January 24, 2015 7:18 AM

And this, kids, is why you should never interject your politics into your business

Amarillo, TX - Some Buffalo Wild Wings customers are noticing an extra charge on their bill that up until now has not been seen in the Panhandle. The Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants in both Amarillo and Lubbock recently attempted to pass their employee health insurance costs on to their customers by adding an Affordable Care Act surcharge. The two percent surcharge started appearing on bills January 1—the same day businesses with 100 or more employees were mandated to provide insurance to at least 70 percent of their full-time employees.

I should probably start by offering my condolences if the best you can do for lunch is a Buffalo Wild Wings in Lubbock or Amarillo, TX….

There’s nothing surprising about business people having political beliefs; such is their right in a free country. When you run a business, though, it helps to understand that your target market isn’t necessarily going to share those beliefs…nor is it likely they’ll appreciate you doing something that leaves them feeling that you’re forcing your beliefs upon them. A very wise man once told me that money knows no ideology, and that many things can happen when you commingle ideology and business, few of them good. If you have strong political beliefs, run for office. If you run a business, keep those beliefs to yourself…unless you truly intend to aggravate and alienate your customer base.

There are so many ways the Howard Restaurant Group could have recouped whatever (largely fictional) additional costs they might have felt they were going to incur. Restaurants adjusts their menus and prices all the time and for all manner of reasons. It’s unlikely customers would have noticed or particularly cared about a 2% across the board increase. Instead, they went about raising their prices in about the worst, most ham-handed way imaginable.

“Due to the Affordable Healthcare Act and its requirement of healthcare coverage to all full-time employees, our restaurant group has decided instead of cutting employee hours and raising food and beverage prices, to implement a two percent surcharge on all guest checks to offset the cost of the federally mandated employee healthcare with the least possible impact to the consumer.”

For a two percent surcharge, the business whizzes at Howard Restaurant Group opened themselves to all sorts of potential problems…which is exactly what happened. Turns out that people don’t appreciate have someone else’s political views interjected into their lunch.

DUH….

Buffalo Wild Wings corporate headquarters threw their Amarillo and Lubbock franchises under the bus at warp speed (and deservedly so) and issued a mea culpa, forcing them to step back from the surcharge. Of course, this isn’t to say that the franchisees won’t surreptitiously raise their prices to coverage any alleged increase in costs…but if they’d done that in the first place, I’d be writing about puppies and kittens.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 24, 2015 7:18 AM.

A "small government" Conservative: Government small enough to fit into our bedrooms was the previous entry in this blog.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good Two-Minute Hate is the next entry in this blog.

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