Something curious happened to me at Rudi's Deli in Winter Park, CO today. I ordered a very delicious sandwich, and paid with my credit card. Nothing strange so far. Rudi's uses Square for their POS, and I am set to receive an email from Square any time that my card is used in their system. When I received the receipt today in my email, I noticed a new surcharge that I have never seen before. It was a Minimum Wage Surchare of 5%.
Colorado is currently going through a minimum wage increase to $12 per hour by 2020. As part of the plan, the minimum wage was increased to $10.20 on January 1st, 2018. Check out this colorado.gov link that has information about all of Colorado's labor and employment laws. I think we're going to be seeing these surcharges a lot more in the future, especially when patronizing family owned and small businesses who may have a difficult time absorbing the increased labor cost. This Washington Post article talks about a similar surchare at an Oceanaire restaurant in DC. In the article, it is argued that the restaurant should have simply raised prices instead of tacking this surcharge onto the bill unannounced. I agree with this. I was pretty unhappy and felt taken advantage of when I noticed the surcharge at Rudi's. The article also says that the surcharge included language that "shifts the blame to employees." I think that a surcharge such as this is more of a political statement than a shift of blame. I'm fine with business owners expressing their political views with surcharges such as this, but I just wish that they would be more up front about it.
Have you seen minimum wage surcharges at your local businesses? Let me know what you think in the comments. And also, what other surcharges do you think business owners could add onto their bills in order to make a political statement? I think the minimum wage surcharge is just one example of many possibilities.