Owner of 'working class' eatery goes on Fox News to complain 48¢ wage hike is 'crippling'

Delores Tronco, the founder and CEO of the Denver restaurant “Work & Class,” took to Fox Business Friday to decry an impending minimum wage hike of $0.48 cents as “crippling,” while moments later, championing her eatery as a “nod to working-class people.”

Fox Business’ Stuart Varney asked Tronco to speak to the challenges facing Denver-area restaurants like her own, to which she said that, “above all,” the biggest issue was Denver’s “rapidly-increasing tipped-minimum wage.”

In 2019, the minimum wage and tipped-minimum wage in Denver, Colorado was $11.10 and $8.08, respectively. After the city’s council voted that year to tie both minimum wages to the Consumer Price Index, it now rises annually, and by 2025 had risen to $18.81 and $15.79, respectively.

“Those wages increase each Jan. 1 with no ceiling, and no review by city council!” Tronco said. “So as you can imagine, seeing a 95% increase in your labor costs is pretty crippling!”

Next year, the projected price hike to both Denver’s minimum wage and tipped-minimum wage will be $0.48 cents, which Varney noted did not “seem to be a whole lot of money.”

“On Jan. 1, I believe that the minimum wage in Denver goes to $19.29 an hour; that's up $0.48 cents from where it is now,” Varney said. “That doesn't seem to be a whole lot of money. You can't afford it?”

Tronco acknowledged that, on its face, a $0.48 cent wage hike did not sound like a lot, but said its compounding effect has left restaurant operators “scrambling.”

“It doesn't, but when you look at those compounded increases since 2019, it really starts to tell the story,” Tronco said. “...It doesn't sound like a lot, does it? It's $0.48 cents, but when you multiply it and you look at it at scale, it's got operators scrambling.”

Tronco was also asked about the name of her restaurant, “Work & Class.” She explained that it was chosen to pay homage to “working-class people,” a class of workers whose earnings primarily come from wage labor, as opposed to business owners like Tronco, whose actual earnings stem primarily from the labor of their employees.

“It was a nod to working-class people!” Tronco explained. “It was this idea that work and class are sort of the things that we have to do as we are growing into adulthood, and it was the idea that it was a place for working-class people to come and just enjoy themselves and be able to take a load off.”

Wage information for Work & Class employees was not readily available, though Tronco’s concern over minimum wage hikes would suggest they’re paid at minimum wage, or close to it. The restaurant serves Latin American cuisine and describes itself as “unpretentious, informal, and a bit irreverent.” Menu offerings include a $12 tofu spam appetizer, $14 draft cocktails, and a large side of leek mashed potatoes for $19.

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