During the pandemic, Kyre Williams took on his first managerial role in the local restaurant industry amid great debate around, and soon after the implementation of, a ballot measure that incrementally raises the tipped worker minimum wage until it equals that received by non-tipped workers.
Three years after this measure, Initiative 82, went into effect, Williams counts among those demanding that the D.C. Council supports D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) efforts to repeal it. He told The Informer that, despite supporters’ intentions, restaurants are struggling to maintain adequate staffing and quality of service.
“The biggest issue I have [deals] with cutting labor,” Williams said. “Now I’m making…decisions to put less money in other people’s pockets because I have to battle against this.”
At the time of Initiative 82’s approval, the tipped worker minimum wage was $5.35 while the non-tipped worker minimum wage was $16.10. As of July 1, those amounts are currently $10 and $17.95, respectively— although the tipped wage amount would’ve been a bit higher, if not for D.C. Council approval of a delay in a rate increase.
Per the current law, all District employees, including those receiving the tipped worker base pay of $10, are required to be compensated at the full minimum wage.
Tipped workers reach that threshold by adding tips received to their base pay. In situations where the total amount accrued doesn’t equal the full minimum wage, restaurant operators are obligated to make up the difference. As such, local restaurants in recent years have incrementally increased the price of their offerings, and, in several cases, imposed service fees and mandatory gratuity to meet this obligation.
At Williams’ place of work, only parties of six or greater have the 20% gratuity automatically added to their bill. While he said workers are comfortable with the process, Williams laments not being able to generate enough revenue to maintain the staff needed to operate the casual dining venue.
“I’m not an owner of space, but it’s still my job to make the schedules for people,” Williams told The Informer. “So when I have to sit here and look at how much money we make and see where I can kind of shave off, it’s slowly but surely…making an impact on people’s lives.”
Williams, whose 12 years experience in the local hospitality industry includes stints as a barback and security guard, first stood against the raised tipped minimum wage in 2018, when District voters approved Initiative 77, which the D.C. Council later repealed.
Since Initiative 82’s approval, Williams has counted among those who’ve spoken out against the law. Though he acknowledged the ballot measure’s intent, Williams said that it’s destroying an industry where tipped workers received more money, while restaurant operators kept costs at bay.
“Because of how fast the minimum wage increases, you don’t have time to think about [that] and that’s what we’re dealing with now,” Williams said. “I have to constantly worry [seeing] the money that we owe to each and every individual worker rise, regardless of what’s happening to the tip-out.”
As Williams explained, even customers are starting to feel the burn.
“Less people are starting to go out because prices are going up,” he said.
D.C. Mayor Bowser Speaks With Restaurant Owners and Tipped Workers
On Monday, Bowser and Shawn Townsend, president and CEO of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW), hosted a roundtable at Shaw’s Tavern in Northwest where they discussed Bowser’s proposed repeal of Initiative 82, as included in the Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Support Act.
Bowser, who announced her intentions around the ballot initiative in March, expressed her concern that, at a time when the District is trying to recoup tax revenue lost from federal government furloughs, local restaurants are losing workers and customers to dining establishments in neighboring cities and counties.
“We live in a very porous area, so it’s very easy for a worker, a bartender, or a patron to go across the border to experience dining, and I worry about losing all of that experience,” Bowser said during the latter part of the roundtable.
As the D.C. Council nears the end of the budget deliberation process, Bowser stressed the importance of her legislative counterparts supporting the Initiative 82 repeal.
She said nothing less would suffice.
“It’s important to continue to talk about this and challenge our policy makers not to…go down the middle,” Bowser said on Monday. “Sometimes when you go down the middle: ‘Well, I’m going to do a little something for these guys over here in the restaurants, but I can’t afford to make the out-of-towners or the unions mad, so, I’ll just stay here in the middle.’ And the middle is not solving the problem.”
Those who attended Bowser and Townsend’s roundtable included: WIlliams; Rahman “Rock” Harper of Hill Prince on H Street NE and Northern Virginia-based Queen Mother’s Kitchen; and Eric Heidenberger of D.C. Restaurant Group (which owns Shaw’s Tavern and five other D.C. restaurants); and Reid Shilling of Shilling Canning Company.
Other guests included Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Nina Albert; Ris Lacoste of RIS DC; and a handful of other tipped workers. For more than 40 minutes, as a group of Initiative 82 supporters stood outside Shaw’s Tavern, the restaurant workers and operators spoke candidly about their experiences since Initiative 82’s passage.
Yana Tarakanova, a longtime employee at Hank’s Oyster Bar in Southwest, said that, despite all that restaurant owners have done since 2022 to comply with the law, she hasn’t seen significant change in her financial condition.
