Very few small mom and pop shops might need to raise prices, many of them already pay decent wages far above the minimum actually, but corporate restaurants and chains like McDonalds can absolutely afford $15 an hour without raising prices because they already pay above that amount in other places. There is already the assumption that if McDonalds could raise their prices then they would. What they pay their staff isn’t a factor in the equation unless they were close to net zero or below, but unlikely because McDonalds makes Billions in Net Revenue annually in the USA alone. If the corporation decided it would be more profitable to close lower traffic operations in small towns then that would be a good thing for local restaurants.
If this sort of idea really hurt the small times more than the corpos wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to stop it from happening using lobbying groups.
Very few small mom and pop shops might need to raise prices, many of them already pay decent wages far above the minimum actually, but corporate restaurants and chains like McDonalds can absolutely afford $15 an hour without raising prices because they already pay above that amount in other places. There is already the assumption that if McDonalds could raise their prices then they would. What they pay their staff isn’t a factor in the equation unless they were close to net zero or below, but unlikely because McDonalds makes Billions in Net Revenue annually in the USA alone. If the corporation decided it would be more profitable to close lower traffic operations in small towns then that would be a good thing for local restaurants.
If this sort of idea really hurt the small times more than the corpos wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to stop it from happening using lobbying groups.