7 ms·

Is the author really in Buffalo? That’s the other side of the state. From my personal experience in nyc, and from talking to neighbors who own restaurants, sma

Is the author really in Buffalo? That’s the other side of the state. From my personal experience in nyc, and from talking to neighbors who own restaurants, small and family owned businesses are absolutely hurting. They’ve reduced staff, and owners are making up lost hours themselves. Delivery has been mostly outsourced. The price of everything on the menu has gone up. A number of lower-cost restaurants have closed completely. Whatever reported numbers the author based this upon do not tell a complete story.

cooljacob204 7y ago
> Delivery has been mostly outsourced I feel like that is more of a side effect of delivery apps getting popular. But in my opinion if your restaurant cant afford to pay $15 an hour, which still isn't really a livable wage in NYC, then maybe it shouldn't be operating.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  So then you think the cost of food should be higher in NYC?
  - cooljacob204 7y ago
    Takeout and dining in? Yes, absolutely. It has already gone up to compensate. I still go out and eat for a few dollars more and people get paid better. Go explore some rent prices in NYC and you will understand why it is necessary.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      Sure and that's fine for you and me, but it also is more cost on those who are likely making $15/hr and get a lot of their meals out and about - which means their cost just rose with their paycheck. Remember, making food at home in a nice kitchen is a luxury.
      - lowpro 7y ago
        I think you have this backwards, paying others to make food for you is a luxury. If you can afford a $50 microwave that you can then use to make meals that cost less than a dollar, that is the standard. You don't need a 'nice kitchen' to eat at home. Not to mention, their wage is double the $7.25 national minimum wage, but food prices at these restaurants do not double in response, so they still come out ahead.
        vorpalhex 7y ago
        You can't live off of microwave noodles and instant rice. Cooking meals not only requires a way to heat food but ingredients which go bad quickly (eg time to go grocery shopping) and time to assemble and cook ingredients (dried beans are cheap but take 12 hours, instant beans still take 10 minutes or so). Then remember food has to be palatable, which is an additional challenge with kids. I'm lucky that I'm in a place now where I can make nice food from relatively raw ingredients and much of that stems from my (relative) wealth.
      - throwaway-hn123 7y ago
        What the fuck are you talking about???? Did you not know that in most of the world, cooking at home is the norm? How come you're so out of touch with reality?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - pcardoso 7y ago
    Aren't you just making this happen with tipping? I am from Europe and I always find it confusing to deal with prices in the US. First the prices don't contain the taxes, and then I have to add tipping. The price of a meal shows up on the menu as 9.95 and I end up paying around 15.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      Please still tip the staff making $15/hr. It's still the custom at most locations.
      - Frost1x 7y ago
        The original point of a tip was to optionaly pay when service goes over and above what they need to do. At some point, it morphed into passing part of the service staff wage to the customer and pretending this was somehow a good thing. It's so entrenched in culture now people just assume even for crap service you tip. At the end of the day, it really gives management an easy out by putting the customer against the service staff for labor rates while the restaurant decides fixed meal costs.
        scient 7y ago
        Its absolutely ridiculous. Its now to a point where 15-18% is expected even for bad service, and 25% and up for good services. There is no way I'm paying an extra quarter of my bill in tips because the restaurant owner is too cheap and offloads the staff costs directly to their customers.
        vorpalhex 7y ago
        Then don't eat at those places. That's a valid option - but don't stiff your wait staff.
        todd8 7y ago
        Its gotten ridiculous, I just wish that we could move away from the tipping culture that we have here in the US. I almost always tip 20%. I even tip 15% for poor service--I figure that there are likely things going on in the kitchen or with other service staff that I'm not aware of, and that tips are often split between everyone so the my tip for poor service is help the other employees busing tables too. My wife often tips 25% or more. Why can't restaurants charge us more, pay their staff better, and then the staff could treat us like we were customers of the restaurant and not expecting us to directly compensate them. For the answer, see my last paragraph. Even for pick up service, say when I place a to-go order for cup of coffee with my Starbucks app and then pick it up from a bin on the counter myself, the app prompts for a tip. At other server-less restaurants, I'm forced to make the choice of tip when I place the order. So why the culture around tipping here in the US. I believe that it's related to why movie theaters can charge so much for popcorn. From Stanford.edu: "The findings empirically answer the age-old question of whether it's better to charge more for a primary product (in this case, the movie ticket) or a secondary product (the popcorn). Putting the premium on the "frill" items, it turns out, indeed opens up the possibility for price-sensitive people to see films. That means more customers coming to theaters in general, and a nice profit from those who are willing to fork it over for the Gummy Bears." [1] In the case of tipping in restaurants, the restaurants are naturally willing to charge more to customers like myself and my wife for the wine+food+service while still making a profit from price sensitive customers that pay less by tipping less for the same wine+food+service. [1] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-movie-popcorn-cost-so-much https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-movie-popcorn...
