9 Reasons It's Costing More to Eat Out
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New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s attempt to ban soda and other sugary drinks was shot down by the courts, but efforts in other cities are still under way. San Francisco is contemplating a 2-cents-per-ounce tax on sweetened drinks, and a similar proposal is under consideration in Telluride, Colo.
Source: Nation’s Restaurant News
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New York City and Washington, D.C., are both considering proposals to ban the use of Styrofoam containers. Restaurateurs claim that the containers are the cheapest, most efficient way to get a hot meal from a restaurant to a customers’ home.
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Current federal law mandates that gasoline manufacturers blend a portion of corn-based ethanol into the fuel they produce, which restaurant owners have denounced as unfairly driving up the price of corn and the livestock that feeds on it. Americans for Tax Reform claims that the program costs every restaurant an extra $18,000 each year.
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Several large cities, including new Seattle, Milwaukee, and Portland, Ore., no mandate that all employers provide employees with paid sick leave. While the laws protect workers (and customers who may have been in contact with the sick employees), they’re one more additional cost for restaurateurs.
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Cities like Chicago, Minneapolis, and Virginia Beach have instituted “meal taxes,” additional taxes on food eaten at restaurants. Proponents of such taxes say that they mostly target higher-income individuals and tourists, but no matter who pays them, they’re driving up the cost of food.
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Voters in SeaTac, Wash., last month approved raising the minimum wage to a whopping $15. That move, and other recent actions like it by cities around the country, reflects months of protests nationwide by retail and fast-food workers demanding higher pay.
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Credit card companies charge restaurants a so-called “swipe fee” in order to process transactions using their cards. Ten states forbid merchants from passing these fees along to customers, and several others are considering such bans.
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A little known provision in the Affordable Care Aft requires that chain restaurants post calorie information about their meals on their menus. The FDA estimates that complying with the rules will cost $315 million in the first year, and more than $44 million each year after that.
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An estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants work in the restaurant industry, not counting the millions of others who work in its supply chain. An immigration reform bill that would offer illegal immigrants a path to citizenship has been rejected by House Republicans.
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