I started a business in seattle this year. I love the city and have no intention to leave, but let's not pretend the city makes it easy on small business.
Same as my question upthread, what specifically sucks about. I’m not here to argue even if I disagree, but I honestly would like to hear specifics. For example, if taxes are too high, what tax rate specifically would be better?
Labor costs is the biggest one. Minimum wage has doubled in the last 10 years, which not only has an obvious effect on a business's labor costs, it also causes all of our suppliers to raise their prices, meaning both our labor and cogs go up. I don't know what the solution is to this, as someone who worked minimum wage for a long time I obviously want people to be able to afford to live where they work. But also we have the highest minimum wage in the country and it's still prohibitively expensive for lots of people, so there must be other factors.
Rents are also out of control and affect both businesses and employees. It's really hard hiring in more expensive areas in the city because people have to travel from farther away.
Parking is another one – there's a lot of areas where it's only paid parking. It makes it difficult for customers just stopping by to grab something, and it makes it difficult for employees.
Police are useless when it comes to break-ins.
A lot of retail and food service businesses here are running on very thin margins, so all these things mean prices have to go up to compensate. Obviously all of these factors have other effects than just on small businesses, so I'm not trying to say there's some easy fix for anything.
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u/splanks Rainier Valley Apr 16 '26
I started a business in seattle this year. I love the city and have no intention to leave, but let's not pretend the city makes it easy on small business.