No one’s going to stop frequenting your restaurant over a half-penny. Since covid local restaurants have annoyed me. There were those that could adapt and those that couldn’t. Then there were those that put on a show. I think what bothered me was I own a business that could do nothing but hunker down during covid while restaurants had many options like scheduled seating times, increasing outdoor seating, and a ton of other ways of working with the restrictions.
Now restaurants in Virginia Beach face a new challenge. The city is raising the restaurant tax by a half-penny and local restaurants claim all their customers will stop coming unless this is stopped and reversed.
They are right that the restaurant tax is too high to begin with but frustrates me watching them act like this is in anyway an imposition on them. They add it to my bill. They’re never going to pay a penny of it and have no issue adding credit card fees. If they don’t think an extra 3.5% charge is going to drive away customers then why do they think an extra half-penny will?
I will also say that none of the restaurants I have seen complaining are what I would call top tier. They are the same mid-level restaurants that complained about staffing issues coming out of covid and couldn’t figure a creative way out of that either other than shutting down and complaining about it and then never reopening. Again a set menu and schedule seating times would have solved all their problems.
It does make me miss a place like Ellie’s Deli that was all about serving good food for a good price and nothing else. All these theatrics do is turn me away. I don’t want to frequent a business that is complaining about a charge they are going to pass on to me anyway.
Lot’s of people complain about the restaurant tax when they get their bill, but no one thinks about it before they walk in the door.
David Huzzard Writes 