Yes! Weekly: Profile of Zaytoon Cafe

Yes! Weekly's Jordan Green has again produced a great piece on how the minimum wage hike might impact small businesses. This time he profiled Masoud Arwatani, owner of Zaytoon Cafe. Here is a bit of what you'll find in the entire profile:

The Awartanis support a proposed citywide minimum wage increase to $9.36 per hour.

"I would have to raise wages by a small percentage, so it's not going to hit me hard," Masoud Awartani says. "Zaytoon will not be hurting greatly if we were to pay $9.36."

He says the increase from the current statewide minimum wage of $6.15 is justified by inflation.

"From my economic background, if you increase the income of the middle class, they will tend to spend the extra money on luxuries, and there might be some chance for some families to save a little bit," Masoud Awartani says. "This [additional pay] that is going to add to their income is going to go back to the market and the city. It's more prosperity to the local economy."

He waves off concerns that the increase would drive corporate stores outside the city limits or shut down small, independently owned businesses.

"I know this increase in the minimum wage, it's around thirty percent," Masoud Awartani says. "It might have a certain effect on chain stores with the profit margins that they set. In my opinion it should not be a drastic hit.

"For a small business," he continues, "it should not be bad enough for them to shut down. They only have three or four employees, so their labor costs are not that great. If a business is to live or die on a three-to-four hundred dollar difference, that's a shaky business. That's a business that's already dying.

"It will affect the large business more, but they can absorb the costs. Food prices are much lower for a large business. They know how to negotiate prices down and buy in bulk."