Expected - between the $15 minimum wage and health care mandates, places like Ruby Tuesday’s (sit-down food chains that try to keep prices reasonable) WILL BE TOAST soon.
The result will be either high-end places where labor cost is less of a factor, and fast-food places that can replace much of their manpower with machines, along with efficiencies associated with high volume.
Also surviving will be single-store, family-run outfits where it is much easier to have some people working off the books, and even if on the books, the higher pay stays in the family anyway, allowing the places to operate at virtually no reported profit, but with lots of money still making it to the household.
Very sad, they were nice places to eat at, particularly for people that travel but don’t want to roll the dice at family places - but there’s no way they can survive now.
Read up on the home “restaurant” niche. Private homeowners are holding dinners for friends and family and making money under the table.
Not surprised, the sad fruits of Mr. Obama’s America.
Plus also the local take out and delivery is doing well also.
Looked at taking over a Vietnamese restaurant some years back. The owner was a bookkeeper, and she had two separate sets of books.