Joe Schoffstall:
“…Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, N.Y.) is set to bartend again for a day to advocate for policies that led to one of her former employers shutting down its business. . . .
Charles Milite, co-founder of the Coffee Shop, where Ocasio-Cortez previously worked, said that the increased minimum wage to $15 per hour for businesses with more than 11 employees led him and his partners to reevaluate their business and shut it down.
“I know it doesn’t sound like much—$2 an hour,” Milite told Crains New York Business in April. “But when you multiply it by 40 hours, by 130 people, it becomes a big number. It was going to increase our monthly payroll $46,000.”
Ocasio-Cortez mourned the loss of the Coffee Shop and stopped in before it closed its doors. “The restaurant I used to work at is closing its doors,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted last August. “I swung by today to say hi one last time, and kid around with friends like old times.” The freshman congresswoman, however, never acknowledged the policies that led to its demise.
After being in business for 28 years and attracting big names, 130 employees ultimately lost their jobs when the company was driven out of business…”