Customers have seen prices go up, sometimes by a lot, since April 1, when California raised the minimum wage for fast food workers from $16 to $20 an hour.
A poll of 182 restaurant owners in California, done by the Employment Policies Institute in June and July, looked at how raising the minimum wage has affected them. It was done online with operators of limited-service restaurants and partner organizations.
The EPI is a non-profit think tank that is run by a lobbyist for the restaurant business who has worked against raising the minimum wage.
According to the poll, 67% of restaurant owners said that the higher wages would cost their companies at least $100,000 per site. About one in four said it would cost more than $200,000.
98% of restaurant owners said they had already raised the prices on their menus. About 89% of those polled said they had cut employees’ work hours, 73% said they had limited overtime or picking up work, and 70% said they had cut staff or merged roles.
Also, 92% of those who answered the poll were worried that raising menu prices would make people less likely to come in person.
The higher minimum wage also changed how owners felt about opening more stores in California. Eighty-nine percent said they were less likely to do so, while fifty-nine percent said they were more likely to open stores in other states.
Some politicians and trade groups say that the pay increase has caused people to lose their jobs and restaurants to close. But the Service Employees International Union and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office say that data from April 1 to June shows that the industry added thousands of jobs.
SEIU officials aren’t happy with the $20 minimum wage, even though they see it as a win for hundreds of thousands of fast-food workers. The union wants a 70-cent raise starting on January 1, 2025, from California’s new Fast Food Council.
