NYC eateries speak out against Joe Biden telling them to hike worker wages
Restaurant owners pushed back after President Biden told a Ohio restaurateur he'd be 'in a bind' unless he raised pay, warning of thin margins already squeezed by past wage hikes.
New York City restaurant owners spoke out against President Joe Biden after he told restaurant owner John Lanni he would "be in a bind for a little while" unless he and other restaurateurs raised worker pay, according to Fox Business.
Rosario Procino, owner of Ribalta in Manhattan, said hiking wages would hurt the industry broadly: "Hiking wages will only bring the entire industry [to] its knee. In New York already, we had a minimum wage hike over 50% in the last few years," he said, per Fox Business's reporting.
Restaurant owners cited in the report also raised concerns about already-thin profit margins. One unnamed owner said, "The margins [have] already shrunk in the last few years [because of] the minimum wage raise increase. Now with the higher price of raw material, with the [increased] rent, it will bring the restaurant margin bottom line to 6-7%," according to Fox Business.
The remark that sparked the pushback
The exchange happened at a CNN town hall at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati on July 21, 2021, according to Yahoo News's account of the event. Lanni, an owner and co-founder of a Cincinnati-area restaurant group, told Biden his business was struggling to find workers amid the pandemic and asked whether the administration would do anything to encourage people collecting unemployment benefits to return to work. Biden responded that restaurant owners would need to pay $15 an hour or more, telling Lanni he would "be in a bind for a little while" until wages rose, per Yahoo News's reporting.
Lanni later told the Cincinnati Enquirer, in comments picked up by Yahoo News, that he did not find the president's answer sufficient. He said 80% to 90% of his own company's workers already made $15 an hour or more, and said he was disappointed Biden did not acknowledge the labor shortage as an industry-wide problem rather than one confined to owners paying low wages.
Why New York operators say they are different
New York restaurateurs quoted in the report pointed to the city's prior minimum-wage increases as already having compressed margins before accounting for rising food costs and rent, framing further mandated wage increases as a threat to already-thin bottom lines rather than a straightforward fix for worker pay.
Reaction beyond New York
The remark also drew criticism from Republican officials and business groups nationally, according to reporting from The Hill. GOP lawmakers and industry groups cited the exchange as evidence that the administration's wage guidance was disconnected from the economics small restaurants were facing, though The Hill's account, like the New York-focused coverage, did not include a detailed White House rebuttal to the specific criticism.
What is not confirmed
The retrieved coverage does not include a response from the White House or Biden's own account of the exchange with Lanni, nor does it specify whether any of the New York owners quoted had raised or planned to raise wages regardless.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Fox Business, Yahoo News and The Hill. It restores a story originally published on this site in 2021; figures are as reported at the time.