On June 3, 2026, Governor Jared Polis vetoed Senate Bill 26-134, the bill the Colorado Restaurant Association spent most of the year fighting for. The bill had already passed the House 44-20 and cleared the Senate twice. It still wasn't enough. Polis set a personal veto record that day, and the swipe-fee bill was one of the casualties.
If you run an independent restaurant or bar in Denver, here's why it's worth understanding: it's a clean example of which costs are actually within an operator's control and which ones aren't.
What SB26-134 Would Have Done
Officially titled "Payment Card Networks' Fees," the bill would have stopped credit card networks from charging interchange fees on the sales-tax portion of a transaction. Right now, when a guest pays with a card, the restaurant gets charged a swipe fee not just on the meal, but on the tax it collects and has to hand over to the state. In 2024, those fees cost Colorado businesses more than $217 million, according to reporting on the bill. The bill would have exempted smaller card issuers (assets under $60 billion) and required larger retailers to pass savings on to customers or employees.
It passed both chambers of the legislature. Then it didn't become law anyway.
The Colorado Restaurant Association's Response
Sonia Riggs, the Colorado Restaurant Association's president and CEO, didn't soften the reaction: "We're devastated that the Governor chose to believe the falsehoods spread by the credit card lobby over the painful reality currently facing our local restaurants and retailers." Her statement pointed to a detail that lands harder than the dollar figure alone: the fee applies to tax dollars a restaurant collects and hands straight to the state, money it never actually earns.
A swipe fee on sales tax charges a restaurant to process money it was only ever holding for the state.
This Doesn't Land in a Vacuum
The veto lands on top of a year that was already expensive. Denver's minimum wage climbed to $19.29 an hour in 2026, with the tipped minimum at $16.27. Statewide, food establishment licensing fees jumped 25% this year, with more increases scheduled for 2027 and 2028. A separate Colorado Restaurant Association survey found Denver's wage increase alone would cost the average Mile High restaurant an extra $70,000 a year. None of that is hypothetical. It's already on this year's books.
What Operators Still Control
The Colorado Restaurant Association exists to fight the battles an individual owner can't fight alone: legislation, licensing, statewide advocacy. That's real, necessary work, and this year it lost a big one. But most of what determines whether a specific restaurant survives a squeeze like this happens in three places an owner can actually touch, not at the Capitol:
Local visibility.
A Google Business Profile with accurate hours, current photos, and a real posting cadence still drives free, high-intent traffic. It costs nothing but attention, and most restaurants set it up once and never look at it again.
Reputation.
Review volume and response rate move both ranking and booking decisions. A restaurant that manages this consistently outperforms a comparable one that doesn't, at the same star rating.
Fees you can actually cut.
Third-party delivery commissions, unlike the swipe fee that just survived a veto, are still something an operator can control. Apps often charge 15-30% a transaction. A direct-ordering flow that's actually easy to use pulls orders off them and keeps that margin in the restaurant instead.
The Takeaway
The Colorado Restaurant Association will likely run this bill again next session; advocacy groups usually do. In the meantime, the fee structure independent restaurants are stuck with didn't get any lighter this year. The move now is to tighten every lever that's still yours to pull, not wait on Denver to fix it.
Sources: Colorado Public Radio, "Polis vetoes bill that would have ended credit card fees on sales tax", June 3, 2026; The Colorado Sun, June 3, 2026; Colorado Restaurant Association, "What Goes into Effect in 2026".