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The people who are most hurt by the $15 an hour wage are those on fixed incomes like people living on a pension or people who are unemployed. Everything will cost more so in the end the wage earner doesn’t win, the company will not lose as they will put up prices to match their outgoings. We have it here in Australia at about $22 and hour. That is a poor wage - a family could not live on one person working at that rate. Even though our unemployment and age pensions might seem generous numbers wise in reality it may be harder in bigger cities here to live because of the cost of produce, rent and utilities. High wages mean high prices - there is no avoiding it! For your particular scenario the larger companies usually provide the cheapest good like Walmart, Costco etc. So only putting their wages up may help the smaller business but not the poorer person if they aren’t getting the wage rise.

"We have it here in Australia at about $22 and hour."

Yes. The exchange rate is about $0.77 USD per $1 AUD now. 0.77 x $22 is 16.94, so it comes out roughly the same per employee/consumer. Some prices on goods might be higher in AU relative to the exchange rate due to inflation, differences in natural resources and import balances.

There's no vast, all-encompassing conspiracy, of course. The markets--especially labor markets--are more chaotic than planned. It just works out to what we're seeing with companies trying to stay strong and get more market share. Better than what hard socialism historically works out to by far.