In all the known natural world, there is perhaps no more predictable outcome than what happens to any business that operates in California:
The owner of four Fatburger franchises in Los Angeles hiked menu prices, trimmed workers' hours and scrapped paid time off to offset an impending California law that raises the state's minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 per hour.
Marcus Walberg, who owns the popular outposts, said he was forced to take the drastic action because the new law is expected to spike payroll by 30%.
"I feel that there will be a lot of pain to workers as franchise owners are forced to take drastic measures," he told Business Insider.
The miserable effects of California's astronomical minimum wage hike are finally arriving and the state's business owners are all like:
Walberg (dude's name is legit "Marc Walberg," but don't mention it to him, he's surely been hearing it his whole life) "said he will jack up prices as much as 10% at his four restaurants" even after he already "implemented [an] 8% menu-price increase just last year." The guy's been raising price after price and he's still going to have to slash worker hours.
This is, unsurprisingly, what happens when you raise the price of labor. When you raise the price of anything, it means people will use less of it. That includes labor, which is no different from any other input!
Walberg, meanwhile, isn't just trimming back hours, he's shoring them up, too:
"We're not hiring new people to fill jobs," he said. "We're being very tight on schedules."
And note well that this is not the first business to suffer from Gavin Newsom's wage hike:
And I'm thinking it won't be the last, either.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
