Quote:
Originally Posted by 2000cs
Several impact already beginning in CA:
Accelerating trend toward self service (app ordering, kiosk ordering) reduces number of necessary employees. This will extend into fast food kitchens as well.
Pizza places already announcing layoffs, particularly of delivery drivers. That means a delivered pizza will come via DoorDash or similar service and will cost more. Likely a net reduction in employment. Might result in more people buying frozen pizza at the grocery store and cooking it at home; otherwise not a lot of great substitutes (that are still pizza). I hope Chuck-E-Cheese doesn’t get a boost out of this!
Rising prices for fast food will result in consumers making substitutions. Obviously this won’t drive someone to choose Burger King over McDonalds, but they will either eat at home or home-prepared (remember brown bags?) meals more or step up to full-service restaurants. I think there will be a fast food contraction, the ones that figure out how to lower costs and maintain/improve quality will do fine but the others will dwindle. My expectation is Burger King dies, at least in California (they have really declined a lot since 2020).
A mandate for higher fast food wages will result in other employees wanting higher wages, restaurants in particular. Whether they get those increases depends on available replacements and ability to raise prices; I think they will get some of it. I also think “tipping culture” will spread and get worse (consumer perspective) as a way to have the consumer pay the employees more.
If I was a fast food worker, I’d do my best to learn every task in the restaurant so I would have a chance to survive staff reductions.
Also worth noting: the non-wage impacts will be “exported” to the other 49 states and maybe internationally. What McDonalds learns in CA about operating with less labor hours will be implemented in all locations, for example. But they have no reason to raise wages elsewhere.
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If you don't have a tip showing for delivery, good luck getting your pizza.