Obama praises Punch Pizza's minimum wage

Barack Obama
President Barack Obama at the White House.
Charles Dharapak/MPR News/File

The Minneapolis pizza chain Punch Pizza is getting some presidential attention again.

In his January State of the Union address, President Barack Obama praised the company's owner, John Serrano, for paying his workers at least $10 an hour.

On Saturday in his weekly address, Obama said he received a letter from a small business owner who was inspired by Serrano and also plans to offer $10 an hour.

Here's the video:

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Here's part of the transcript:

In my State of the Union Address, I talked about pizza. More specifically, I talked about a pizza chain in Minneapolis - Punch Pizza - whose owner, John Soranno, made the business decision to give his employees a raise to ten bucks an hour.

A couple weeks ago, I got a letter from a small business owner who watched that night. Yasmin Ibrahim is an immigrant who owns her own restaurant - Desi Shack - and plans to open another this summer.

Here's what she wrote. "I was moved by John Soranno's story. It got me thinking about my ... full-time employees and their ability to survive on $8 an hour in New York City." So a few weeks ago, Yasmin put in place a plan to lift wages for her employees at both her restaurants to at least $10 an hour by the end of this year.

But here's the thing - Yasmin isn't just raising her employees' wages because it's the right thing to do. She's doing it for the same reason John Soranno did. It makes good business sense.

Yasmin wrote, "It will allow us to attract and retain better talent - improving customer experience, reducing employee churn and training costs. We believe doing so makes good business sense while at the same time having a positive impact on the community."

The state Legislature recently passed a bill to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour, but a federal minimum wage law in Congress is stalled. Republicans believe raising the wage will harm businesses.