What impact do you see the economy having on your restaurants today?

CROSBY: What we’re seeing is a tremendous positive impact. When we set out, we put forth our financial plan. We had our annualized pro forma budget month-by-month, pretty aggressive budget in this economy. For the current month, from what we projected that we would do, we’re up 76 percent.

We don’t discount. We price it at the best possible price. We don’t say, “Oh, but we could sell it cheaper, and we will—for a while. Here’s a coupon.” People recognize the value.

We are seeing people trading down from the full-service-type restaurants. We’re just really, really thriving. Most everyone I know in this end of the business—whether independents or they’re franchising in a big national chain, is doing strong numbers right now.

How about the potential impact of a raise in minimum wage? What are the implications to you as an operator?

CROSBY: It’s really critically important to pay people a fair wage starting. The impact of minimum wage increases, because of our average pay and the success we have with hiring people, isn’t that big to us when it goes up in a given year. If it’s across the board and if it is going to drive pressure on the financial statements that people have to react to, you can pretty well expect that all your competitors are going to be in the same place. It keeps the playing field level when it’s a federally mandated minimum wage or if you’re just in one state.

We’re right on the border with Virginia. So if Virginia’s set minimum wage is different than Tennessee’s, that might cause some problems for us. But the federal minimum wage going up we see as a good thing. It’s helping the employees, and we like for the employees to have a good life. The wage going up is reasonable because it’s trailing way behind what our average wage is anyway.

ANDREW: When that’s raised then it makes it more of a competitive field. We pay all our employees above minimum wage. You have to in a market like this anyway. It has minimal to no impact on us whatsoever.

MASON: Same with us. We pay well above the minimum wage. Our customers perceive our staff as providing a great service, so they get some pretty decent tips at the end of the day, too. That works out great for our employees.

How do you feel about employee healthcare?

CROSBY: It’s something we absolutely wish we could provide for all of our employees. I associate with a co-op of restaurateurs trying to figure out how can we bundle together here and get this worked out so we can afford it. The price of the product really keeps us out of the market of being able to provide full coverage healthcare for the hourly employees, which we regret.

If healthcare was more affordable. … It’s one of the big issues, especially in the United States, we’re going to have to come to terms with. We would be all for it if we could afford to jump in. But at this time, it’s just something we cannot make work on our financial statements.

Imagine you have a few minutes to sit down with President Obama and talk with him about the issues that you face as a small business owner. What things would you ask him to address?

ANDREW: I would ask the president to really see what kind of measures they can put in place to make sure that that money hits the street in the communities, gets to the local banks and regional banks so bank lending officers and committees have the assurance that they can lend money again to local restaurateurs and local operators and feel safe.

It was encouraging to see that the SBA is going back up to 90 percent now of their qualifications from like 70 percent. The quicker they can make that happen, I think we’ll see the country get back to where it was just a handful of years ago. We all know that it’s small businesses that create the majority of the jobs in this country, so we put the pressure on the lending at the small-business level.

CROSBY: We would say let’s be smart and focus on how to get people back to work because the more people out there working, the more people eating in restaurants.

But one of the things that’s coming forward is unionization. I think that’s wrong for U.S. business. Whether you’re a big manufacturer, mainline retailer, or in the restaurant business, that harms us. It’ll make us less competitive in world markets. To get the United States really back on course, we need to become a net producer country again instead of the net consumer country that we’ve been for decades.

I don’t think that unionization is the right way to get the number of jobs that we need out there. Nor is it the right thing for small or younger businesses if they’re having to kind of look over their shoulder and worry about an issue like that.

As we were talking earlier, we would really like to see things move forward on getting affordable healthcare in this country because that’s going to make a difference and make us more competitive.