Fast food CEO: Minimum wage hikes closing locations

[sb0]

Something that frequently gets overlooked in these situations (sorry if it was mentioned in one of the preceding 130+ posts)...

When someone tries to support a family on a minimum wage job, they frequently receive other kinds of government aid - food stamps, Medicaid, section 8 housing, etc. These programs essentially hide the true cost from taxpayers and subsidize the business that pays the low wages (corporate welfare).

I'd rather pay a higher price for a product if the higher wage reduced or eliminated the need for the employee to rely on government assistance. It would reflect the corporation's true cost of labor.

Or maybe we should just let the poor starve and freeze to death.

You don't understand what the word "subsidization" means.

I have heard this nonsense coming from the left more times than I can count.

It is logical garbage.

Were those programs not to exist, those minimum wage employers wouldn't be paying a penny more.

As such, it's not subsidization.

Those programs do not save employers money. Period. If anything, they do the opposite.

Ironically, people like you prefer to put this type of welfare on the backs of the middle class, through increased prices, rather than on "the rich," as it would if it came from taxes.

 

[MCgrease08]

Bumping this as California's $20 minimum wage for fast food workers is set to take effect, leading to thousands of layoffs for Pizza Hut delivery drivers across the state.

Who could have seen this coming?

California Pizza Hut lays off delivery drivers amid new wage law

PacPizza, a Pizza Hut franchisee, plans to lay off its entire fleet of delivery drivers ahead of California's wage increases for fast-food workers.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[Trapper Jim]

Working hard is too hard for many folks today. After being commissioned only retail for over 45 years, one sees the shortcuts in standards.

Let’s take The restaurant (fast food mostly but high line occasionally) typical model. Franchisee has money to invest. Corporate wants the best image. Reality is dirty glass, French fries on the floor, concrete apron to store tacks up the bottom of your shoe, orders not right, making change is a challenge, they are out of everything and food is substandard.

Now while the manager sets around playing Candy Crush, treats the employee’s like crap, and employees see a dead end job cause no one wants to work hard at advancement fixing the above while on duty, hard working people on the go shop at this god forsaken hell hole cause the Drinkun Donuts are cheap, fast and the peopleless apps lets you get in and get out. Maybe even in Westfield. Check it out and open your eyes. Bathrooms are a good start.

Rinse and repeat every single day.

The initiative of the hourly worker is just above having a pulse. They usually are walking comas.

Some have figured it out, but if you look around the tell is screaming volumes of what and how it happens. Not just restaurants but in so many vocations today.

On the flip side, if we could get some standards back and the hourly employees wants to make it his/her own then more than likely $30 an hour is where it could be for a minimum wage in this country.

But with poor management and the people eating like wolves on a tight lunch hour, it is never going to happen.

Retail will always figure it out or that address will be something else next week.

Raising the hourly wage unfortunately will not alone fix the problem of who wants to work hard at bettering their life. It will only do what it has always done. Help people that can’t or won’t survive each day.


It can start with the shopper. Leave a note, (after you get your food) Report to corporate. Observe the hostess at Pee For Chongs watching TickTok when the foyer doors are filthy or the tables with no bussers.

You ever see one of these joints that are not hiring.? We call that a clue.

The beat goes on.

 

[jamil]

Bumping this as California's $20 minimum wage for fast food workers is set to take effect, leading to thousands of layoffs for Pizza Hut delivery drivers across the state.

Who could have seen this coming?

California Pizza Hut lays off delivery drivers amid new wage law

PacPizza, a Pizza Hut franchisee, plans to lay off its entire fleet of delivery drivers ahead of California's wage increases for fast-food workers.

www.businessinsider.com

Toljah.

 

[jamil]

Paying people $20/hour minimum wage does not create a workforce of high value employees. Hiring high value employees and paying them enough to stay does. Let the market determine what minimum wage should be. And if companies don't pay their high value employees enough to retain them, then they'll suck.

 

[KellyinAvon]

Bumping this as California's $20 minimum wage for fast food workers is set to take effect, leading to thousands of layoffs for Pizza Hut delivery drivers across the state.

Who could have seen this coming?

