Steve Gaibler, who has owned Niwot’s Garden Gate Cafe for 25 years, started cutting back on staff hours this year by not filling positions when someone leaves.
That’s how he’s making the numbers work as the minimum wage for unincorporated Boulder County increases. But, he warned during a recent rally of Niwot area farmers and business owners, he’s not sure his small breakfast-and-lunch spot can keep up with planned yearly increases that boost the minimum wage to $25 an hour by 2030.
He’s cut 50 hours a week by asking employees to take on extra tasks. Every $1 added to the minimum wage costs him $1,000 more a week for payroll, he said.
“It’s just unsustainable,” he said. “Restaurants already operate on razor-thin margins. Labor is our biggest expense. We’re not asking for special treatment. We’re asking for survival. This is the definition of unintended consequences. You’re destroying the businesses that provide jobs.”
In November 2023, Boulder County’s three county commissioners unanimously approved a staggered minimum wage increase, which applies to all employees in the unincorporated parts of the county, including minors. At the time, the commissioners said they hoped to see the towns and cities in the county follow suit to create a regional minimum wage. But, so far, that hasn’t happened.
On Jan. 1, the minimum wage in unincorporated Boulder County rose to $16.57 per hour. That’s close to $2 above the state’s $14.81 minimum wage and $1 above Boulder’s $15.57 minimum wage. Longmont, Louisville and Lafayette all adhere to the state’s minimum, though Longmont is continuing to talk about the possibility of raising it in the future. Longmont is organizing a minimum wage “fishbowl” feedback session that’s set for 5:30 p.m. Aug. 25 at the Longmont Senior Center.
Local governments have been allowed to set their own minimum wages since the passage of a 2019 state law. Denver was the first to take advantage of the new law, followed by Boulder County and Edgewater. Denver’s local minimum wage will rise to $19.29 an hour starting Jan. 1, making it one of the highest in the country.
While the Boulder City Council agreed last year to enact three years of incremental wage increases, it didn’t go as high as the county. Boulder plans to raise its minimum wage to $18.17 by 2027, still more than $1 short of where Boulder County’s will land that year– and well short of the county’s eventual $25 an hour minimum.
While labor advocates cheered Boulder County’s increase, a coalition of farmers and businesses is asking the county to pause future wage increases. The group held a rally Tuesday in Niwot and is continuing to urge residents to send letters and comment at Boulder County commissioners’ meetings.
Boulder County officials said they’ve received “hundreds” of letters about raising minimum wage in recent months, but they didn’t provide an exact number. The coalition estimated the number of letters at around 600. A recent survey by the Niwot Community Association also shows 97% of the 141 respondents want the commissioners to either reduce the unincorporated minimum wage to the state minimum or pause it at the current level until it aligns with surrounding cities.
“Without regional cooperation, these wage hikes backfire,” said Nicholas Little, who owns Noblestar Technologies, LLC, and is leading the minimum wage task force for the Niwot Business Association.
He argues that raising the minimum wage so high, so fast in only unincorporated areas will force businesses to close and jobs to disappear, hurting the low-wage workers the county wanted to help. Unincorporated Boulder County includes Allenspark, Coal Creek Canyon, Eldorado Springs, Gold Hill, parts of Gunbarrel, Hygiene and Niwot. It accounts for roughly 12% of the county’s population and an estimated 5% of the workforce.
Small, independent restaurants, retail stores and farms are the most vulnerable, especially in the current economy, Little said, pointing to the recent closures of two downtown Niwot restaurants. Upscale dining restaurant 1914 House closed in the summer of 2024 after eight years, while the farm-to-table Farow Restaurant closed in January. Niwot Pizza, formerly known as Lefty’s Pizza, relocated to Longmont in June after several decades in Niwot.
“It threatens the survival of the town,” said Tony Santelli, past president of the Niwot Business Association and former co-owner of the Niwot Tavern. “There will be a tombstone that says ‘Niwot.’ “
Santelli and others at Tuesday’s rally said they’re increasingly frustrated by a lack of response from the commissioners, who haven’t formally discussed the minimum wage increases since approving them in 2023.
Claire Levy, who is the commissioners’ lead on minimum wage, said she’s receptive to reopening the minimum wage discussion, which would require the agreement of at least two of the three commissioners. The topic is expected to be discussed at an administrative meeting in a couple of weeks. If changes were eventually made, the soonest a different wage scale could go into effect would be Jan. 1.
Factors in the commissioners’ decision in 2023 included the “crushing need” seen by safety-net organizations such as the Emergency Family Assistance Association and the Sister Carmen Community Center because of the area’s high cost of living. The Colorado Center on Law and Policy estimated that in 2022, a single adult with no children would have needed to make at least $19.44 per hour to be able to afford to live in Boulder County.