“The increase to $10 an hour didn’t really make a big difference in my take-home earnings, but it created a big difference for restaurant owners who have to adjust in order to stay afloat,” Tarakonova told Townsend during the roundtable. “In its own turn, it affects positions on the floor, so there were a lot of positions cut or removed completely, left with runners, bussers.”
Tarakonova went on to say that bar staff who are fortunate to keep their jobs often have to deal with customers frustrated about the changes.
“Service fee, which is another option as of the initiative, doesn’t unfortunately encourage generous tips or any tips at all sometimes,” she said.
Eidenberger later revealed that D.C. Restaurant Group no longer enjoys a profit margin. He said that, since Initiative 82’s implementation, the restaurant operator had to significantly reduce its workforce while raising prices and exploring service charges at the six D.C.-based restaurants under its purview.
“Either you’re raising prices or you’re doing service charges, and restaurants are doing that to be able to make ends meet,” Eidenberger said. “We’ve had customers say they don’t enjoy that part of the service aspect.”
While Eidenberger wanted to build upon a family legacy started by his father nearly 50 years ago, he said that he is unable to follow through on that vision in the current economic environment.
“We wanted to open a new location every two years,” he said on Monday. “That was about creating something new in the community and elevating our staff. We have paused all expansion opportunities in D.C. just to focus on what we have, keeping spaces open.”
Without a repeal of Initiative 82, Eidenberger said D.C. Restaurant Group may not be able to hold on for much longer.
“We want to serve D.C. for another four years,” he said, “but it’s getting pretty tough.”
Restaurant worker Stacy Malary concurred, saying that, in the post-pandemic era, with fewer people working in front facing and barback positions, it’s becoming harder to maintain a level of service that people expect and appreciate.
“It’s just like we’re working harder, we’re also working less hours, because all the hours are being shaved to try and work with labor costs,” Malary said on Monday. “ I think that it’s something that everyone knows about, and I think the general public needs to be aware of, is that this all doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And workers are not in isolation, and then the owners are not in isolation.
How Best to Ascertain the Effects of Initiative 82
Over the past several months, as council members appear split on whether to approve the budget season repeal of Initiative 82, the war between proponents and opponents has centered on economic data.
RAMW released the findings of a survey at the beginning of this year revealing that 44% of full-service casual dining establishments operating in the District said they would likely close their doors in 2025. The survey, conducted between January and February, had responses from more than 200 D.C.-based restaurant operators.
Respondents cited Initiative 82 — along with decline in sales and customer traffic, rising food costs, federal government layoffs — as primary causes.
In response, UNITE Here Local 25 compiled data points indicating a healthy dining ecosystem. A report circulated by the union in March cited a nearly 4% increase in liquor licenses since Initiative 82’s approval. Other data points center on a 5% increase in the number of dining establishments within the same time frame, and a nearly 14% increase in the median income of those working in “food preparation and serving-related occupations.”
“Yes, there are restaurants that close, but there are restaurants that open,” said Paul Schwalb, executive secretary-treasurer of UNITE Here Local 25. “We just said there’s less money being earned by workers in the industry, but the budget office of the council came out with numbers that said exactly the opposite, so that’s just befuddling to me.”
Over the past several weeks, Schwalb and other members of UNITE Here Local 25 have engaged all members of the council, including D.C. Councilmembers Anita Bonds (D-At large), Matt Frumin (D-Ward 3), Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4), and Kenyan McDuffie (I-At large) in discussion about the proposed repeal. While Schwalb said he’s identified Lewis George and Frumin as allies of his cause, he hasn’t spoken to McDuffie, though he acknowledged both of their efforts to meet.
As it relates to Bonds however, Schwalb said she doesn’t appear hard pressed to learn more about the worker perspective.
“I think Councilmember Bonds has made her position clear: she is supportive of the mayor’s attempts to repeal the legislation,” Schwalb said. “I continue to be disappointed in the lack of respect for what the voters voted for on the part of Banz and some other folks.”
For Schwalb, the repeal of Initiative 82 is not a budget issue, rather one of policy.
“I think it’s just a bunch of owners who don’t want to pay their workers well,” he told The Informer. “For some reason, the mayor has decided that she doesn’t want to pay restaurant workers well either.”
In June, before the D.C. Council approved the pause on the incremental wage increase, some council members spoke about concerns they heard from local restaurant owners who, in response to the new wage requirements, imposed service fees on customers. Other council members, like D.C. Councilmembers Lewis George and Frumin, cited data indicating a post-Initiative 82 boom.
Nearly two months later, in its Fiscal Year 2026 budget mark-up, the council’s Committee on Executive Administration and Labor recommended the acceptance of Bowser’s proposed repeal of Initiative 82 with further analysis of the issue.
That analysis, according to the late June committee print, would happen in collaboration with stakeholders. A staffer in the council’s Committee on Executive Administration and Labor told The Informer that Bonds, committee chair, met with fewer than a dozen restaurant owners, managers and workers on both sides of the issue during the latter part of June.
