Fourth in a series. 

Re: “Shulman Worries When Patrons Will Say ‘That’s All’” 

When the new Los Angeles City Council-mandated minimum wage law of $15 an hour gradually is imposed, and prices necessarily will rise, Alan Shulman, owner of two Downtown restaurants, predicts patrons will raise their arms and cry out “Enough!”

What happens next?

“Great question,” says Mr. Shulman.

“In there is the mystery. We (entrepreneurs) all are wrestling with that. We all – 400 restaurants in the Los Angeles area – are part of a group, organized, the L.A. Independent Restaurant Assn.

“These are 400 of your better full-service restaurants,” said the owner of Akasha and Sambar.

“All of us – Culver City, Santa Monica, all of Los Angeles County, are wrestling with this. We don’t understand. We never have disagreed. We don’t disagree with the increase in  labor.

“But the increase in labor for us, in our world, is impacting the front of the house because this is where the minimum wage factor is a factor.”

Mr. Shulman and his fellow restaurateurs stridently believe that generously-tipped waiters and waitresses, already the highest earners, will be boosted into the relative stratosphere if they are not subtracted from the $15 wage ordinance.

“And yet,” said Mr. Shulman, “those in the front of the house (waiters/waitresses), at the end of the day, are the highest paid people in the restaurant because of tips.

“If you don’t factor tips into the (new minimum wage) equation,” Mr. Shulman said, “the front of the house is going to benefit the most.

The irony is, “they are not even asking for it.”

(To be continued)