In the wake of the recent minimum wage increase that took place at the start of 2019, many California businesses have decided to add a surcharge to the customer’s purchase checks. Businesses, like the Norms Restaurant chain, do this with the claim that they are helping customers save money by keeping prices low and passing the extra minimum wage increase to the customers instead of having the company pay for the extra cost of doing business.
The Norms Restaurant in the city of West Covina, along with all the rest of the Norms Restaurant chain, is one of the businesses who added the new surcharge. The extra charge was added on Jan. 10, 9 days after the wage increase went into effect on Jan. 1. This has been met with anger and pushback from the customers.
In fact, while standing in line to pay the check, many customers demanded to see the manager and asked that the charge be taken off the bill.
“It’s not fair, they should advertise that cost, tell us about it. That would give us an option if we want to eat there or not,” said May Pacheco, a mad customer that was forced to pay the surcharge.
Norms Restaurant does not tell customers about that surcharge until after the fact. Many people find the 3% surcharge particularly deceptive as they are not aware until after they have eaten and find the charge at the bottom of the dinner check.
They are not told by the staff when they enter the restaurant nor is there any signage outside the restaurant.
The only advisement is a small sign hidden behind the cash register unless a customer were to lean over the counter to read it. A week later, that sign was reduced to a fourth of its original size, a full color letter sheet, and hidden behind a larger sign advertising the daily specials. Even the color was taken off and it’s now just three lines of a text.
The small sign informs guests that they are being charged in order to “offset doing business in California without raising our menu prices, reducing portions or cutting back on our EXCELLENT Norms Service.”
While there are other businesses, such as that are also practicing this idea, they clearly post the sign outside on the door to the establishment. Consumers are notified that they will be charged an extra cost on top of the cost of their orders. This gives customers an opportunity to decide if they want to go in and eat or not, while at Norms, they are told by the wait staff or the cashier, after they finish eating and they have no choice but to pay it.
Yessica Toledo, the West Covina Norms general manager said she was not allowed to comment to the press so she referred the Clarion to the Norms corporate office.
“We added the charge so that it wouldn’t affect the quality of the food and service. We didn’t want to have to cut back on the number of employees nor the employees benefits,” said Isabelle, a customer relations corporate team member. Isabelle refused to provide her last name as she isn’t allowed to speak directly to the press.
So far, Norms Restaurant has not followed up on their promised call back for further questions.
Ever since the legislation to increase the minimum wage to $15 in the Los Angeles County and subsequently in the rest of the state, many businesses have been trying to figure out how they are going to pay for the extra costs to pay their workers. Especially the small businesses, commonly called “mom and pop shops,” can’t afford to pay their employees and have to increase many prices.
“We haven’t been able to hire anyone in a long time, and for the people that have been working here for a long time they were already making more than the minimum wage,” said Jennifer Marshall, owner of Lorisa Garden in downtown Glendora.
And it’s true, the new minimum wage increase has hurt the possibility of many new businesses opening up in the city of Los Angeles or in the County of Los Angeles. This has made doing businesses harder than what it used to be.
Many other business owners have predicted that raising the minimum wage would hurt their businesses. In the Forbes Magazine article, 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Survive A Rising Minimum Wage, written by Mike Kappel, he reports that a poll conducted by Wells Fargo and Gallup said that less than half of all small business owners polled prefered not to increase the minimum wage as it would hurt how many people they could have working for them. Others even said that they might to start letting their employees go.
The article’s main idea was tips on how small business owners could survive the minimum wage increase. Some of the tips for the businesses were to reduce their operating hours and to increase prices, both of which make it harder to gain more business from the customers.
“I only have two employees working for me; we did have to raise the prices of somethings, we have a gift wrap up and we had to raise the price of that,” said Lisa Gustarson, (cq) owner of a small stationary shop located in Glendora, Periwinkle.
But on the other side of the table, many of the employees have started to complain that the cost of living in the city of Los Angeles has gone up so much that it has become almost impossible to live off that. They say that they need the minimum wage increase in order to be able to afford to pay their bills and buy food for their families.
