If you experience a decrease in sales, whatever the reason, you need to cut costs. Minimum wage increase made that impossible. Conversely, the increased wage costs, $11 is too high, may have caused him to raise prices, which led to the sales drop off in the first place.
Are his competitors still in business?
Are they required be meet the same wage standards?
Sometimes a decrease in sales means you need to invest more for the future. Cutting cost often hastens your demise. Cut costs and quality and service suffers leading to further declines in sales and more cost cuts. That’s a fools errand.
Successful cajor corporations decades ago learned to increase R&D spending in recessions.