In February, Denver City Councilman Darrell Watson said he would propose a change to Denver’s tipped minimum wage structure within a month to help the struggling industry.
“I will be leading a process to focus on the tipped credit thatap a balanced approach,” he told The Denver Post.
Six months later, Watson has proposed nothing.
“I think city council has dropped the ball on this,” said Scott Wasserman, a Denver-based restaurant consultant.
Watson, who is up for reelection next year, declined interview requests from BusinessDen for this story.
“We are listening to the community and when we have something to report we will,” his spokesman Dwight Clark said in a text.
Darrell Watson
Watson’s pledge proposal came the same day as the release of a city-sponsored report detailing a contracting Denver food scene. A lofty minimum wage was front and center: $19.29 an hour, and the tipped minimum wage is $16.27 due to a $3.02 “tip credit,” as itap commonly known.
In January those numbers will stand at $19.84 and $16.82. That is on par with or exceeding cities including New York and San Francisco and is often cited as a top issue facing Denver restaurateurs. Other cities, like Chicago and Washington, D.C., have walked back their high tipped minimums.
The report, which was compiled and written by Adam Schlegel, who co-founded Snooze A.M. Eatery and Chook Charcoal Chicken, and Dana Faulk Query, the co-owner of Big Red F Restaurant Group, had several recommendations to change Denver’s tipping structure.
One of them was to create a “middle tier” wage so tips could be shared between front-of-house customer-facing staff and back-of-house workers. Another included a return to the state’s tipped minimum of $12.14 an hour while implementing a provision to “guard against wage-erosion” and guarantee a certain amount of take-home pay.
Watson didn’t give specifics about his planned proposal in February, although he said he doesn’t support dropping the tipped minimum wage all the way to the state minimum.
“Beyond briefing all City Council members … on the reportap findings, we haven’t been informed further on the specifics of his proposal, or even if one is forthcoming,” Schlegel and Query said in an email to BusinessDen. “This isn’t an easy problem to solve, and we’re sympathetic to that.”
Kristen Rauch, executive director of the independent restaurant industry group EatDenver, said conversations with Watson slowed this summer.
Boulder’s decision to not pause or slow its rising $13.80 hourly tipped minimum at the end of July seemed to slow Watson’s momentum, Rauch said.
EatDenver represents limited and counter-service restaurants as well as full-service, the model that is affected the most by Denver’s high wage. That varying constituency is why the group hasn’t taken an official position, Rauch said.
“I haven’t been in direct communication with council in a month or so,” she told BusinessDen “Itap one of those really difficult issues that is very touchy, and kind of political suicide sometimes. Politicians don’t really want to talk about wage stuff, and itap really sticky with consumers also.”
Wasserman, a former union head who led the left-leaning think tank Bell Policy Center from 2016 to 2024, echoed that sentiment.
“I think they know that this is a big problem. I think they know that we have to do something,” he said. “But I think that the politics are so toxic around this issue that they have been afraid to lean into it.”
During the 2025 legislative session, a similar battle to increase the tip credit at the state level led to restaurateurs getting harassed for their support of a bill to return to the state minimum wage. That measure was heavily amended before being passed as an act allowing cities to lower their tipped minimum wages.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston also has not pitched any proposal. His office did not respond to a list of questions from BusinessDen.
The standstill comes as data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics continues to show a decline. In the full-service sector, there were 18,905 jobs reported at the end of Q1 this year, the most recent publicly-available date. Thatap down from a post-2020 peak of 21,691 jobs in Q3 2023 and down from the 24,000 workers the category had in Q3 2019.
“Denver’s leaders of all sides should acknowledge that we have a big problem with restaurants, not just closures, but jobs too,” Wasserman said. “And we’ve seen a drop off in sales tax revenue (with the city). It used to be 16%, and now itap 13%. And thatap informing the budget situation.”
Despite inaction from city council, Query and Schlegel said the city has made progress on the non-wage problems outlined in the report. The pair said Denver Economic Development and Opportunity initiatives and Community Planning and Developmentap updated permitting process are a “real, tangible response” to some of the regulatory recommendations in the report.
They also said flexibility on energy-compliance and outdoor dining rules have helped.
DEDO Director Adeeb Khan told BusinessDen that his department will be issuing a “comprehensive update” later this month on “all of the work that has resulted from the report.”
“The restaurant report provided much needed and candid feedback that the city has been using to guide how we are addressing and meeting the needs of restaurant owners and operators in our city,” he said.
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