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In California, a Foster’s Freeze location closed and laid off its workers due to a new $20 per hour minimum wage that took effect April 1st. The wage increase was mandated by Governor Gavin Newsom under a law raising the fast food minimum wage by 25% to $20 an hour. The assistant manager said the owner could no longer afford the higher salaries. Some employees initially thought it was an April Fool’s joke. Prior reports indicated many California restaurants had already begun layoffs anticipating the wage hike. While economists debate the impacts of minimum wage increases, the restaurant industry is...

California-based fast food restaurants have hiked the price of menu items by as much as 8% in response to the $20-an-hour minimum wage law that went into effect April 1. .... A typical Chicken Burrito from a California Chipotle will now cost $10.25, while the average price of a Steak Burrito will set you back $12. ... Wendy’s also instituted substantial price hikes on staple menu items

A fair wage advocacy group is demanding that California’s new $20 minimum wage law for fast food workers be extended to all sectors to help working-class people who are struggling with the state’s high cost of living. FOX Business spoke with Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage to discuss what she described as the skyrocketing levels of home insecurity and food insecurity post-pandemic. Fast food workers winning a $20 minimum wage, she said, “was just the beginning.” Jayaraman pointed to the exorbitantly high cost of living in the Golden State where, in some counties, an individual would need a...

The runaway inflation raging under Joe Biden’s failed presidency has gotten so bad that some Americans are being priced out of eating at McDonald’s. Exacerbating the situation in California is the new $20-an-hour minimum wage, which has forced many fast food chains — once considered an affordable meal option — to anger customers by hiking prices. This is the second time in three months the Golden State has raised its minimum wage. In January, the state increased the minimum wage to $16 an hour from $11. A TikTok user lamented that she had paid more than $25 for a 40-piece...

A Fosters Freeze outlet in Lemoore shut down on Monday — the same day the new minimum wage kicked in — and its workers are now out of a job. Monica Navarro, former assistant general manager of that Fosters Freeze location, told Fox Business that she and her former colleagues would prefer the old wage over being unemployed. “From the people that I spoke to, my employees, we would have rather stayed at the wage that we did have before, just because now we don't have a job,” she said. She also observed the impacts of the new minimum wage...

Another California small business and its workers have seemingly suffered at the hands of the state’s newly enacted $20 minimum wage. ... When making their way to work Monday morning, Navarro and her team learned upon arrival that the restaurant owner had made the decision to close its doors for good. The owner, Loren Wright, told local Fox affiliate KMPH that this was the “last thing” they wanted to do, but knew by Friday night the business likely wouldn’t be able to absorb the wage hike and didn’t “want to ruin their Easter Sunday.” The new California statewide legislation went...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing backlash after a restaurant he partially owns posted a job listing for $16 an hour when a new state law is forcing fast food eateries to pay their employees $20 an hour. PlumpJack Cafe in Olympic Valley – which is among a group of eateries owned by a company Newsom founded in 1992 – is hiring a part-time busser who “will aim to assist the food server … to ensure guest satisfaction during all aspects of the dining experience,” according to a ZipRecruiter posting. The job listing states the salary for the busser is...

Monday, as California's minimum wage for fast food workers rose to $20 an hour, the Foster's Freeze in Lemoore permanently closed.

A restaurant partially owned by California Governor Gavin Newsom is recruiting for a $16-per-hour role, despite a new state law guaranteeing a minimum wage of $20 per hour for fast-food workers. The restaurant appears not to meet the threshold for the new minimum wage, a law that Newsom himself signed to much fanfare in September. On April 1, the new law guaranteeing a minimum wage of $20 per hour for fast-food workers employed in large chains took effect across California, up from the previous minimum of $16. The law was passed by Democrats in the state legislature last year but...

You’ll be dropping a lot of dollar on that Whopper. Menu prices at fast food chains across California have increased, as a new law went into effect requiring them to pay a $20-an-hour minimum wage to workers from Monday. The Post checked menus at several restaurants in the Los Angeles area to see if the costs are already being passed onto consumers — with mixed results. The biggest leap on was at a Burger King, where a Texas Double Whopper meal cost $15.09 on March 29, but surged to $16.89 on April 1, a price whopping increase of $1.80 for...