  - jaas 7y ago
    Yes. There are many cheap food options in NYC and if they need to charge a bit more to pay a fair wage then so be it. Providing even cheaper prepared food off the backs of staff not getting paid a living wage is not ok.
  - subpixel 7y ago
    Yes, absolutely, and eventually. Restaurants have long been subsidized by workers stuck in a position where they will work for _any_ wage. As that changes, which is demonstrably a good thing, so will prices rise to match costs. It’s similar to the way Uber/Lyft prices will need to rise when their subsidies change terms.
  - dangerface 7y ago
    Restaurants != Food Having some one else prepare and serve you food is a luxury, they deserve to be paid for their work. If you disagree then do the work yourself no one is stopping you.
arzt 7y ago
Anecdotally I have to agree. Having lived in Manhattan for the past decade, I have seen more restaurants close in the last two years than the previous eight. Most of lower Manhattan's retail footprint is filled with chains (Starbucks etc) rather than neighborhood restaurants.
- nickdoesdesign 7y ago
  Thats a factor of rising rents not rising wages. Its been well documented that rent seeking is causing this behavior.
- kiba 7y ago
  If you have to pay something ridiculous like 13k a month, I am sure you go out of business too.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    If I had to pay that much in rent, I wouldn't go into business.
- thawaway1837 7y ago
  So restaurants which have the lowest margins (chains) are proliferating but restaurants with higher margins are failing. That seems to indicate that worker pay isn’t really the issue here. And it’s well known the reason restaurants are closing shop is almost because of outrageous rents.
coldpie 7y ago
We don't have to use anecdotes, we have data. Linked from the article is this summary, which links to the full report: http://www.centernyc.org/new-york-citys-15-minimum-wage http://www.centernyc.org/new-york-citys-15-minimum-wage Quote: "During this period, New York City has seen a strong economic expansion of the restaurant industry, outpacing national growth in employment, annual wages, and the number of both limited- and full-service restaurant establishments." Perhaps the disagreement you see is because this study focuses on the workers, instead of the business owners. Food service worker wages and employment rates are up relative to overall growth. This article is dispelling the notion that increasing worker wages will lead to worse outcomes for those workers, which is a common objection to increasing the minimum wage.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  “This period” in the quoted report is 2013-2018. The minimum wage hike occurred in late 2018. > Roughly 77 percent of NYC restaurants have slashed employee hours. Thirty-six percent said they had to layoff employees and 90 percent had to increase prices following the minimum wage hike, according to a NYC Hospitality Alliance survey taken just one month after the bill took effect. > Only about 4 percent of survey respondents indicated that none of the above changes took place in their restaurants. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city’s-15-minimum-wage-now-officially-disaster-71761 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city’s-15-mi...
  - ashelmire 7y ago
    As a former service worker, I'd argue that cutting employee hours was exactly the goal. Typically, in a restaurant in Philly or places with similarly lower-than-minimum service wages (which still has the $2.75 or whatever minimum for service workers), you'll be scheduled excessively for hours when the restaurant definitely isn't going to have any business. For example, coming in at 330/4 to start prep for the dinner shift. When labor costs basically nothing, there's no reason not to overschedule them. This reduced the amount of time I could spend outside of work learning to program (for example... since it's what I did hah) or others could spend improving their skills for basically no money. It's a huge detriment to the employees. You'd stand around cleaning for some nitpicky manager making 0/hour effectively, doing untipped cleaning and prep work. Your paychecks will be $0 if you get even a modest amount of tips for the night (it's all taxed). Now restaurants will be more particular about how they schedule employees, and the untipped work actually costs money to have done (if a janitor would have to be paid minimum+ to do it, why should a server do it for $2.75/hr)?
Someone1234 7y ago
It is using New York's official data on the restaurant sector, and other quantifiable studies to make its point. Dismissing it because of "where the author lives" and anecdotes, comes across like you've decided the conclusion and are trying to fit facts to support that preconceived conclusion. Why not look at the actual data and try to address that? It would be a much stronger argument.
ilikehurdles 7y ago
