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Rising wages, food costs and labor shortages transforming how SLO restaurants do business

Samantha Payette (left) with Shanny Covey, co-owner of Luna Red in San Luis Obispo, California
Thomas Wilmer

The San Luis Obispo restaurant industry is facing increasing costs on multiple fronts. Current and impending issues include a rise in minimum wage to $15 per hour, a regional labor shortage, mandated health care, sick leave, along with rising food costs. Restaurant owners are brainstorming ways to modify their business models, including instituting a service charge or surcharge.

Shanny Covey co-owner of Robins Restaurant in Cambria, Novo and Luna Red in San Luis Obispo, and Samantha Payette, Culture and Talent Development with Blue Mango Restaurant Management Services share ideas about ways to keep pace with rising costs and creating a more equitable wage model.

Ideas include attempts to level the playing field between servers who receive tips and “back of the house” cooks, prep workers and dishwashers who are now forbidden by law to receive pooled tips from the servers.

Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer NPR One, Apple Podcast album art
Credit Kornreich Design, San Luis Obispo California
Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer NPR One, Apple Podcast album art

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Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer winner of the Lowell Thomas Award 2017, 2016, 2015, 2013
Credit SATW Foundation
Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer winner of the Lowell Thomas Award 2017, 2016, 2015, 2013

 

Tom Wilmer produces on-air content for Issues & Ideas airing over KCBX and is producer and host of the six-time Lowell Thomas award-winning NPR podcast Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer. Recorded live on-location across America and around the world, the podcasts feature the arts, culture, music, nature, history, science, wine & spirits, brewpubs, and the culinary arts--everything from baseball to exploring South Pacific atolls to interviewing the real Santa Claus in the Arctic.