and/or making changes to their service model by abandoning labor intensive table service in favor of counter service. 3. At some point during the march to $15/hr, tips will be replaced by service fees on guest checks to help fund the base wage increases. These service fees will be retained by the business and used to fund employee costs. The adoption of these types of fees coupled with higher guest checks will start to kill the guest's appetite for leaving a gratuity eroding directly tipped full service restaurant employees' take home pay from $24-35 per hour to the actual minimum wage. This is why the Service Industry for Change is so concerned about this issue. I hope you will consider increasing business size--lots of local independent restaurants have a large number of employees as we employ lots of part-time workers we for example have 100 employees at our Downtown Minneapolis location. I hope you will look to save table service in Minneapolis by doing something different with tipped employees - either by acknowledging tips as income or stretching out the implementation schedule for these workers and finally I hope you look to preserve access to jobs for our youth by implementing a true youth wage not this 90 day training wage. Thank you. JJ -- JJ Haywood CEO Pizza Luce 612.554.1955 From: Brock, Lisa A on behalf of Reich, Kevin A. To: Rivera-Vandermyde, Nuria Subject: FW: Minneapolis Minimum Wage Date: Wednesday, June 21, 2017 4:16:16 PM Lisa Brock Council Associate Minneapolis City Council – First Ward 612-673-2201 [email protected] Subscribe to Ward 1 E-Mail Updates HERE From: JJ Haywood [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, June 19, 2017 8:23 PM To: Reich, Kevin A. Subject: Minneapolis Minimum Wage Dear Council Member Reich: I'm writing you requesting that the Council reconsider the phase in to the $15/hr minimum wage ordinance. There is NO data (because no City has reached $15/hr yet) to support the claims that a $15/hr wage with no acknowledgement of tips is easy and won't result in job losses, business closures and the like. If the Minneapolis $15/hr minimum wage ordinance passes without acknowledging tips as income for restaurant servers/bartenders/delivery drivers, our Minneapolis restaurants will change for the worse. The vibrancy we are seeing with beer halls, neighborhood restaurants, coffee shops, bars, nationally recognized fine dining locations and the like will slow dramatically as full service and delivery restaurants grapple with dramatic wage increases for tipped employees currently paid minimum wage. Its important to note that in a full service restaurant, minimum wage tipped employees make up about 1/2 of the hours worked at the restaurant and with their tips earn among the highest wages in the restaurant - at Pizza Luce in Minneapolis our servers, bartenders and delivery drivers W-2 earnings in 2016 were between $22-30 per hour including the tips they claimed. Looking at the Ordinance as currently proposed with 2 increases in 2018 for "large businesses" we are forecasting picking up an additional $186,000 of wages in 2018 just to for directly tipped servers, bartenders and delivery drivers. This doesn't include the increases we will give to our other employees to keep pace with inflation and remain competitive in a very tight labor market. We will add a similarly large wage cost in 2019 and 2020 and 2021 as the wages continue to go up. Absorbing these costs without making serious changes to our business is impossible we are not alone in this - all restaurants in Minneapolis will need to look closely at what they do to remain in business. It has been infuriating to be shut out of the discussion on the minimum wage, the absolute refusal by the City Council and the Mayor to consider our position has been astonishing. It's as if small businesses don't matter and as if restaurants aren't part of what makes our city vibrant. As you prepare for the Council meeting next week I ask you to consider the following: 1. It is a myth that a table service and delivery restaurants can simply raise prices to cover the cost of bringing tipped employee wages to $15/hr. This is a $5.50 change (nearly 60% increase) in about 1/2 of the workers in a full service restaurant. The half that already earns well over $20/hr including tips. Demand for restaurant food is elastic, we cannot charge what what ever we want for our food and expect to stay in business. Many guests will not pay $30+ for a pizza, $16+ for a burger and $7+ for a local beer that would be required to "cover" this wage increase. 2. This increase will result in tipped (currently earning $20-35/hr) restaurant job losses as businesses manage increased labor costs by introducing tools like iPad ordering and/or making changes to their service model by abandoning labor intensive table service in favor of counter service.