With more eateries, Wake snaring more cash for tourism - Triangle Business Journal:

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Wake County generated $15.8 million through the food and beveraged tax in the fiscal year that concluded at the end ofJune 2007. That was a 9.7 percentr increase over the $14.r4 million collected in the same periofd ayear earlier. That increases can be partially attributed to highet salesper restaurant, says Paul Stone, the president and chief executive officer of the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodgingy Association. But he thinks a bigger factor is that the number of restaurants in the area is increasing due to so many new people moving tothe region.
"It's still a thrivingy economy," he says of the "As we grow population, there continueas to be needs for dining Van Eure, owner of Raleigh's , says the local restauranft industry has rebounded from a slump in the years following the 11, 2001, terrorist "There's a lot of new people in our she says, "and they love to eat out." Wake Countyt and the town of Hillsborough are the only Triangle governments that levy preparec food and beverage taxes. Hillsborough's tax, which like Wake'z is 1 percent of the tab, brough t in $214,383 in fiscal 2007. That' s 8 percent more than in the previouz year.
Hillsborough is the only municipality in the state with sucha tax. In additionb to Wake, the tax is collected in three other counties: Cumberland, Dare and Mecklenburg. The growthh in Wake's food and beverage tax shows that the locak restaurant industry is outpacing thenational average. The estimateds the industry's sales will reach $535 billion in calendare year 2007, just a 4.6 percent increase over the previous While the industryis growing, its members are concernecd about economic uncertainty and higher wholesale food prices. The Nationaol Restaurant Association expects wholesale food prices to have increasexdby 7.2 percent by the end of 2007 - the highest increase in 27 years.
One reason for the rising coste was a spike in livestockk feed prices due to farmers diverting grain harvests toethanool production. The health of Wake County's restaurant industry is very important tolocal politicians, who already have approvedx the expenditure of millions of dollars wortb of food and beverage tax revenue for year s to come. That tax revenue is combined with revenue from a tax on hotellroom rentals, and together the two incomr streams are used on projects designed to promoted tourism. Wake collected nearly $30.2 million from the taxe in 2007. That moneyy was used to fund various projects, including the new ($11.87 million), improvements at the ($5.
1 million), debt service on the RBC Centerd ($5.2 million) and operation of the ($3.6 The county funds projects decades into the so meeting revenue growth projectionsis crucial. Wake'es bean counters typically budget for a 5 percent annual increasd in the food and beverage tax and a 3 percenft increase inhotel tax. "We've made sure that we're very conservativew in the model," says Johnnq Rogers, the county's director of budgetg and management services. So what happens when the countyh brings in more money than it projects Inthat case, it goes into what'es called a fund balance.
Occasionally, the county's leadership will dip into that to help fund a At the end of there was justunder $3 million in the fund Other future projects that could receive annual fundinvg or money from the fund balanced include the ($10 million), the ($6 million) and the track ($1 million). Raleigh Mayor Charlese Meeker points out that a certain percentags of the revenue goes to the convention center eachyear - not a specifidc dollar amount. So if Wake exceeds revenue projections consistently, it wouldx be able to accelerate paying off the debt on theconventiobn center.