A Denny's franchisee in Florida warned he might slap a 5 percent surcharge on meals. An Applebee's franchise owner in New York warned he'd stop hiring because of Obamacare. Papa John's CEO said that Obamacare spelled higher pizza prices.

Come January 2014, because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — now widely known as Obamacare — businesses with more than 50 employees will have to provide health care to employees who work 30 or more hours a week. If they don't, they face being fined for each employee beyond their first 30.

Discussions about what Obamacare will signify for businesses are being held in boardrooms and offices across the country. Last week, it seemed that those most vocal in expressing their concerns were the operators of national chain restaurants.

While they make headlines, restaurateurs here wait, along with other business owners, to see if Pennsylvania sets up its own health insurance exchange or opts for a federally run exchange.

And they wait — in some cases anxiously — to see how the implementation of Obamacare shakes out.

"We're sort of terrified," said Ray Hottenstein, owner of The Greenfield Restaurant & Bar and a former president of the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association, who discussed the issue via email and in a phone interview.

As an independent restaurateur, Hottenstein said he's all too familiar with the feeling of waking up at 3 a.m. "sweating the payroll."

Obamacare is adding to his middle-of-the-night worries, he said. "There's just a lot of uncertainty."

"There is no doubt that this initiative will have the most direct effect on our industry," Hottenstein said. "No one can sustain the increase in costs that are attached to this."

Hottenstein said he currently offers a health plan for his employees who work 30 hours or more — the same threshold set out by the ACA.

"My wife and I have always had the philosophy of treating others the way we would be treated," he said. "The irony is that many of our young people do not want to spend their share of the cost on health care because they know that the chance of major illness is lower at a younger age."

The ACA mandate is meant to ensure that younger, healthier people join the pool of the insured. And adding young people to the insurance rolls would mean lower costs for the insurers, but Hottenstein isn't sure that will translate to lower premiums.

He said that people who are adamantly in support of Obamacare "don't care what the pressure is — they think that every business has the profits and the margins to accept this new expense. … In our industry, it doesn't work that way."

Hottenstein has about 50 to 55 employees. He's not sure if he will be considered a "large employer" — and thus be bound by the law — under the ACA.

The calculation is complicated: The total monthly hours of both full-time employees — those working 30 hours or more per week — and part-time employees are added together, and then that number is divided by 120. The first 30 employees are subtracted from the total. A business is considered "large" if it has at least 50 full-time employees (seasonal workers not included).

(Pennsylvania's Small Business Development Centers, a partnership program of the U.S. Small Business Administration, has more information on this, and which businesses may participate in state-run health insurance exchanges, on its website: http://www.pasbdc.org/ppaca.)

Hottenstein said that most of his friends in the restaurant business "throughout the state have taken a wait-and-see attitude. We really have no other choice."

John Smucker, CEO of the company that owns Bird-in Hand Family Restaurant & Smorgasbord, said his chief financial officer has "just begun to do an analysis" of Obamacare's impact. "We have not gotten into the meat of it," he said.

Excluding its lodging properties, Smucker's company has about 300 full- and part-time employees. Insurance coverage is offered to employees who work 36 hours or more a week. For "a number of years," part-time employees who worked at least 28 hours also could buy into the company's health care plan, but "we abolished that about three years ago because of overall costs," Smucker said, in a phone interview.

"As health care costs keep ratcheting up and racheting up for small businesses like ours ... we have to make some changes so we can continue to stay in business and make a profit," Smucker said.

He expressed concern about what Obamacare would mean in terms of costs. Health care, he said, is "a constantly changing landscape. What this is going to do, I don't know."

But Obamacare, Smucker said, is "coming down the pike. ... We're going to have to face that."

Last week, Papa John's CEO and founder John Schnatter refuted reports that his company planned to cut jobs and scale back employee hours to counter the effects of Obamacare.

"Since our franchisees own the restaurants they operate, who they hire, how many hours they give each employee and what they pay each employee is up to them, not me or Papa John's," Schnatter wrote, in the Huffington Post.

Also last week, the CEO of Denny's Restaurants made it clear that the Florida franchisee who was threatening an Obamacare surcharge wasn't speaking for the company as a whole.

Greenfield's Hottenstein said he has heard people speculate that Obamacare will result in a mostly part-time workforce, but he couldn't succeed with a kitchen and catering staff made up only of part-time workers. There would be "no continuity," he said. "Independent restaurants cannot make mistakes."

Independent restaurateurs who survived the recession "already have cut staff and cannot cut any more without drastically affecting our production," Hottenstein said. "We need good people to put out a good product."

Darden Restaurants Inc., which owns Red Lobster, Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, announced in October that it was experimenting with limiting employee hours, in advance of the ACA's implementation.

Here, one restaurant chain — Isaac's Famous Grilled Sandwiches — believes it's ahead of the curve, where Obamacare is concerned.

"We already offer health care benefits to employees working at least 25 hours a week," which is five hours under the threshold set by the ACA, said Phil Wenger, president of the Lancaster-based chain of 20 restaurants.

And his company, he said, actually wants to get employees onto its health insurance plan.

Wenger shared his thoughts on health care via email and in an interview at Isaac's downtown office. For his company, Obamacare might mean tweaking some things, but isn't likely to bring about any seismic changes.

"What we hope and expect is that the new health care law will reward employers who have focused on providing health care benefits to an expanded pool of employees and have worked diligently to lower costs by keeping employees healthy," Wenger said. "What Isaac's already has been doing for the last 20 years aligns with the intent of the new law to expand coverage, lower cost and improve the outcomes for our employees."

The company's focus on employee wellness has helped to hold its health care costs steady for the past four years, Wenger said.

Isaac's offers 100 percent reimbursement for flu shots. Employees receive continuing education on wellness and preventable illness. They complete health risk assessment forms, which enable the company to tailor wellness programs to their needs.

The company's health plan includes dental and vision coverage, and a prescription drug plan. Other benefits available to employees who work 25 hours a week or more include an employer-matched 401(k) retirement plan and paid time off.

Wenger said this employee-centered approach "strengthens our company's ability to operate profitably, while doing so with a high level of social responsibility."

Of the 600 or so Isaac's employees, more than 200 are eligible for benefits.

Because the company is privately and locally owned, it can put its money back into its employees and into the community, Wenger said, noting that it's not beholden to investors.

Wenger said that the restaurant business is a "unique people-to-people" business. In his view, if a company takes care of its employees — which includes helping them to stay well — a cared-for customer base is the result.

In 2008-09, at the height of the recession, Isaac's did have to reduce its 401(k) match. But the company held firm to its commitment to offer health coverage to employees working at least 25 hours a week.

"Our brand promise says that our employees are our greatest asset, and they know it," Wenger said. "This is part of our DNA and who we are as a company."

scassidy@lnpnews.com