Mom-and-Pop Restaurants Feel Pinch of Minimum Wage Hike
LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J.—As far as Rob Pluta is concerned, New Jersey lawmakers who say they want to help restaurant workers by raising the state’s minimum wage for tipped employees have it all wrong.
“This will cripple the restaurant industry,” Rob Pluta says of New Jersey’s minimum wage hike.
If Trenton wants to help these workers, says Pluta, who owns and operates Leonardo’s II, an Italian eatery in Lawrenceville, it needs to promote the state, not enact even more mandates.
There is Revolutionary War history everywhere around Lawrenceville, population about 4,000. It’s not too far from Trenton, where Gen. George Washington launched his famous Christmas night surprise attack on Hessian soldiers garrisoned there. The Battle of Trenton and Battle of Princeton were fought during the “Ten Crucial Days” that reinvigorated the colonists and to this day are the subject of elaborate re-enactments during the Christmas season.
Rob Pluta owns and operates Leonardo’s II, an Italian eatery in Lawrenceville, N.J. (Photo: Leonardo’s II Facebook Page)
“There’s so much rich history here and so much potential for our business community,” says Pluta. “But the price of doing business keeps going up, and it makes New Jersey less competitive than it should be with neighboring states.”
Pluta wasn’t …read more