Bibb Announces Ten Winners of $5000 Restaurant Grants to … – Cleveland Scene

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Mark Oprea

Cooks at Miega on Thursday. The restaurant was one of the cohort to win grant money.

On Thursday, on the second floor of the Asia Town Center off East 38th and Superior, Mayor Justin Bibb awarded $5,000 to the winning restaurants in City Hall's partnership with One Fair Wage, a national coalition seeking to raise the sub-minimum wage for servers to a meaty $15 an hour.

The restaurants given the award were:

To the mayor, who bussed at Toby's Kitchen as a teenager, the first series of grants are a precursora "pilot program," he saidthat could act as a legislative rallying cry to bring a $15 minimum wage to the whole state of Ohio.

"I'm really excited about the conversation, the hard but important conversation we're having right now about a fair wage," Bibb told the crowd standing in front of Miega's front door. "And that is not just about putting more money in people's pockets, because that's important, especially in this economy. But this is about dignity."

Mark Oprea

Barbara Bradford-Williams, owner of JB Grill Soul Food. "We're looking to promote the neighborhood. We're looking to hire new employees, and we're looking to pay them $15 [an hour]," she said.

OFW and its campaigners are quick to compare Ohio's sub-minimum tipped wageabout $2.13 an hourto the country's history of underpaying waitstaff and cooks. It's a mentality OFW supporters approach in an anti-capitalist way, suggesting that servers are paid low because, well, the pay has always been that way.

"The sub-minimum wage here in Ohio and here in our entire country is a remnant of slavery, and we are all fighting in those remnants of slavery," Mariah Ross, an OFW campaign manager, told the crowd. "The sub minimum wage was first introduced due to emancipation when Black women and Black men were freed."

As for the meager $2.13 an hour? "That is what we're fighting to change," she added.

Restaurant owners and managers present at Asia Town Center said they'd use the $5,000 to either start or continue higher pay for staff.

"We're looking to build up," Barbara Bradford-Williams, owner of JB Grill Soul Food, said. "We're looking to promote the neighborhood. We're looking to hire new employees, and we're looking to pay them $15 [an hour]."

But both Bibb's and OFW's financial boost for the ten progressive-minded restaurants present brings up questions for those on the other side of receipt.

In a culture run mad with ubiquitous tip suggestions, with flipped iPads and Square terminals everywhere, it seems that tipped workers paid a fairwage might not elicit the same 15 to 20 percent restaurant goers are used to paying them.

Mark Oprea

Chris Nguyen (center) and his wife Claudine (left), owners of Superior Pho. The restaurant was one of 10 to receive a grant Thursday

"Tip percentages and menu prices don't change in the long run," Mikey Knabb, the national director of High Road Restaurants, a partner with OFW, told reporters.

Chris and Claudine Nguyen, owners of Superior Pho down the street, seemed to agree with this new model. They have been paying staff at least $14 an hour since 2021, and said the grant money given to them Thursday will only help bolster their employee pay philosophy. And keep ingredient prices, especially with inflation, manageable.

"Should it change the culture of tipping? I don't know," Nguyen said. "I think people tip if they want, and I think that they should have the choice to patronize businesses and tip if they would like to."

The second round of restaurants to win the $5,000 grant will be announced, the city said, later this year.

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Bibb Announces Ten Winners of $5000 Restaurant Grants to ... - Cleveland Scene