Ohio Restaurant & Hospitality Alliance

For more than a century, the Ohio Restaurant & Hospitality Alliance (ORHA) has served as the leading advocate for Ohio's restaurant, foodservice and hospitality industry. In early 2024, ORHA turned to Inspire for strategic communications support as the industry faced a significant threat: a proposed ballot initiative backed by One Fair Wage that sought to eliminate Ohio's tipped wage system and accelerate the state's minimum wage increase.

The proposed measure had the potential to dramatically reshape Ohio's restaurant industry, which employs more than 500,000 people and operates on historically thin margins. Restaurant owners were concerned the initiative would lead to higher menu prices, reduced staffing levels, fewer employment opportunities and possible business closures. Equally important, many tipped employees feared the loss of a compensation model that allowed them to earn well above the proposed minimum wage. Research showed Ohio restaurant operators overwhelmingly opposed eliminating the tipped wage, making it clear that a broad public education effort was needed.

Inspire developed and executed a comprehensive public affairs and earned media campaign centered on education, stakeholder engagement and thought leadership. The team conducted extensive research into similar efforts across the country, analyzed industry data and leveraged ORHA member surveys to inform campaign messaging. Inspire then created a statewide communications strategy that included key message development, spokesperson identification and training, media outreach, editorial board engagement, op-ed development, visual content creation and the launch of a dedicated online media center.

A cornerstone of the campaign was a press event unveiling new survey results from nearly 1,000 Ohio servers, bartenders and tipped employees. The data demonstrated overwhelming support for Ohio's existing tipping system and provided a compelling, worker-focused narrative that helped shift the discussion from politics to real-world impacts on employees and small businesses. Inspire secured widespread media coverage across print, broadcast, digital and trade outlets, ensuring ORHA's voice remained central to public conversations about the proposed measure.

Ultimately, the campaign helped build awareness, amplify industry perspectives and support ORHA's efforts to protect Ohio's restaurant and hospitality community. The initiative concluded with a major victory when proponents failed to gather enough signatures to qualify the measure for Ohio's November 2024 ballot.