Soon after the Prince William County Board of Supervisors adopted a meals tax, workers at Dixie Bones BBQ in Woodbridge, Virginia, started wearing new shirts.
On the back of them reads, “End the meals tax,” which is a plea to local leaders to reverse a step that owner Nelson Head said is negatively impacting business.
The 4% tax went into effect in July 2022. At the time, customers would occasionally yell at their servers, accusing the restaurant of price gouging, Head said.
Servers also noticed their tips getting smaller. When the tax started, he had 35-40 full or part-time workers. Now, they’re down to about 20.
The combination of inflation and the meals tax prompted some diners to scale back, Head said.
The meals tax is expected to shift from 4% to 3% starting in January 2026, as part of the Board of Supervisors’ recently approved budget package.
“Inflation forced everybody’s prices high,” Head said. “When they add another 4% on top of it, it just pushed the price over the top for a lot of customers. And you lose customers; and when you lose customers, your business deteriorates.”
Shannon Patterson, a manager who has worked at Dixie Bones for 14 years, said the meals tax has resulted in customers leaving smaller tips. They often have a budget of what they’re expecting to pay, and what doesn’t get spent on food gets spent on the tip, he said.
“But if the food is so high, because of the taxes, our tips are reduced,” Patterson said. “That really does affect us in the long run, as far as what we can afford, what we can eat, our bills.”
It also affects retention, Patterson said, because if restaurant workers aren’t making as much money as before, it’s more likely that they’ll leave.
Customers have noticed the price changes and tax, Patterson said, and staff have had to explain to them exactly what it’s for.
Many don’t think about how the total amount is calculated, they’re just focused on the total, Head said.
“They just know they paid that much for that meal. It’s just plain economics that as the prices go up, demand falls off, and that’s exactly what’s happened,” Head said.
While many may not pay close attention to the details, Head placed a “cheat sheet” next to the menu showing how prices fluctuate from week to week. Each Monday, they send out emails explaining what happened to their prices in the week prior.
It’s a step Head said he’s had to take since prices started going up after the pandemic. Tuesday’s version of the “Weekly Market Report” said beef rose 3%, and the price of cabbage and potatoes dropped. It also compares prices to those from February 2021.
They’ve also created a section of the menu with smaller portions, so customers can get the same food they enjoy without having to pay as much.
The only way the restaurant could survive, Head said, was to shift to a model similar to the one most grocery stores use. If the cost of the food he’s buying goes up, “we have to mark that up to cover our overhead and expenses.”
“Every week we bid every single item we buy,” Head said. “Every week, we try to get the best prices we can get from the wholesalers, wherever we get it, and then reflect that in that chart, and also that’s reflected in our weekly prices.”
The meals tax, on top of the cost of items they’re buying, is a “big deal,” Head said.
“It really forced the value from people’s perspective of, ‘I’m looking at my check. It doesn’t seem to me there’s a value there anymore,’” Head said.
The expected decrease in the meals tax is a “great start,” Patterson said, with the hope it could eventually be eliminated.
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