California Pizza Hut lays off delivery drivers amid new wage law

PacPizza, a Pizza Hut franchisee, plans to lay off its entire fleet of delivery drivers ahead of California's wage increases for fast-food workers.

www.businessinsider.com

HOLY NECROPOST, BATMAN!! A very appropriate necropost I might add...

 

[loudgroove]

Here are my thoughts. Minimum wage jobs are for kids learning to work. college kids to help their parents, housewives that want something to do and what not. They also help small businesses turn a small profit to stay in business. If you plan on supporting a family by working one of these jobs, I will question your life choices! On the flip side, those that are middle class that support such a thing are happily accepting a pay cut. Just because these jobs will pay more doesn't mean that consumer prices will stay the same, nor does it mean that your boss will give you a rase either!! So, if you are working a job that pays $15 over the Minimum wage, that gap is smaller now and the price you pay for something will go up.

 

[Twangbanger]

Here are my thoughts. Minimum wage jobs are for kids learning to work. college kids to help their parents, housewives that want something to do and what not. They also help small businesses turn a small profit to stay in business. If you plan on supporting a family by working one of these jobs, I will question your life choices! On the flip side, those that are middle class that support such a thing are happily accepting a pay cut. Just because these jobs will pay more doesn't mean that consumer prices will stay the same, nor does it mean that your boss will give you a rase either!! So, if you are working a job that pays $15 over the Minimum wage, that gap is smaller now and the price you pay for something will go up.

The real mistake is doing this without the border being closed. Announcing to the world you're instantiating a $20 min wage - but leaving the borders open - is absurd, if California's #1 issue is not being an affordable place to live. You're going to draw more people competing for the same jobs and more dollars chasing the same housing. More dollars chasing the same limited commodities equals inflation. Which in turn exacerbates the same problem you were trying to solve in the first place - which was people not being able to afford a basic standard of living.

CA succeeded in attracting an "underclass" to do their peon labor for them, but the problem is now the people who can afford to live in CA feel guilty about the conditions their "underclass" has to live in. They desperately want to put more "money in pockets" for these people, but the way they're going about it is economically ignorant. California is trying to balance two fundamentally contradictory objectives. California has a finite resource everybody wants...liberals want to make it "cheaper." They cannot see how the second desire sabotages the first. It's the same thing the government did with college degrees. That's why after decades and decades of "city on the hill" policies, it's still an economically crushing place for poor people to live. It isn't how much money you put in peoples' paycheck; it's how much they can buy with that, that determines their standard of living. So here the concept of "resource competition" rears its ugly head. The more money you put in peoples' pockets, the more the target escapes your reach. More and more money chasing that impossible dream. You need less people chasing the dream.

If your heart bleeds for the underclass who mows your yard / serves your food / shingles your roof, and it bothers you to see them living in poor conditions, what those people really most desperately need from you, in terms of public policy, is for them to not have to endure dog-eat-dog competition from letting in more millions of people just like them, elbowing in beside them, competing for the same oxygen. What they really need is that most basic of government-enforceable forms of labor protectionism: closing the damn border already. Until you do that, you can pass all the wage laws you want, but all you're doing is bailing out one side of the boat while more water comes in the other. As long as businesses get all the cheap bodies they want, the living conditions of those people will suffer. And letting them in, then trying to punish companies for hiring them, is perverse, unrealistic, and doomed to fail, because the problem is already here and the dogs are already eating the dogs.

I guess we're going to have to have Bill Maher write this on a board and whack Steve Colbert in the face with it or something.

 

[Creedmoor]

Working hard is too hard for many folks today. After being commissioned only retail for over 45 years, one sees the shortcuts in standards.

Let’s take The restaurant (fast food mostly but high line occasionally) typical model. Franchisee has money to invest. Corporate wants the best image. Reality is dirty glass, French fries on the floor, concrete apron to store tacks up the bottom of your shoe, orders not right, making change is a challenge, they are out of everything and food is substandard.

Now while the manager sets around playing Candy Crush, treats the employee’s like crap, and employees see a dead end job cause no one wants to work hard at advancement fixing the above while on duty, hard working people on the go shop at this god forsaken hell hole cause the Drinkun Donuts are cheap, fast and the peopleless apps lets you get in and get out. Maybe even in Westfield. Check it out and open your eyes. Bathrooms are a good start.

Rinse and repeat every single day.

The initiative of the hourly worker is just above having a pulse. They usually are walking comas.