> Delivery has been mostly outsourced This is true in just about every market in the US, including all the ones without minimum wage increases. > The price of everything on the menu has gone up You could say this most years about any restaurant and most years you'd be right. The other years, you'd see smaller servings. > A number of lower-cost restaurants have closed completely The average person eats at fewer restaurants in their entire life than the number of restaurants that close in NYC in any given year. Anecdotes aren't a data point.
- wolco 7y ago
  Removing smoking from restaurants and bars had a huge effect no one mentions. The industry hasn't recovered.
  - JoBrad 7y ago
    Studies post-ban haven’t shown that. https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2013/12_0327.htm https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2013/12_0327.htm
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Studies from the "center of disease control and prevention" haven't shown that. Hardly the best source to pick a study that says "the smoking ban hurt businesses".
      - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
        Do you have a criticism that goes deeper than pointing to the name of an organization?
        coldtea 7y ago
        Don't need to, I find that this is a good enough filter for a pareto 80% of cases.
pytester 7y ago
>small and family owned businesses are absolutely hurting likely because profit = revenue - expenses and expenses (in the form of wages) have gone up more than revenue. Raising the minimum wage has always been bad for margins. That's why those restaurants (and economists indirectly on their payroll) try to convince us that it's bad for workers too.
coldtea 7y ago
>From my personal experience in nyc, and from talking to neighbors who own restaurants, small and family owned businesses are absolutely hurting. They’ve reduced staff, and owners are making up lost hours themselves Well, if they were hurt with such a raise, perhaps they were not viable businesses and are better closed. The employees might lose a crappy near-subsistence job, but both the employees and owners can then concentrate their efforts into something better... Somehow Europe manages to have viable restaurants despite decent minimum wage and not tips-oriented compensation...
- dwild 7y ago
  > The employees might lose a crappy near-subsistence job, but both the employees and owners can then concentrate their efforts into something better... Before the hike, both the employee and owners could do that... yet they didn't. Is the existence of a lower paid job make it harder to create something better? That seems really backward, because there will always be lower paying job. > Somehow Europe manages to have viable restaurants despite decent minimum wage and not tips-oriented compensation... Where does Europe has an higher minimum wage than $15 USD? That's excluding tipping which can bring that wage MUCH higher. You can't really compare viability when the wage is actually lower....
- scient 7y ago
  Impossible, go away with your socialist ideas! /s
- alfromspace 7y ago
  What if the alternative is unemployment?
  - Freak_NL 7y ago
    What makes the US unique that it needs to forego minimum wage? Unemployment isn't much different from most countries in Europe or other comparable economies.
    - eej2ya1K 7y ago
jkingsbery 7y ago
An article that supports this: https://nypost.com/2019/09/29/15-minimum-wage-hike-is-hitting-hurting-nyc-restaurants/ https://nypost.com/2019/09/29/15-minimum-wage-hike-is-hittin... > Gabriela’s isn’t alone. In a survey of 324 full-service restaurants, the New York City Hospitality Alliance found that 76.5 percent of respondents cut staff hours and 36.3 percent eliminated jobs, including whole layers of middle management, in response to mandated wage increases. > To cope, restaurateurs like the Milners are moving from large-scale restaurants to small spaces. The Milners have Gabriela’s Taqueria at West 44th Street and Eighth Avenue. It seems unlikely the original article is telling the full story.
- mattzito 7y ago
  Ehhhhh - so, the Post is notoriously anti-minimum wage hikes, and the NYCHA is a restaurant owners association, so it makes sense that they are anti-wage hike. I would say that from my experience with the restaurant industry here, it definitely puts pressure on restauranteurs with marginal businesses. If you have a labor-intensive restaurant with thin margins, it hurts you. However, the restaurants with strong businesses, it's not really affecting. A far greater impact on the typical restaurant is delivery, which is an increasing percentage of their business with a lower margin for many traditional restaurants, given the cut that Grubhub/Seamless/etc. take.
  - jkingsbery 7y ago
    Whatever the bias of the publisher, the article from the NY Post contradicts this research backed by data on a couple of fronts: * "massive layoffs in the restaurant industry are unlikely," but the survey indicated that a large number of restaurants have eliminated jobs or cut hours * "...because owners need a certain number of staff to operate a full-service kitchen," but at least in the anecdotes from the interview in the NYPost article, restaurant owners are moving to smaller venues that require less staff or moving to "common space" layouts.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
To respond to your anecdata: In a capitalist system, isn't it their fault for not being able to compete? Why should we lower wages for thousands of workers because you personally know failing businesses?
- subject117 7y ago
  Employees who could have been hired by these businesses won’t be now. This creates more competition for the workers because it decreases the supply of jobs. (ECON 101)

