[kjam22]

I'm not in favor of raising the minimum wage. But just for some context.... when I was in college I managed a burger restaurant while paying for college. Our monthly goal was a 30 to 33% food cost, and a 20% labor cost. Then by time you subtracted out the various other expenses you would net around 10% of gross sales monthly. Really the food cost and labor cost were pretty much the only controllable items.

I don't know McDonalds numbers. I wasn't at McDonalds. But we didn't really count burgers and work backwards. We priced burgers based on those percentages.

[knarf]

I appreciate your comment ... I'm ignorant of how businesses come to the numbers.

I know some some contracts are bid by the sq ft ... "I can build that for $360 per sq ft" (or something like that)

Obviously I'm blue collar because of the way my brain formulates.

[lacrew]

Well using your numbers, if labor is 20 percent, doubling the minimum wage to $15 raises labor on a $1 burger from 20 cents to 40 cents, and the burger now costs $1.20, or 20 percent more.

And I assume you may sell less burgers at this price, skewing your baseline expense percentages.

...or, the burger joint hires fewer people, and expects its employees to run around like decapitated chickens, to keep labor costs down.