Some have figured it out, but if you look around the tell is screaming volumes of what and how it happens. Not just restaurants but in so many vocations today.

On the flip side, if we could get some standards back and the hourly employees wants to make it his/her own then more than likely $30 an hour is where it could be for a minimum wage in this country.

But with poor management and the people eating like wolves on a tight lunch hour, it is never going to happen.

Retail will always figure it out or that address will be something else next week.

Raising the hourly wage unfortunately will not alone fix the problem of who wants to work hard at bettering their life. It will only do what it has always done. Help people that can’t or won’t survive each day.


It can start with the shopper. Leave a note, (after you get your food) Report to corporate. Observe the hostess at Pee For Chongs watching TickTok when the foyer doors are filthy or the tables with no bussers.

You ever see one of these joints that are not hiring.? We call that a clue.

The beat goes on.

I don't believe I've ever been in a dirty Chick-fil-A, much less one with a Help Wanted sign hanging in the front window nor have I ever had tawdry service at one.
Maybe up your game.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

9 year old thread of predictions. Which ones came true? Prices didn't skyrocket due to wages. They stayed pretty stagnant until COVID and print-a-trillion economics. McD's still seems to be profitable. Etc. Many have tried to push more automation. I refuse to use the kiosk for ordering, but I eat out so seldom I doubt they miss me.

FWIW, I worked for Pizza Hut in high school, still owned by Pepsi Co then. Delivery drivers started out at an inflation adjusted $14-ish an hour plus a flat fee per delivery, full benefits, and a week of PTO (after the first year). No idea what CA would have been, of course.

The biggest issue for Pizza Hut is competition and the fact they suck. They've been in decline for years. Major franchise holders went bankrupt, roughly 6% of corporate stores were shut down in 2019. Their marketing sucks, as well. I'm sure the increased wage requirement will them harder because they are already swirling. Yum! was the worst thing to happen to Pizza Hut ever, IMO.

 

[jamil]

What are people willing to work for? What are employers willing to pay for that labor? Find the equilibrium of that and that's what the labor is worth. No minimum wages necessary. It's just a market.

If someone wants to pay more than that, it's their business. Of course it will affect their bottom line, because labor costs are a line item that contributes to the bottom line. Maybe not enough to have to raise prices. Labor costs are a factor in prices, but not the only factor. It's up to the business after they crunch the numbers if they they can afford that virtue, and if the gain of signaling it is worth it to them.

Either way, if treating your employees well is a priority, you'll pay them well.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

What are people willing to work for? What are employers willing to pay for that labor? Find the equilibrium of that and that's what the labor is worth. No minimum wages necessary. It's just a market.

If someone wants to pay more than that, it's their business. Of course it will affect their bottom line, because labor costs are a line item that contributes to the bottom line. Maybe not enough to have to raise prices. Labor costs are a factor in prices, but not the only factor. It's up to the business after they crunch the numbers if they they can afford that virtue, and if the gain of signaling it is worth it to them.

Either way, if treating your employees well is a priority, you'll pay them well.

"The market" doesn't exist in a vacuum. Had these arguments 9 years ago, without the social safety net the real minimum wage is your replacement costs. What does it cost for you to live and to raise a child to the age they can replace you? This isn't new, Adam Smith lays it out (though he assumes one man working supporting a wife and two children, as the wife will need a replacement in the next generation as well). We do have a social safety net, though, so the government subsidizes sub-living wage jobs.

If we truly want 'the market' to rule, then immigration checks are an active barrier to this. Free flow of labor is just as important as free flow of goods. But we don't, because we want a middle class and that requires some level of protectionism. I doubt anyone here is enough of an anarchist to disagree, though I've noted many will attempt to rationalize some odd separation where free market only applies in a given political boundary.

Reasonable minds can differ on where the line is drawn, and there's no free ride. Personally, I'd like to see some slowing and reversal of the extreme wage gaps and wealth distribution in fewer and fewer hands as I think it's incompatible with democracy long term. But I've had all these arguments ad nauseum, so I figure I'm done here.

 

[jamil]

"The market" doesn't exist in a vacuum. Had these arguments 9 years ago, without the social safety net the real minimum wage is your replacement costs. What does it cost for you to live and to raise a child to the age they can replace you? This isn't new, Adam Smith lays it out (though he assumes one man working supporting a wife and two children, as the wife will need a replacement in the next generation as well). We do have a social safety net, though, so the government subsidizes sub-living wage jobs.

