It’s a scary time to be a business owner. For the first time in seven years, I am afraid for my future and my business. Besides the construction in Worcester’s Canal District, coming obstacles make me wonder if The Queen’s Cups, or our neighbors, will survive the next five years.
I am excited for the City of Worcester and its $101-million Polar Park baseball stadium project anticipated to open on 2021. Being directly on Water Street, I have not dealt with the construction woes my friends on Green Street have, and I cannot help but feel for them. With all of the construction, they are feeling the impact of less foot traffic, the complaints from customers who drove around for 20 minutes looking for a parking spot, and the lack of income. With less people in our neighborhood, it impacts every business. Just a couple weeks ago, my staff frantically called me on a Friday morning after a construction company hit our gas line, resulting in the loss of gas and hot water. How can you run a bakery without gas or hot water? You can’t. They fixed it within an hour, but if you bake at home, you know how much an hour can put you back.
Besides construction, I can already foresee the greed created by the Pawtucket Red Sox’s planned arrival in our area. Amy Lynn Chase has spent almost a decade building her businesses and our Canal District community – creating friendships and bonds among business owners – and with the impending park headed our way, everyone wants in now. Most people believe the baseball games will make us all millionaires.
We can hope that will be the case, but it’s doubtful. All of our rents are going to skyrocket to market pricing. Landlords will be able to fill our spaces within a day of us leaving. There won’t be any parking. We are going to see businesses here for years be forced to leave because they are told they don’t fit the mold. We may not say it, but it is a scary thought not knowing what to expect.
On top of the construction in our area, minimum wage for all businesses will increase to $15 an hour by 2021. A typical hourly rate for a cake decorator is also $15. So, when I have to pay high school kids that hourly rate, my cake decorators will expect a pay increase, and I will be forced to raise our prices. Who is going to buy an $8 cupcake? This is going to be a problem for small businesses. We already pay a lot in payroll taxes. This increase could result in tens of thousands per year to businesses, one we may not be able to afford.
By 2021, Massachusetts will have paid family and medical leave, where employees will pay a percentage into a trust fund. Employers who have 25 or more employees also will pay a percentage. It’s just something else employers have to worry about. For employees, some just cannot afford to lose a percentage of their pay. Some of my employees can’t, and I am not naïve to think The Queen’s Cups is an anomaly.
As a small business owner, I prided myself on being able to offer health insurance to full-time employees for the first time this year. I also had my first employee who was pregnant, and I offered her paid maternity leave. These will no longer be a perk to work for me, since they will be instituted by Massachusetts in a few years. What will I have to offer employees as an incentive to work at The Queen’s Cups? For the first time in my career, I am dumbfounded.
I have always been gung-ho on owning a business, following your passion and just blindly going for things because life always seems to work out. But after spending the last nine months working on a project and ultimately having to back out on a dream, solely because of the financial burden it could place on my family’s wellbeing with all of the anticipated changes coming our way, I feel pretty much defeated and in a rut. This is a scary time to be a business owner. My fear is Massachusetts will see so many of us close our doors because we cannot make our American Dream work any longer.
Renee Diaz is the owner of The Queen’s Cups bakery, which generated more than $1 million in revenue last year.
