NORTHAMPTON — Six months after eliminating tipping and restructuring wages for employees, Haymarket Cafe owner Peter Simpson has done away with taking orders at tables, making a full switch to counter service.
The popular downtown lunch spot, at 185 Main St., announced the changes Sunday, and they were put in place Monday, Simpson said.
“With the new wage structure we are finding that while our lunch business is solid enough to accommodate table service, the mornings and evenings are not,” was the message on the restaurant’s Facebook page Sunday. “This has resulted in greater pressure on labor costs in the restaurant.”
Customers now order at the counters anywhere in the restaurant, and staff serve the food to the tables.
These changes come after the cafe eliminated tipping and agreed to pay all of its employees $14 an hour — as well as a $1 increase in November, followed by two more $1 increases in 2017 and 2018 — in an effort to make wages across the board more equal, Simpson said.
Providing staff with higher wages, he said, was intended to signal that Haymarket Cafe was on board with a movement called “15 Now,” a nationwide campaign to raise minimum wages.
To help pay for the higher wages, menu items featured upstairs saw a 10 percent price increase in November, while those downstairs went up by 20 percent, Simpson added.
Simpson said in an interview Tuesday that there would be no layoffs resulting from the structural changes, but that some staffers’ hours had been slightly reduced.
“I imagine when the next person leaves, we’ll readjust … and give everyone back the hours,” Simpson said.
The back-to-back adjustments, he said, are primarily a result of higher-than-expected labor costs and maintaining the higher wages for his employees, which was the utmost priority.
“So I feel that pressure kind of over my shoulders, where I really want to make sure the restaurant is structured where it can support those wages,” Simpson said.
The current Massachusetts minimum wage is $10 an hour, and the minimum wage for workers who make tips is $3.35 an hour.
Simpson also maintained that Haymarket Cafe is the only restaurant in Northampton which has pledged to pay its employees higher wages in cooperation with 15 Now.
“I think it would be great if Northampton were a $15-an-hour town,” Simpson said. “So I’m doing it for the people who work at the cafe. I think those changes over the next couple of years are going to make a difference.”
Michael Majchrowicz can be reached at mmajchrowicz@gazettenet.com.