cooljacob204 7y ago

> Delivery has been mostly outsourced I feel like that is more of a side effect of delivery apps getting popular. But in my opinion if your restaurant cant afford to pay $15 an hour, which still isn't really a livable wage in NYC, then maybe it shouldn't be operating.

vorpalhex 7y ago
So then you think the cost of food should be higher in NYC?
- cooljacob204 7y ago
  Takeout and dining in? Yes, absolutely. It has already gone up to compensate. I still go out and eat for a few dollars more and people get paid better. Go explore some rent prices in NYC and you will understand why it is necessary.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    Sure and that's fine for you and me, but it also is more cost on those who are likely making $15/hr and get a lot of their meals out and about - which means their cost just rose with their paycheck. Remember, making food at home in a nice kitchen is a luxury.
    - lowpro 7y ago
      I think you have this backwards, paying others to make food for you is a luxury. If you can afford a $50 microwave that you can then use to make meals that cost less than a dollar, that is the standard. You don't need a 'nice kitchen' to eat at home. Not to mention, their wage is double the $7.25 national minimum wage, but food prices at these restaurants do not double in response, so they still come out ahead.
      - vorpalhex 7y ago
        You can't live off of microwave noodles and instant rice. Cooking meals not only requires a way to heat food but ingredients which go bad quickly (eg time to go grocery shopping) and time to assemble and cook ingredients (dried beans are cheap but take 12 hours, instant beans still take 10 minutes or so). Then remember food has to be palatable, which is an additional challenge with kids. I'm lucky that I'm in a place now where I can make nice food from relatively raw ingredients and much of that stems from my (relative) wealth.
    - throwaway-hn123 7y ago
      What the fuck are you talking about???? Did you not know that in most of the world, cooking at home is the norm? How come you're so out of touch with reality?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- pcardoso 7y ago
  Aren't you just making this happen with tipping? I am from Europe and I always find it confusing to deal with prices in the US. First the prices don't contain the taxes, and then I have to add tipping. The price of a meal shows up on the menu as 9.95 and I end up paying around 15.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    Please still tip the staff making $15/hr. It's still the custom at most locations.
    - Frost1x 7y ago
      The original point of a tip was to optionaly pay when service goes over and above what they need to do. At some point, it morphed into passing part of the service staff wage to the customer and pretending this was somehow a good thing. It's so entrenched in culture now people just assume even for crap service you tip. At the end of the day, it really gives management an easy out by putting the customer against the service staff for labor rates while the restaurant decides fixed meal costs.
      - scient 7y ago
        Its absolutely ridiculous. Its now to a point where 15-18% is expected even for bad service, and 25% and up for good services. There is no way I'm paying an extra quarter of my bill in tips because the restaurant owner is too cheap and offloads the staff costs directly to their customers.
        vorpalhex 7y ago
        Then don't eat at those places. That's a valid option - but don't stiff your wait staff.
      - todd8 7y ago
        Its gotten ridiculous, I just wish that we could move away from the tipping culture that we have here in the US. I almost always tip 20%. I even tip 15% for poor service--I figure that there are likely things going on in the kitchen or with other service staff that I'm not aware of, and that tips are often split between everyone so the my tip for poor service is help the other employees busing tables too. My wife often tips 25% or more. Why can't restaurants charge us more, pay their staff better, and then the staff could treat us like we were customers of the restaurant and not expecting us to directly compensate them. For the answer, see my last paragraph. Even for pick up service, say when I place a to-go order for cup of coffee with my Starbucks app and then pick it up from a bin on the counter myself, the app prompts for a tip. At other server-less restaurants, I'm forced to make the choice of tip when I place the order. So why the culture around tipping here in the US. I believe that it's related to why movie theaters can charge so much for popcorn. From Stanford.edu: "The findings empirically answer the age-old question of whether it's better to charge more for a primary product (in this case, the movie ticket) or a secondary product (the popcorn). Putting the premium on the "frill" items, it turns out, indeed opens up the possibility for price-sensitive people to see films. That means more customers coming to theaters in general, and a nice profit from those who are willing to fork it over for the Gummy Bears." [1] In the case of tipping in restaurants, the restaurants are naturally willing to charge more to customers like myself and my wife for the wine+food+service while still making a profit from price sensitive customers that pay less by tipping less for the same wine+food+service. [1] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-movie-popcorn-cost-so-much https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-movie-popcorn...
- jaas 7y ago
  Yes. There are many cheap food options in NYC and if they need to charge a bit more to pay a fair wage then so be it. Providing even cheaper prepared food off the backs of staff not getting paid a living wage is not ok.
- subpixel 7y ago
  Yes, absolutely, and eventually. Restaurants have long been subsidized by workers stuck in a position where they will work for _any_ wage. As that changes, which is demonstrably a good thing, so will prices rise to match costs. It’s similar to the way Uber/Lyft prices will need to rise when their subsidies change terms.
- dangerface 7y ago
  Restaurants != Food Having some one else prepare and serve you food is a luxury, they deserve to be paid for their work. If you disagree then do the work yourself no one is stopping you.

