Mpls. Restaurant Group Raises Minimum Wage
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A major Twin Cities restaurant group is raising the minimum wage for some of its employees, and it's higher than the new state law requires.
The Blue Plate Restaurant Company owns eight popular spots, and will open a new restaurant at the State Fair Thursday.
Starting Sept. 1, Blue Plate's non-tip workers will earn $9.69 an hour -- a 21-percent increase over state law.
Tipped employees got a 75-cent increase when the new law went into effect Aug. 1.
When the new law was initially passed, the restaurant owners decided to take two percent from servers' tips to make up for some of the extra costs from the state law.
Two weeks later, they say they've changed their minds.
The owners started out as two servers and now own and run the Longfellow Grill, Edina Grill and Groveland Tap, to name a few.
After hearing negative feedback from the community and servers, they've decided to resume paying the two-percent fee that credit card companies charge merchants when customers pay with a card.
This will cost the business more, but the owners say they hope they will have less turnover and more efficient, happy employees in the long run.
They say they want people to see them as a business that listens to the feedback of its customers. They welcome people to come and discuss it at their new endeavor, Blue Barn, in the State Fair's new West End Marketplace.