Business

Local Applebee’s owner to Obama: Step aside, let us create jobs

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Zane Tankel is embarked on a huge business expansion — no thanks to Washington.

In this slow-growth, regulation-heavy economy, where new jobs are all but gone, Tankel’s ambition is not only welcome, but needed.

The CEO of Apple Metro anticipates hiring more than 1,000 workers at his six new Applebee’s restaurants in New York through 2013.

The new hires will increase his payroll from roughly 3,000 today to some 4,000. Tankel has three new Applebee’s planned in Manhattan, two in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn over the next 24 months.

“It’s a war out there,” the sprightly and tough-talking Tankel, 71, told The Post.

“Business is harder, consumers are more demanding. They want $1.10 for each dollar spent.”

Naturally, Tankel knows something about labor markets — and he’s lashing out at Washington on the US jobs crisis. “We need to incentivize people back to work,” he said. “We are doing a lot of the wrong things in Washington to create jobs.”

The right thing to Tankel is to favor new self-funding tax incentives for employers. “If each $10 the government spends on each hire translates into $12 in new taxes paid by each new employee, that’s a 20 percent return on investment,” he said. “It doesn’t take brain surgery.”

Tankel also wants to see ObamaCare repealed. “Nobody even knows how much it will finally cost,” he said. “But it will cost business over and above what was originally forecast.

“I am making capital commitments of up to $20 million to new business that won’t be completed for a few more years,” Tankel said. “That’s huge. Unfortunately, government hostility to the private sector, government rules and regulations, will discourage others from doing the same.”

Tankel has been here before. He defied the recent recession, finding opportunity where others only saw disaster. He has opened 10 new restaurants since 2008.

The ink had barely dried on a deal to refinance his business in late 2007 when the economy tipped into recession. It was tempting to wait for the recovery. Instead, Tankel expanded.

Last year, he refinanced again, at a lower interest rate, and snagged $15 million from his bankers for new construction. “That’s when everyone was saying there was no liquidity, the banks are not lending,” Tankel said. “I think that says much about how profitable we are.”

Tankel describes himself as a bit of a “cowboy” capitalist. He risks his money. But as long as fear persists about how Washington will regulate, from taxes to health care, he thinks many business owners won’t be as speculative.

he endorses more taxes on wealthy individuals, himself included. “It is not knowing if Washington will hurt us or not that is hurting job creation,” Tankel explained.

“If Washington is going to push through labor laws above and beyond what they should [fairly] be, that’s a no-win for the private sector.”