If we truly want 'the market' to rule, then immigration checks are an active barrier to this. Free flow of labor is just as important as free flow of goods. But we don't, because we want a middle class and that requires some level of protectionism. I doubt anyone here is enough of an anarchist to disagree, though I've noted many will attempt to rationalize some odd separation where free market only applies in a given political boundary.

Reasonable minds can differ on where the line is drawn, and there's no free ride. Personally, I'd like to see some slowing and reversal of the extreme wage gaps and wealth distribution in fewer and fewer hands as I think it's incompatible with democracy long term. But I've had all these arguments ad nauseum, so I figure I'm done here.

I'm not the free market absolutist I was 9 years ago. But also I don't think government should determine what wages should be. Generally the markets work better than arbitrary numbers picked by ideologues as a solution for something they don't understand.

I agree about the impact of an open border. But setting those wages arbitrarily high, to TB's point, doesn't solve it. Either way the border needs closed for illegal immigrants. I don't have a problem with protectionism either. I think we need to bring manufacturing back to the US.

The problem that caused McDonald's to even be in this discussion is that it was formerly a job for teens and college students. Not to provide a living for a family. Pushing real jobs to Mexico and China caused that problem. To me the solution isn't to force McDonald's to pay more. Stop the global nonsense, bring manufacturing back here (yeah, there will be a hit on prices) and close the borders.

I'm not even as opposed to Unions as I was 9 years ago. I think they're necessary in corporations to help offset corporate greed, because they would definitely **** the workers if they could do whatever they want. But, unions are overbearing and have too much power. I think there needs to be a reset of power between labor and corporations. Neither should have an upper hand. I think the laws now give the unions a greater advantage than they should have.

I'm not as concerned about the wage gap. Wealth is not a zero sum game. But I am concerned about access to the ability to make wealth. I'm not wealthy. I do alright. I'm comfortable. I'm satisfied. I don't chase wealth. Doesn't bother me what Elon Musk has. Or how he got it. But in terms of access to wealth, it used to be that a nobody could use a good idea to make wealth. I don't think that access is as available as it once was. I'm not sure what the answer to that is. But redistributing wealth is probably not the right answer either.

 

[Basher]

OP’s username checks out…

 

[miguel]

Maybe we are at a point where we are oversaturated with fast food joints and/or they have outlived their original purpose?

Think of the original premise...cheap food, made on very short order, with locations often focused at/near major throughways for people traveling, in a hurry or closing out an event. (a kid's sporting event, a concert, trip to a museum or park, etc.)

Fast forward that original model to what we now have...food that is the same price or likely more expensive depending on what you order compared to a meal made at home, long lines (Culvers, Chik-fil-A, etc.), if you drive past one cluster you will find another in just a few minutes (unless you are in a small town), and frankly they're frequented by mostly lazy people (moms/dads) who don't want to go home and prepare a meal for the family or do the dishes.

Also, these places are open in many cases 18 hours a day rather than "normal" business hours.

Board 'em all up and just go to Kroger!

 

[Tombs]

All of this is ultimately ignoring the fact we're structuring an economy around dead end service jobs, and as a result nobody wants to work. We can keep playing with minimum wage but it's just a bandaid on a severed corpse. You could not hope to create a more bleak vision for future generations than we already have.

Until we decide, as a country, we want to have real jobs with a real future, and put a hefty leash on imports, we will continue down this path.

Either we get domestic manufacturing back, or we borrow time until we collapse. Fast food jobs are already a significant casualty of automation and will continue to become less viable as employment options. Considering the hurdles inflation has caused, I'll be surprised if fast food as an industry manages to remain viable, as it won't be long until someone creates a better industry.

 

[Tombs]

Working hard is too hard for many folks today. After being commissioned only retail for over 45 years, one sees the shortcuts in standards.

Let’s take The restaurant (fast food mostly but high line occasionally) typical model. Franchisee has money to invest. Corporate wants the best image. Reality is dirty glass, French fries on the floor, concrete apron to store tacks up the bottom of your shoe, orders not right, making change is a challenge, they are out of everything and food is substandard.

