The minimum wage in California is $10.50/hr with San Francisco enacting a local $13/hr exemption.
I would note the following sentence from that article which from an economics standpoint completely contradicts the gist of the article itself: "Many of the restaurants have declared difficulties like the cost of finding and keeping good employees."
If your difficulty is finding and keeping employees, then the problem is NOT the minimum wage, as the most common solution to that particular problem is solved by paying employees more. The problem and the reason the vast number of restaurants have been closing in the San Francisco area is NOT due to increased pay under minimum wage laws, it's because RENTS are freaking sky high due to demand. (In other words, the economy is doing so well there that landlords are demanding far more to lease space in their buildings than many of the restaurant owners can afford.) Also, office space is so much in demand that converting restaurant space to office space is a maneuver that landlords are doing to maximize their profits.
I had just read an article about how the gentrification in what was "ghetto" area known as the "tenderloin" where some 20 yrs ago a bunch of Vietnamese restaurants had opened and located due to cheap rents. Now due to their work and the area becoming once again a vibrant commercial center, the owners of the buildings where they were located have increased rents by 300+%, if they even allowed for the restaurants to remain when their leases ended.
The cost to lease commercial space in San Francisco is now higher than the cost of renting in Manhattan. There has been an 81% increase in commercial rents over the last 4 yrs. I would also note that San Francisco has the most number of restaurants both
per capita and in real terms than any other city in America with nearly 40 restaurants per 10,000 people. New York City by contrast only has 25 per 10,000. Some 60 restaurants closing in San Francisco in a 3-4 month span is barely a blip compared to the number of restaurants in operation.
Here's the CEO (one of my clients when I was with the law firm in L.A.) and a local franchisee discussing how they've actually benefited from the increase with the local guy doubling his profits from just a few years back AFTER the minimum wage was put into place.
https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/01/0...-thats-what-this-fast-food-ceo-says-happened/
How does an increase of a 10% in salary compare to an increase in rent of 100% to 300% on a business's bottom line? How does not being able to find and keep employees because they are opting for other higher paying jobs indicate that the minimum wage is the cause of that problem exactly?
Claiming that the rise in minimum wage, while ignoring much larger increases in expenses and applicable factors that impact the restaurant business, had lead to the closing of these restaurants seems to me to be nothing more than an exercise in
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
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