“We wanted to enact a wage to make it more affordable for people to live in Boulder County,” Levy said. “We had hoped, by going ahead and increasing the wage in unincorporated Boulder County, that we would set a path for other communities to follow.”
She said the commissioners also considered an exception for those under 18 but ultimately decided ”if you are doing an hour of labor on behalf of a business, you ought to be paid the same thing as an adult person working alongside you. An employer shouldn’t get an hour of labor for less cost for someone who is 17 years old versus someone who is 18 years old.”
Still, she said, she sees raising the minimum wage as just one element of what’s needed to make the county more affordable. Providing more affordable housing and more affordable child care are also important, she said. She added that she doesn’t support raising the minimum age so high that it completely bridges the gap between salaries for low-wage earners and the high cost of living because that would place an unfair burden on businesses.
“Retail and restaurant business owners really should not bear the brunt of the external forces making housing and childcare so expensive,” she said.
But Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann, after listening to minimum wage concerns at an April 3 public comment session, said she would advocate for a higher minimum because it costs so much to live here. She said a living wage in Boulder County is more than $50 an hour.
“We cannot continue to have businesses succeed by exploiting workers,” she said.
Several Niwot business owners and farmers took exception to that comment, saying they pay as much as they can afford.
“My workers are like family,” Gaibler said. “I do everything I can for them.”
Michael Moss, who owns Kilt Farm off Oxford Road just outside of Niwot, said the minimum wage increases threaten the future of farming in Boulder County, especially labor-intensive vegetable farming. He took the summer off from farming to work on agricultural issues that include the minimum wage.
He said farmers already are struggling with price increases for materials and supplies — and expect to see prices only rise as tariffs go into effect. He added local farmers are already competing against farmers in neighboring counties, including Weld and Larimer, and other states. Plus, he said, it can only take one hailstorm to knock out a farm’s profits for the season.
“A 10,000-acre farm in California producing just lettuce mix can produce on an industrial scale that we can’t,” he said. “I can charge more for my salad mix because it’s a really high quality product, but if we keep raising prices, eventually our customers will say ‘no.’ We have very thin margins. Farming is not easy anywhere, but our costs are high in Boulder County. If I’m forced to sell below cost of production, it just doesn’t pencil out anymore.”
He said about 90% of the county’s vegetable farmers have joined the Keep Boulder County Farms and Jobs group that’s asking the commissioners to pause the wage increases.
“If this ordinance isn’t changed, we’re really going to lose a lot of the vibrancy that makes Boulder County special,” he said. “We want the commissioners to work with us to find a solution.”
Others advocating for a freeze on the minimum wage increases include siblings Alison Steele and Seth Steele, who own the Niwot Market. One of the few independent grocery stores left in the area, the store stocks vegetables from local farms and serves as a community space, hosting events that include summer Friday night dinners and the town’s annual Fourth of July pancake breakfast.
Alison Steele said the market will have to raise prices to cover the increase in salaries as the minimum wage goes up, making it even more difficult to compete with the large, corporate grocery stores in neighboring communities.
“We can only raise prices so much before people won’t go here anymore,” she said.
Steele said the market often hires teens for part-time positions, giving them their first jobs. It’s not sustainable to pay them as much as $25 an hour, she said. Starting a cashier at $25 an hour is another concern. If she pays $25 an hour for an entry level job, she asked, what will she need to pay a manager?
“We would have to cut jobs,” she said. “We’re not understanding how us in these teeny towns having a higher minimum will fix the high cost of living. It’s not solving the problem at all.”
Jay French, who bought Hygiene Feed and Mercantile a year ago, shares the concerns that the ever-increasing minimum wage will force him to stop hiring teens. For the time he needs to invest in teaching them how to perform basic tasks, he said, paying them $25 an hour doesn’t make sense. Paying teens more will also mean less money available to pay higher salaries for the adult workers.
“It will possibly be a back breaker,” he said. “Where’s that precipice?”
For Mark Guttridge at Ollin Farms outside Longmont, his main worry is if he can afford to continue the farm’s summer teen internship program. This summer, he had 16 teens on the payroll. While he used to pay $12 an hour, he’s now paying close to $17 an hour.
“It’s put a crunch on how many kids we can hire,” he said. “At $25, I don’t even know if that program is going to exist any more. Small farms and independent restaurants hire the most high school employees. These kids need to be out there learning that next step and what having a job is all about. Why would you cut out that opportunity? I’m just dumbfounded.”
He noted he already pays the adults working on the farm more than the county’s minimum wage.
“The commissioners are underestimating the business community and how well we treat our employees,” he said. “If you don’t pay a living wage, you’re not going to have employees. To me, it’s not something that needs to be regulated.”
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