Posted on 03/14/2015 11:33:54 AM PDT by grundle
Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law goes into effect on April 1, 2015. As that date approaches, restaurants across the city are making the financial decision to close shop. The Washington Policy Center writes that “closings have occurred across the city, from Grub in the upscale Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, to Little Uncle in gritty Pioneer Square, to the Boat Street Cafe on Western Avenue near the waterfront.”
Of course, restaurants close for a variety of reasons. But, according to Seattle Magazine, the “impending minimum wage hike to $15 per hour” is playing a “major factor.” That’s not surprising, considering “about 36% of restaurant earnings go to paying labor costs.”
(Excerpt) Read more at shiftwa.org ...
This is simpleton logic which I expect when liberals run anything and rapidly make a hash of it - I would imagine the servers are not thrilled about it in the slightest as: 1) food prices will rise; 2) business will fall off; 3) people will be a lot less likely to tip over 15 percent since they know the server is making a lot more than the minimum and tis reflected in their dinner checks; and, 4) this will all be reported as taxable income to the IRS, as opposed to tips, which are often “guesstimated’ by the recipients according to what I have read about the restaurant industry.
Eat it, leftists.
Someone will open up. Eating out is a bargain.
How can they afford it? They keep their costs low, their menu options minimal, and deliver pretty good food. On the flip side, their menu prices are also relatively low compared to other chains.
Thing is, up until now, by offering higher wages than competitors, they were able to maintain not only employee loyalty, but encourage hard work for that money. The customer benefited, the employees benefited, and the company benefited.
Now, by artificially raising the tide of wages, they will strip out much of that ethic that In-N-Out has been able to maintain by eliminating their ‘higher than average’ wages and making it equal with the clock puncher at McDonalds who could really care less what you buy, what they do, and even if you get your order.
And that's going to hit restaurants hard - chain restaurants will simply have more clock punchers, places that offered higher wages likely won't be able to raise them much higher - why work hard for $17 an hour when you can slug along at $15? Traditional restaurants will likely have to cut down kitchen staff - eliminating thousands of prep kitchen assistants and simplifying menus, and server staff will have to pick up more of the slack, as many busboy positions will be eliminated as well.
In the end, what the people of Seattle will get is probably worse service, fewer menu choices, fewer options to eat at, and lose tens of thousands of jobs. It'll be an absolute boon to the kitchen food supply companies, as restaurants turn to more pre-prepared food to serve as they can no longer process fresh foods into meals, and it will be an absolute boon to food borne illness, as all these cuts mean more exposure of food to contamination from tables being cleaned by servers, food left on tables longer, kitchen staff filling in for busboys, etc.
So yes, the dream of a $15 an hour food service job is obtainable on the open market, but by making the market change, they eliminate the rewards of hard work. They hurt local farms which will find less of a market for their raw foods, they hurt the currently employed by making their services too expensive, they hurt the food options through simplified menus and more reliance on food service companies, all so they can feel better about paying more for the same food.
I sometimes wish balloting wasn't secret. I'd love to see a $30 surcharge on every bill given to a voter for this deal, since even with the higher wages, the servers deserve more, and they should pay that extra. Maybe the restaurant could split that surcharge with staff and lower the bills of those who didn't vote for this idiocy.
Well, if privately-owned restaurants can’t survive, then the government will have to subsidize them, or even take them over.
Then, food prices can be priced on a “progressive” sliding scale, so the EBT crowd can get burgers for $0.25, while the rich white people will have to pay $25.00 /s
Interesting post, thanks.
New info to me confirmed by this:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/In-N-Out-Burger-Salaries-E14276.htm
Seattle restaurants going dark as $15 an hour minimum wage goes into effect
3/14/2015, 8:54:42 AM · by afraidfortherepublic · 129 replies
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3267831/posts
Seattle eateries closing as $15 minimum wage approaches
Hotair ^ | 03/14/2015 | Jazz Shaw
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3267895/posts
$15 an hour closing restaurants? who could have seen that coming/ Oh yeah anyone with a brain................
The restaurants frequented by the elites who made the law can probably afford it, so no harm done.....
Logical progression.
There was a guy at my company who had an obama/biden bumper sticker on his car. obama gets re-elected and this guy was laid off 2 weeks later. Careful about who you or what you vote for.
The people who get killed here are the servers. They make most of their money on tips and most make lots on tips.
A good server can make a hundred or more dollars a shift on tips.
If they make $15 per hour, the combination of higher wages and higher food prices will kill tips
I won’t tip at all. The 15 bucks takes care of that.
Suck it, Seattle.
(Apologies to Freepers there)
Ain’t that the truth. A lot of Obama/Biden bumper stickers in the welfare parking lot... Just sayin’. ;o]
That sentence makes sense only to people who learn economics from Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart. In the real world, earnings are what is left after all expenses are paid.
“Perhaps the day is not far off when fast food places have two employees per shift, mostly for logistics and janitorial.”
Indeed, one to load the raw ingredients from the supply trucks into the mini-food-factory and one to take out the trash and keep the place clean.
Won’t be long now. If you’ve ever watched the TV show “Food Factory”, you can see it’s feasible to automate an entire fast food restaurant. It’s just a matter of economics now, namely, when will it be cheaper and less trouble to mass produce and install fast food restaurant mini-food-factories vs. dealing with the increasing headaches of the increasingly expensive complement of unskilled fast food restaurant labor.
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth
Good. May the socialists enjoy their self-created misery.
never in a million years could you have predicted this reaction to a $15 minimum wage mandate
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.