Not too long ago, Gavin Newsom got caught with his hand in the cookie jar of political cronyism. In response to a draconian law passed raising fast-food worker wages to $20 an hour, known as A.B. 1228, Newsom carved out a little exemption for his friends at Panera Bread on the laughable grounds that these establishments bake bread on the premises. In reality, the owner of several Panera establishments was a high school buddy who was a really good donor to his campaigns. Once caught, Newsom backed off, but right when he thought no one was looking, he went right...

California restaurants are reportedly laying off staff and reducing hours for other team members in an effort to cut costs ahead of a California state law taking effect on April 1 that will raise fast-foot workers’ hourly wage to $20. In the months leading up to the wage mandate, California eateries, particularly pizza joints, have established a plan to cut jobs, according to state records obtained by The Wall Street Journal. Pizza Hut and Round Table Pizza — a Menlo Park, Calif.-founded chain of 400 pizza parlors, mostly on the West Coast — have said they plan to lay off...

In 2022, Seattle's City Council passed an ordinance mandating a minimum earnings floor for app-based food delivery drivers in the city. The law finally went into effect in January 2024, but so far the main result has been customers deleting their delivery apps en masse, food orders plummeting, and driver pay cratering. The ordinance, part of a legislative package called "PayUp," was passed under the banner of protecting gig workers. By setting a compensation floor for app-based delivery drivers based on miles driven and amount of time worked, the ordinance operates as a (supremely complicated) minimum wage. The wage floor...

Lyft and Uber said they will cease operations in Minneapolis after the city’s council voted Thursday to override a mayoral veto and require that ride-hailing services increase driver wages to the equivalent of the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour. Lyft called the ordinance “deeply flawed,” saying in a statement that it supports a minimum earning standard for drivers but not the one passed by the council. “It should be done in an honest way that keeps the service affordable for riders,” Lyft said. “This ordinance makes our operations unsustainable, and as a result, we are shutting down operations...

Talk about fortuitous! In a strange turn of events, one of Gavin Newsom’s biggest donors hits the jackpot, and when the state-mandated $20 minimum wage for certain fast-food workers takes effect in April, this lucky duck employer won’t be subject to complying with the increase, thanks to an “obscure” exemption in the statute. Here’s the story, from Fox News yesterday:A major donor to Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to reap the benefit of an obscure exemption to the state’s new $20 minimum wage regulations for the fast food industry that will allow some of his restaurants to continue...

When fast food restaurants across California have to start paying workers $20 per hour on April 1, one major chain will be exempted from the mandate—and it just so happens to have a connection to a longtime friend and donor to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Panera Bread is poised to get a boost from a bizarre clause in the fast-food minimum wage law that exempts "chains that bake bread and sell it as a standalone item," Bloomberg reports, adding that "Newsom pushed for that break, according to people familiar with the matter." That exemption stands to benefit Greg Flynn, owner and...

Former U S Senator Barbara Boxer has chosen to turn her back on 2 Women, one of whom is a Woman of Color, and instead is endorsing a wealthy white man for a vacant U-S Senate seat. In endorsing Adam Schiff for the seat, Boxer ignored Katie Porter and Barbara Lee. All 3 candidates are liberal Democrats.

Minimum wage is a topic that draws a lot of attention, especially in California, a state that has one of the highest minimum wages in the United States. In a debate Monday night, Rep. Barbara Lee defended her previous advocacy for a $50 minimum wage. “In the Bay Area, I believe it was the United Way that came out with a report that very recently $127,000 for a family of four is just barely enough to get by,” Lee said. “Another survey very recently: $104,000. For a family of one, barely enough to get by low income because of the...

When arguing against a given minimum wage (e.g., $15/hour), late radio giant Rush Limbaugh would sometimes rhetorically ask: Why stop there? If that amount is good, wouldn’t a $50 minimum wage be even better? It’s unknown whether Limbaugh would’ve even suspected that a statist would make his “illustrating absurdity by being absurd” example a serious proposal within 10 years, but here we are: Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who’s running for the Golden State’s open Senate seat, made this very proposal in a Monday night debate with her rivals. “Just do the math!” she exclaimed, alluding to the supposed self-evident legitimacy...

A Southern California fast food franchise owner is the latest to signal that menu prices will go up when the minimum wage for all fast food employees climbs to $20 an hour in April under a new California law. Marcus Walberg, whose family operates four Fatburger restaurants in Los Angeles, recently told Business Insider that he sees no option but to raise prices and make other changes to adapt. “It’s a scary thing because customers are already complaining that prices are too high,” Walberg told the business news outlet.