Minimum wage and restaurants

Council Members Benjamin and Speer proposed an informal group to build relationships between restaurant owners and workers following minimum wage debates, aiming for possible policy recommendations by the next council retreat. Council unanimously endorsed starting the conversations without committing staff time or the next council.

Council members Matt Benjamin and Ryan Schuchard proposed starting informal relationship-building conversations between restaurant owners and workers, growing organically from groups like the Boulder Restaurant Alliance, with a goal of possibly bringing recommendations to a future council retreat. Council unanimously endorsed moving forward.

No council member moved the staff-recommended motion to amend Ordinance 8754. The mayor noted this means no action was taken, so the existing minimum wage and tip offset schedule adopted in 2024 proceeds unchanged into 2027.

After public comment, council members Speer, Schuchard, Marquis, Brockett, Benjamin, Kaplan, Winer, Adams, and Brockett again each spoke against increasing the tip offset this year and in favor of keeping the 2024 minimum wage schedule as planned for January 2027. All backed forming a restaurant and worker task force to look at rent, fees, and other business costs instead.

“It is none of us. It is all of us or none of us.”

Downtown Boulder Partnership CEO Tammy Door, Boulder Chamber policy director Jonathan Singer, and Colorado Restaurant Association staffer Jade Wood each asked council to form a restaurant industry and worker task force instead of relitigating the tip offset every year. Wood said 498 Colorado restaurants closed in 2025 and many now operate on margins near 1 percent.

Assistant professor Rebecca Mitchell criticized the city's June 2026 report as a post hoc justification for a chosen policy. She said the report cherry-picked labor costs while ignoring rent, insurance, and other cost drivers, and that the online calculator visually framed a wage loss for tipped workers as a gain.

28 members of the public spoke during the public hearing on the tip offset. Most speakers, including many restaurant and hotel workers, labor organizers from the Boulder Area Labor Council and New Era Colorado, and CU Boulder students, urged council to keep the current minimum wage schedule and not increase the tip offset. Several linked the issue to a union organizing effort by Unite Here Local 23 at the Hotel Boulderado, now owned by AJ Capital.

“You were elected to serve all Boulderites, not just the wealthy few.”

Staff presented Ordinance 8754, which would set a local tip offset for food and beverage workers in 2027. Staff gave four options ranging from no change to freezing the base wage at $13.80 through 2028, and showed sales tax and job data suggesting the restaurant sector is flat or declining. A city survey of about 280 people found most restaurant workers and community members wanted no change, while most restaurant owners wanted a larger change.