Minnesota Chef Testifies on Capitol Hill to Discuss Soaring Crime Rates and Harm it Does to Businesses

(KNSI) — A Minnesota chef and restaurant owner testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday to discuss soaring crime rates and how they affect communities and small businesses.

Brian Ingram owns Hope Breakfast Bar in St. Paul, which has been robbed seven times in the last year. He explained to the panel the measures he has had to take just so his staff and customers can feel safe, including “Shortening our hours, even bringing in our staff a little later. We have a breakfast restaurant that used to open at 6:00 a.m., and now we’ve pushed that back to 7:00 a.m. just because we wanted it to be light out before our staff would come in; restaurants closing at 10:00. We have a pub that would primarily do business late night, that is now closed.”

Ingram adds, “security cameras, alarms systems, we have spent so much on those types of things, and it doesn’t deter anybody. The safety stuff we have done is no deterrence.” He estimates he has spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don’t know that I can even put a number on a number on the sales – we have two new restaurants, we are reinvesting, those restaurants we’re planning on not keeping open – that is going to lead into the millions of dollars until something changes in our city.”

He thought the restaurant was being targeted until he spoke to his neighbors, who said they too had been robbed, and it drives neighborhoods right into the ground. “And what you are seeing so much is that in minority parts of the city, restaurants are closing at a rapid pace. I believe it’s one in three now that are closing down and typically those are in areas that are underserved. We are seeing restaurants, we are seeing businesses close day in and day out and it continues to grow. Right now, in Minneapolis, it’s a ghost town when you drive through Minneapolis.”

Ingram was invited to testify at a House Financial Services Committee Oversight Subcommittee Hearing by Minnesota’s Sixth District Congressman Tom Emmer. Congressman Emmer is the lead Republican on the Oversight Subcommittee.

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