On Main Street in Manchester, a warm atmosphere welcomes guests as they enter Penny’s Place, a breakfast-and-lunch restaurant owned by Penny Braga.
Braga said she has not drawn a paycheck since the business opened two years ago and has been forced to change her style of business. Braga says eight months ago, she paid servers $15 per hour, but to save money, resorted to paying them the lower tipped minimum wage. Now servers are paid $8.50 per hour plus tips.
While the new hourly wage for servers did cut some costs at Penny’s Place, Braga says she noticed a drop in new employees’ work ethic. After a month of training, she says she’d notice they didn’t carry out their job responsibilities and frequently would make the same mistakes on orders, which cost her more money at the end of the day.
“I would love to have a couple of part-timers in here; I’ve given up,” Braga said. “We look for help, we get somebody in here, they last a month.”
In Spring 2024, UConn Journalism senior Kaily Martinez photographed a series of portraits of business owners in Manchester, Connecticut as part of a story about the increase in Connecticut’s minimum wage to $15.69 and the impact on local small businesses.