Now while the manager sets around playing Candy Crush, treats the employee’s like crap, and employees see a dead end job cause no one wants to work hard at advancement fixing the above while on duty, hard working people on the go shop at this god forsaken hell hole cause the Drinkun Donuts are cheap, fast and the peopleless apps lets you get in and get out. Maybe even in Westfield. Check it out and open your eyes. Bathrooms are a good start.

Rinse and repeat every single day.

The initiative of the hourly worker is just above having a pulse. They usually are walking comas.

Some have figured it out, but if you look around the tell is screaming volumes of what and how it happens. Not just restaurants but in so many vocations today.

On the flip side, if we could get some standards back and the hourly employees wants to make it his/her own then more than likely $30 an hour is where it could be for a minimum wage in this country.

But with poor management and the people eating like wolves on a tight lunch hour, it is never going to happen.

Retail will always figure it out or that address will be something else next week.

Raising the hourly wage unfortunately will not alone fix the problem of who wants to work hard at bettering their life. It will only do what it has always done. Help people that can’t or won’t survive each day.


It can start with the shopper. Leave a note, (after you get your food) Report to corporate. Observe the hostess at Pee For Chongs watching TickTok when the foyer doors are filthy or the tables with no bussers.

You ever see one of these joints that are not hiring.? We call that a clue.

The beat goes on.

I don't think retail has a very good chance of continuing in the modern era. Amazon took that industry's lunch entirely thanks to covid, and due to patterns, I think it's a trend that will continue.

Then we're back to arguing whether someone running boxes in a warehouse should be paid $30 an hour or not, while robots and drones slowly replace all of them anyway.

We don't have much value creation in the current economy, it's not sustainable. I think that's the key in all of this, people know their jobs are not driving the economy along or generating value, they're just arranging chairs on the titanic. It all drives back to the point that we need to start making things domestically.

 

[bwframe]

None of this applies anymore. Fast food quit being fast some years back.

It's even been years since I had to quit reminding myself of this, by pulling out of the drive through line, after minutes and minutes of sitting idle.

 

[Ingomike]

Maybe we are at a point where we are oversaturated with fast food joints and/or they have outlived their original purpose?

Think of the original premise...cheap food, made on very short order, with locations often focused at/near major throughways for people traveling, in a hurry or closing out an event. (a kid's sporting event, a concert, trip to a museum or park, etc.)

Fast food was invented for the working class to eat fast, don’t think any of that significantly played into its popularity. You do get it right that, especially for families, the pace of life today makes them have to do twigs fast.

Fast forward that original model to what we now have...food that is the same price or likely more expensive depending on what you order compared to a meal made at home,

I would challenge this to some degree if one is making the exact same thing. I love the Big Mac, not that **** they sell today, what I was getting in the 70’s. I have taught myself to make them at home complete with homemade sauce. Yep I spend more than going and buying a couple at McD’s.

long lines (Culvers, Chik-fil-A, etc.),

Funny you name two of the better quality and value places and not one disgusting place like McDonalds or Taco Bell, the lines are there because value is there.

if you drive past one cluster you will find another in just a few minutes (unless you are in a small town), and frankly they're frequented by mostly lazy people (moms/dads) who don't want to go home and prepare a meal for the family or do the dishes.

Do you realize that the vast majority have no idea how to prepare a meal? Home economics is a relic of the past, and many of the current mothers and fathers parents did not know how to cook, so it is a downward spiral.

I make peanut brittle, butter toffee, aged egg nog, just to make a couple of things I do in this season. The number of folks that cannot believe I make that and how good it is because it is so uncommon today.

From what I see, tragically, kids eat chicken nuggets when out or if at home they eat frozen chicken nuggets quickly baked.

Also, these places are open in many cases 18 hours a day rather than "normal" business hours.

Board 'em all up and just go to Kroger!

Yep, lock ‘em up. Nobody works late or gets up early and needs a quick bite of food, they can make do at the gas station. Opps, you probably want them closed too…

 

[Ingomike]

None of this applies anymore. Fast food quit being fast some years back.

It's even been years since I had to quit reminding myself of this, by pulling out of the drive through line, after minutes and minutes of sitting idle.

80% of fast food sales come at the drive through window so there will be lines. You might be going to the wrong places if it takes that long…