The small group session, the staffer said, ensured the collection of feedback in the most effective manner possible.
“Our intention was not to have a session with 30 people all sort of expressing themselves in a way that wouldn’t have been productive,” the staffer told The Informer.
However, some restaurant workers, like Tom Luby, said that, without a wide spectrum of perspectives represented in the conversation, Bonds, Bowser and other elected officials are able to create a narrative that paints the restaurant owners as victims of an ill-conceived policy.
“There’s been just this consistent attempt to astroturf the conversation,” Luby, a tipped wage worker, told The Informer. “They’re trying to highly curate the tip workers that they’re hearing from by closing the doors, and then giving the owners…who are members of RAMW prime place while the rest of us are just locked out of the conversation.”
On Monday, Luby counted among nearly a dozen protesters who stood outside of Shaw’s Tavern in opposition to Bowser’s proposed repeal of Initiative 82.
One week earlier, as he recalled to The Informer, Luby and others unsuccessfully attempted to enter Bonds’ invite-only meeting.
“Even if we’re not allowed in the room, we’re making them kick us out,” Luby told The Informer as he gave his account of the June 30 encounter. “We made the mayor’s police escort walk the door to a point where, you know, normal patrons were going or trying to go in. They were checking to make sure that they weren’t actually industry workers.”
A staffer in Bonds’ office told The Informer that they engaged the group of Initiative 82 advocates during the latter part of the meeting, and well after. They affirmed that Bonds is relaying advocates’ concerns about wage theft in the absence of Initiative 82 to D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D).
“If tipped workers are not receiving the full minimum wage, that’s a bit concerning and we have to beef up wage theft enforcement with the Department of Employment Services,” the staffer said.
Nine months ago, Luby, a former federal government employee, first entered the restaurant industry as a tipped wage worker. He called the career change a preemptive measure against the furloughs happening under the second Trump administration.
For him, Initiative 82 has ensured that he and his co-workers receive consistent pay, regardless of fluctuations in customer traffic.
“If I’m on a shift that’s not very crowded, I still make more money than I would normally,” Luby said. “So it’s good to have that to fall back on. Last week when it was really hot out, I had my earnings cut in half because I just wasn’t making any tips, so the hourly wage made up the bulk of my earnings.”
On Monday, nearly a week after longtime downtown D.C. staple Georgia Brown’s announced its closure, Townsend said that any further implementation of Initiative 82 could decimate the local restaurant industry to a point of no return.
“D.C. historically has been in the 90th percentile in terms of small local business,” Townsend said. “If we go to a full minimum wage by 2027, we’ll see the reverse start to happen in the District, and that’s [affecting] little chains, more local, more Black, brown, diverse [restaurants].”
In speaking about service charges, what consumers call the bane of their dining experience, Townsend said that restaurant owners often have little choice but to implement them to fully comply with Initiative 82.
“It varies throughout the industry,” Townsend told The Informer.
Townsend, then gave a breakdown of what those service fees usually cover.
“Some of the money is going to health care benefits for workers or paid time off vacation,” Townsend said. “And then, quite honestly, a lot of it is being used to offset a consumer cost, [like] paying [employees in the] back of the house a little bit more money, because there’s that tension there as well created by Initiative 82.”
Some Nostalgia Among Some Tipped-Wage Workers
Some tipped workers, like Valarie Torres said, under the old system, she and others received well above the tipped minimum wage.
Now she said those funds go toward maintaining fidelity to Initiative 82, and not workers.
“Because this increase of the minimum wage is so exponential…in such a short period of time, some businesses are using that service charge to cover some of that increased labor costs, and then the employee gets the rest of it,” Torres told The Informer. “But you’re not getting 20% on top of your base wage. Then if you move in toward…elimination of tip credit altogether, and eliminating that base wage, then now that service charge is being used to cover the expense of paying the full minimum wage.”
Torres, one of the guests at the Monday morning roundtable at Shaw’s Tavern, counted among those who organized against Initiative 77 in 2018, and later Initiative 82.
Reflecting on her experiences, she admitted not thinking that the ballot measure would gain much traction.
“I didn’t even think it was going to get as far as it did,” Torres said. “And then I realized it’s because the people who were pushing it were using very misguided and false narratives to convince people to vote for it.”
During the roundtable, Torres, a restaurant industry worker of nearly 30 years, chimed in with her take on what restaurant workers endure in the new economic environment. She questioned why, amid concerns about wage theft, lawmakers couldn’t strengthen accountability measures rather than upend what she called an entire way of life for restaurant workers.
“As in any other sort of field or industry, those bad actors should be addressed,” Torres told The Informer, “and there should be [enforcement of] the actual law of the land, instead of dismantling an entire system that has been working for people for decades.”