Study shows small business owner uncertainty at new high

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Opening a small business is never easy, and maintaining it comes with its own problems.

A new survey shows when it comes to uncertainty, levels for small business owners are at an all-time high.

“We’ve seen a lot. Some things we can’t unsee,” said co-founder of Mister Sizzle’s, Casey Casas. “There’s been a ton of changes.”

It’s been a journey for the owners of Mister Sizzles since opening in 2021. Casas and her husband have been in this industry for a long time, but owning their own place came with unique challenges. 

“I thought I knew. I, in fact, did not know,” she said.

They were determined to change the stigma that restaurant work is a dead-end job.

“This is something that you could do the rest of your life and be both financially successful, have benefits and grow within a company,” Casas said.

All of that takes time and money. 

“Small business owners are sort of sitting tight, not making a ton of long-term decisions, but trying to ride out what’s currently going on,” said Ashley Ranslow, the New York state director for the National Federation of Independent Business.

A NFIB survey from September 2024 found small business owner uncertainty is at an all-time high.

Inventory gains hit their lowest rate since 2020, about a third had job openings they couldn’t fill and a quarter listed inflations as a continuing concern.

“They may not look at doing any sort of expansion or investment into their business, which certainly has an impact on the state’s economy, local economies,” Ranslow said. 

While presidential elections tend to impact uncertainty, there’s no way of telling how much, or even if, that’ll go down after election day.

“Especially in New York state, this is not a state that’s easy to do business in,” she said. “We need to make sure that we hit the brakes and that we’re not pursuing policies that make it more challenging to run a small business.”

“I think we’ve increased salaries in the kitchen by, I mean some ridiculous percentage,” said Casas. “We’re probably up maybe 70% to 80% higher than what we started with on the day we opened.”

Casas is doing what she can to keep things running here. 

It seems to be working.

“We have expanded,” she said. “We have a location on One Buffalo Street in Hamburg, and that actually opened yesterday.”

While she can’t say what the future will bring, she’ll continue to hold their standards and hope the community continues to support business owners like them.

“It’s hard, you know? I mean, there’s a lot of pressure on small business owners,” she said. “We’re all in it together, right?” 

Uncertainty levels are just one aspect of the optimism index.

That did tick slightly up in September, but numbers over the past three years still remain below the prior 50-year average.