New regulations are forcing businesses to raise prices and cut back on hours and operations to stay open.
As the CEO of a restaurant operation that comprises three cafes and a diner, Matt DiGregory’s job is to keep his 300-employee-large business running, according to the Albuquerque Journal. But with each new regulation passed by Albuquerque, New Mexico city councilors, the difficulty increases, and businesses such as his are balancing customers’ needs with keeping their businesses afloat.
Minimum wage hikes have increased his staffing expenses by 10 percent, monthly health insurance costs jumped from $12,000 to $20,000 and his unemployment insurance costs have climbed by 40 percent to the tune of roughly $80,000 per year, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
For DiGregory, the culmination of these regulations forced him to to increase the cost of menu items at the expense of customers. And he’s not alone.
Other Albuquerque business owners face similar difficulties, which have forced them to likewise raise prices along with foregoing their own paychecks or eliminating jobs. In Seattle, where businesses have seven years to adjust to a $15 minimum wage law, some restaurants are already folding. Throughout the country, state minimum wages are placing a burden on small businesses, from Oregon to New York.
“I think every year it gets tougher because there are more rules to follow,” NFIB New Mexico State Director Minda McGonagle said in an interview with the Albuquerque Journal.
Back in Albuquerque, DiGregory’s meeting the challenges as best he can: implementing stricter standards in the kitchen, tightly managing workers’ schedules, cutting jobs when he has to and forgoing his own paycheck at times.
“I’d give anything if we could go back to the prices we were charging 10 years ago,” DiGregory told the Albuquerque Journal. “But there are so many things tacked onto us that we have to compensate for.”
See the latest in NFIB’s fight to curtail small business regulations.
