Washington Post, June 23, 2014
Kevin Settles prides himself on being an early adopter. The owner of the mini-chain Bardenay in Boise, Idaho, says he was the first restaurateur in the country to get a federal license to distill liquor at a restaurant. He put Thai satay and baba ganoush on the menu despite his customers’ steak-centric palates.
So when the health-care law went into effect, Settles acted quickly. In September, he offered health insurance to dozens of his employees to comply with the Affordable Care Act, which requires all but the smallest businesses to extend coverage to their full-time workers. He put in new systems to track employee hours and provide the data to the government. All this well before the employer mandate kicks in next year.
But unlike Settles’s other experiments, this one hasn’t been great for his business.