How will Initiative 82 impact the DC restaurant scene in 2025?

It’s been more than two years since District voters passed Initiative 82, which did away with the tipped minimum wage, which critics argued would generate confusion and service fees while turning the restaurant industry upside down.

Yet, the industry didn’t die. In fact, high-end, world-class restaurants keep opening up, increasing the number of restaurants operating in the city — even as the payroll required to run those restaurants have also soared. But there are warning signs flashing too: a record 74 restaurants have also closed since the initiative’s passing, and ahead of a hearing being held by the D.C. Council on Wednesday afternoon to talk about the impact of Initiative 82, the restaurant industry is warning that the fine dining industry in the city is in trouble.

“The reality is, restaurants close every year for a number of reasons,” said Shawn Townsend, president and CEO of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. He said crime is sometimes cited as one reason. Another are rising rent prices.

“You may see a restaurant that’s been in business for 10, 15, 20 years, they’ve come to the end of their lease, and they just aren’t able to renegotiate good terms,” Townsend said.

But with D.C.’s restaurant workers currently making $10 an hour, which increases to $12 this summer, Townsend said some in the industry are worried. A hospitality industry lawyer told WTOP about 20 bars and restaurants are already working through the legal system to challenge evictions or renegotiate leases, suggesting they’ve found themselves in a financial hole. And he cautioned that most of the time, businesses in that predicament just end up closing without going through the legal system.

“We are quite concerned about what the fall could potentially look like,” Townsend said.

The D.C. Council’s hearing is supposed to focus on the workers in the restaurant industry, a number that studies show has shrunk in the last couple of years, and Townsend said at last look there were more than 60 people scheduled to testify.

Townsend said that the District lost 1,800 full service jobs in the last year, which was directly correlated to Initiative 82.

Employment Policies Institute, an Arlington think tank, said about 4,000 jobs have been wiped out since Initiative 82 passed.

One Fair Wage, a group which led the charge for Initiative 82, told WTOP that changes in employment couldn’t be directly correlated to the initiative, as the policy hasn’t been fully implemented and its effects haven’t yet been realized.

“We have not yet seen a cycle-over-cycle decline in the restaurants or employment since the passage of I-82,” the organization said in an email.

The organization pointed out that jobs have fluctuated in Maryland and Virginia, where the subminimum wages persists, as well as in D.C., and trends suggested “economic and seasonal factors” more than specific policy changes.

Townsend said the hearing on Wednesday will be important for the restaurant industry moving forward. But he also said his group will no longer be leading the charge to repeal or fix Initiative 82. That will fall on the declining number of restaurant workers instead.

“The writing’s on the wall, you know? I mean, we’re seeing all of these different organizations release data that tells us that this is bad,” he said.

Townsaid said the feeling isn’t unanimous in the industry — some workers he’s spoken with are happy with the new pay structure. However, he said that the consensus skews toward the policy not working.

“I think the workers have to be able to articulate that and be vocal about it to the folks that make policy decisions in the city.”

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John Domen

John started working at WTOP in 2016 after having grown up in Maryland listening to the station as a child. While he got his on-air start at small stations in Pennsylvania and Delaware, he's spent most of his career in the D.C. area, having been heard on several local stations before coming to WTOP.

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