arzt 7y ago

Anecdotally I have to agree. Having lived in Manhattan for the past decade, I have seen more restaurants close in the last two years than the previous eight. Most of lower Manhattan's retail footprint is filled with chains (Starbucks etc) rather than neighborhood restaurants.

nickdoesdesign 7y ago
Thats a factor of rising rents not rising wages. Its been well documented that rent seeking is causing this behavior.
kiba 7y ago
If you have to pay something ridiculous like 13k a month, I am sure you go out of business too.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  If I had to pay that much in rent, I wouldn't go into business.
thawaway1837 7y ago
So restaurants which have the lowest margins (chains) are proliferating but restaurants with higher margins are failing. That seems to indicate that worker pay isn’t really the issue here. And it’s well known the reason restaurants are closing shop is almost because of outrageous rents.

coldpie 7y ago

We don't have to use anecdotes, we have data. Linked from the article is this summary, which links to the full report: http://www.centernyc.org/new-york-citys-15-minimum-wage http://www.centernyc.org/new-york-citys-15-minimum-wage Quote: "During this period, New York City has seen a strong economic expansion of the restaurant industry, outpacing national growth in employment, annual wages, and the number of both limited- and full-service restaurant establishments." Perhaps the disagreement you see is because this study focuses on the workers, instead of the business owners. Food service worker wages and employment rates are up relative to overall growth. This article is dispelling the notion that increasing worker wages will lead to worse outcomes for those workers, which is a common objection to increasing the minimum wage.

barry-cotter 7y ago
“This period” in the quoted report is 2013-2018. The minimum wage hike occurred in late 2018. > Roughly 77 percent of NYC restaurants have slashed employee hours. Thirty-six percent said they had to layoff employees and 90 percent had to increase prices following the minimum wage hike, according to a NYC Hospitality Alliance survey taken just one month after the bill took effect. > Only about 4 percent of survey respondents indicated that none of the above changes took place in their restaurants. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city’s-15-minimum-wage-now-officially-disaster-71761 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city’s-15-mi...
- ashelmire 7y ago
  As a former service worker, I'd argue that cutting employee hours was exactly the goal. Typically, in a restaurant in Philly or places with similarly lower-than-minimum service wages (which still has the $2.75 or whatever minimum for service workers), you'll be scheduled excessively for hours when the restaurant definitely isn't going to have any business. For example, coming in at 330/4 to start prep for the dinner shift. When labor costs basically nothing, there's no reason not to overschedule them. This reduced the amount of time I could spend outside of work learning to program (for example... since it's what I did hah) or others could spend improving their skills for basically no money. It's a huge detriment to the employees. You'd stand around cleaning for some nitpicky manager making 0/hour effectively, doing untipped cleaning and prep work. Your paychecks will be $0 if you get even a modest amount of tips for the night (it's all taxed). Now restaurants will be more particular about how they schedule employees, and the untipped work actually costs money to have done (if a janitor would have to be paid minimum+ to do it, why should a server do it for $2.75/hr)?

