By Taylor Graham Updated February 24, 2020
SPOKANE, Wash. — Inlander Restaurant Week is best known for giving local spots a boost over a ten-day stretch every winter, but restaurant owners say it has the power to impact business well past the end of February. They’re hoping that’s the case again this year as they battle their biggest minimum wage increase yet.
“It went up $1.50 overnight,” said Tom Sciortino, managing parter of Wild Sage Bistro. “If we didn’t change the way we did business at all — if we just accepted that wage increase without passing that on in some different direction, that was a $35,000 hit to our bottom line.”