Restaurants will not completely disappear, but they will change. There will be fewer restaurants and they will be more automated. The ones that survive will have much longer lines that never end, so employees will always be busy and providing a return on that $15/hour wage. Employees will also to a growing extent be family members of the owner - in many cases a Korean or other Asian extended family will provide the entire staffing for restaurants that used to offer jobs to local teens.
Laws have consequences, and no one will win from this terrible law, except for the professional racists who will expand their captive audience by pricing them out of a job.
So many places around here there's one person actually doing the work and a few others mostly in their way.
One restaurant owner in Los Angeles stated that he was preparing for signing a new lease on ONE of his TWO restaurants.
He won’t be able to sign that lease now, and he is looking closely at shutting down BOTH operations, and he says the rise in minimum wage is the reason.
I suspect he will move completely out of Los Angeles, and find a location where he can use his skills.
The cost isn’t just the base raise-—you have to factor in matching Soc Sec==6.2%—matching Medicare==1.45% and then there is Workmen’s Comp Insurance. . All of that can add up to more than 35% on top of the base wage.
The last time I did bookkeeping for a roofing company in LA, their workmen’s comp rate was 105%-——For every $100.00 paid to the employee, the cost of the premium for workmen’s comp was $105.00.
Now you might understand why it costs so much to get a new roof on your house.