How a Restaurant Built Living Wage Jobs from the Ground Up

The challenge 

Restaurant workers earn some of the lowest wages in the United States. In seasonal tourist markets, the situation is particularly complicated. Earnings fluctuate with volume, tips are unpredictable, and winter slowdowns can wipe out any income gains workers may have built over a busy summer. For restaurant operators who want to pay a stable, living wage year-round, the math requires more than goodwill.

Cheese Louise, a grilled cheese concept with three brick-and-mortar locations in New England and a fleet of food trucks, faces this challenge head on. Founded in 2018 as a food truck, the company committed early on to being the most people-focused restaurant company imaginable. But translating that commitment into a durable pay structure that held through seasonal swings took time and thoughtfulness to develop. The core questions: What's the right wage floor? How is it maintained across markets with different costs of living? And how to absorb the volatility of tips and seasonality without passing that instability on to workers?

The solution: Cheese Louise x Living Wage Institute 

To start, Cheese Louise referenced the MIT Living Wage Calculator—the latest slice of our Wage Index database that we produce and maintain as a public benefit—as the annual benchmark for setting pay floors across all three of its locations.

Because the living wage varies by county, Cheese Louise's compensation model accounts for geographic differences directly. The formula that guarantees each worker a self-sustaining living wage has three components: a 2026 inflation-adjusted hourly base rate of $20.60; a location-specific living wage adjustment that varies by restaurant location; and a performance bonus of up to $5.00 per hour tied to team-level operational metrics that reset annually. Together, these components are designed so that the lowest-paid employee earns enough to cover their own basic needs on average over the course of the year. That’s at least $27.48 per hour in Portsmouth (Rockingham County, NH), $26.26 per hour in Portland (Cumberland County, ME), and $24.23 per hour in North Conway (Carroll County, NH).

To absorb the volatility of tips and seasonality, Cheese Louise pools tips across all staff and makes up any shortfall directly. In slow months, when pooled tips fall below the guaranteed floor, the company covers the difference. The seasonal fluctuation that usually impacts restaurant workers’ pay stubs shows up on Cheese Louise’s bottom line instead.

The impact 

To date, about 100 Cheese Louise employees have built a stable financial foundation through the company’s living wage guarantee. Most team members have earned raises that take them beyond a living wage floor or received promotions that moved them up the career ladder.

Business outcomes have tracked worker outcomes. Cheese Louise has maintained profitability across all its locations. Its living wage pay structure has also generated two measurable operational benefits: consistent application flow for open positions and low voluntary turnover relative to industry norms. Both can be expensive problems, especially in the restaurant sector where annual turnover frequently exceeds 70%.

While Cheese Louise uses a segment of our Wage Index database to anchor its hourly compensation commitment for frontline restaurant workers, employers across industries use the same data to design their total rewards investments and make cost-effective pay decisions. 

Interested in using our Wage Index database to inform your compensation planning? Reach out to the Living Wage Institute team to learn more.