Arizona next week will usher in a new year — and new wages.

Minimum wage earners around the state will see a boost in their paychecks beginning Jan. 1, when state law will increase the minimum wage from $14.35 to $14.70 per hour.

Some local business owners such as Dave Karsten of Karsten’s Maricopa Ace Hardware, 21542 N. John Wayne Parkway, don’t anticipate the 35-cent bump to affect their margins.

“This year, we expected it to hit our business minimally. Our average [pay] is well above minimum, so it’s usually just a couple of folks that might be impacted at the minimum level,” he told InMaricopa.

Changes in worked hours and pricing in his business are more “driven by business, a function of sales,” not labor costs.

Alex Mejia of Vero Chicago Pizza, 19975 N. John Wayne Parkway, Suite 110, had a similar viewpoint. He said point blank that the wage increase “is not going to affect the price of the product.”

However, he warned that a big enough hike would do just that, such as what happened in California earlier this year when a drastic jump in the minimum wage to $20 bankrupted businesses across that state.

“I understand that the way things are, there has to be some sort of an increase in minimum wage … I don’t need to pass that kind of cost onto the customer right now,” Mejia said.

A long time comin’

Minimum wage earners can thank 2016 voters for the pay increase. Arizonans voted in favor of Proposition 206, the Fair Wages and Healthy Families Act, which provides annual increases in minimum wage.

Since it passed, minimum wage has increased between 50 cents and $2 per year. Those yearly increases were tougher on smaller businesses, said Mejia.

“When the first increases were set, it really affected pricing across the board,” he said of his experience with Vero restaurants in other cities. “Not just on our pizzas where we had to raise them, but it also came in from our suppliers. When minimum wage went up, our suppliers started increasing the price of product and that’s when we had to increase our menu items and prices.”

The margins shrank, meaning Mejia and other business owners had to offset the costs somewhere.

But, with last year’s modest 50-cent bump and a smaller increase this year than in the last nine, those worries are shrinking in the rear-view.

“Like many businesses, labor has always been our largest expense,” Karsten said. “We’ve fortunately never had to go through major layoffs, so we really try to focus on culture and reducing turnover.”