With just weeks until the election, the political scene is heating up for restaurants [Video]

Political surprises just keep coming for restaurants in the run-up to the November elections.

Start with the self-damaging appearance in Congress last week of One Fair Wage’s president, Saru Jayaraman, according to the co-hosts of the Working Lunch political affairs podcast. In this week’s edition, Joe Kefauver and Franklin Coley note that the usually polished Jayaraman, whose brilliance at a microphone has definitely worked against the industry, came across as high-handed and disrespectful to the congressmen participating in the hearing. 

“I do not think it was her finest hour,” commented Kefauver, who runs the Orlando government-affairs shop Align Public Strategies in partnership with Coley. 

The focus of the hearings was the future of the tip credit, the employer concession that allows restaurateurs to count server’s and bartender’s tips as a portion of the pay the workers are due by law. Jayaraman has been making the case for years that the …