Someone1234 7y ago

It is using New York's official data on the restaurant sector, and other quantifiable studies to make its point. Dismissing it because of "where the author lives" and anecdotes, comes across like you've decided the conclusion and are trying to fit facts to support that preconceived conclusion. Why not look at the actual data and try to address that? It would be a much stronger argument.

ilikehurdles 7y ago

> Delivery has been mostly outsourced This is true in just about every market in the US, including all the ones without minimum wage increases. > The price of everything on the menu has gone up You could say this most years about any restaurant and most years you'd be right. The other years, you'd see smaller servings. > A number of lower-cost restaurants have closed completely The average person eats at fewer restaurants in their entire life than the number of restaurants that close in NYC in any given year. Anecdotes aren't a data point.

wolco 7y ago
Removing smoking from restaurants and bars had a huge effect no one mentions. The industry hasn't recovered.
- JoBrad 7y ago
  Studies post-ban haven’t shown that. https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2013/12_0327.htm https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2013/12_0327.htm
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Studies from the "center of disease control and prevention" haven't shown that. Hardly the best source to pick a study that says "the smoking ban hurt businesses".
    - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
      Do you have a criticism that goes deeper than pointing to the name of an organization?
      - coldtea 7y ago
        Don't need to, I find that this is a good enough filter for a pareto 80% of cases.

pytester 7y ago

>small and family owned businesses are absolutely hurting likely because profit = revenue - expenses and expenses (in the form of wages) have gone up more than revenue. Raising the minimum wage has always been bad for margins. That's why those restaurants (and economists indirectly on their payroll) try to convince us that it's bad for workers too.

coldtea 7y ago

>From my personal experience in nyc, and from talking to neighbors who own restaurants, small and family owned businesses are absolutely hurting. They’ve reduced staff, and owners are making up lost hours themselves Well, if they were hurt with such a raise, perhaps they were not viable businesses and are better closed. The employees might lose a crappy near-subsistence job, but both the employees and owners can then concentrate their efforts into something better... Somehow Europe manages to have viable restaurants despite decent minimum wage and not tips-oriented compensation...

dwild 7y ago
> The employees might lose a crappy near-subsistence job, but both the employees and owners can then concentrate their efforts into something better... Before the hike, both the employee and owners could do that... yet they didn't. Is the existence of a lower paid job make it harder to create something better? That seems really backward, because there will always be lower paying job. > Somehow Europe manages to have viable restaurants despite decent minimum wage and not tips-oriented compensation... Where does Europe has an higher minimum wage than $15 USD? That's excluding tipping which can bring that wage MUCH higher. You can't really compare viability when the wage is actually lower....
scient 7y ago
Impossible, go away with your socialist ideas! /s
alfromspace 7y ago
What if the alternative is unemployment?
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  What makes the US unique that it needs to forego minimum wage? Unemployment isn't much different from most countries in Europe or other comparable economies.
  - eej2ya1K 7y ago

jkingsbery 7y ago

An article that supports this: https://nypost.com/2019/09/29/15-minimum-wage-hike-is-hitting-hurting-nyc-restaurants/ https://nypost.com/2019/09/29/15-minimum-wage-hike-is-hittin... > Gabriela’s isn’t alone. In a survey of 324 full-service restaurants, the New York City Hospitality Alliance found that 76.5 percent of respondents cut staff hours and 36.3 percent eliminated jobs, including whole layers of middle management, in response to mandated wage increases. > To cope, restaurateurs like the Milners are moving from large-scale restaurants to small spaces. The Milners have Gabriela’s Taqueria at West 44th Street and Eighth Avenue. It seems unlikely the original article is telling the full story.

mattzito 7y ago
Ehhhhh - so, the Post is notoriously anti-minimum wage hikes, and the NYCHA is a restaurant owners association, so it makes sense that they are anti-wage hike. I would say that from my experience with the restaurant industry here, it definitely puts pressure on restauranteurs with marginal businesses. If you have a labor-intensive restaurant with thin margins, it hurts you. However, the restaurants with strong businesses, it's not really affecting. A far greater impact on the typical restaurant is delivery, which is an increasing percentage of their business with a lower margin for many traditional restaurants, given the cut that Grubhub/Seamless/etc. take.
- jkingsbery 7y ago
  Whatever the bias of the publisher, the article from the NY Post contradicts this research backed by data on a couple of fronts: * "massive layoffs in the restaurant industry are unlikely," but the survey indicated that a large number of restaurants have eliminated jobs or cut hours * "...because owners need a certain number of staff to operate a full-service kitchen," but at least in the anecdotes from the interview in the NYPost article, restaurant owners are moving to smaller venues that require less staff or moving to "common space" layouts.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

To respond to your anecdata: In a capitalist system, isn't it their fault for not being able to compete? Why should we lower wages for thousands of workers because you personally know failing businesses?

subject117 7y ago
Employees who could have been hired by these businesses won’t be now. This creates more competition for the workers because it decreases the supply of jobs. (ECON 101)