by Richard S. » Sun Apr 04, 2021 3:07 pm
This is something I see pretty much every day with my part-time food delivery gig. Having worked in the restaurant business on both sides of the counter for decades, my feelings about this have changed over the years. Here's a sampling of what I think these days (I don't know anything about the Portage House, so I can't comment on how they were running their business):
A few weeks ago I picked up an order from a local (franchised) location of a global burger chain. They had a sign taped on the window that said "Now hiring managers. $9 an hour to start." For laughs, I looked up the cost of opening one of these locations, and it's anywhere from $1-3 million. What that means is this franchisee spent around $2 million or so on this location, but wants to entrust it to someone making $9 an hour. I seriously doubt they'd keep $2 million in a bank where the manager was making $9 an hour. It's no surprise that every trip to this restaurant is a disaster. I've been to several locations to find that staff had turned out all the lights well before closing, although you could still seem workers lurking about.
Although I disagree with the politics of the top people at Chick-fil-A, there's two things I see when picking up an order at one of their locations: #1, a line of cars wrapped around the building, and #2, a sign that says "Now hiring, $15 an hour to start." They didn't have to be forced by the government to pay a decent wage. The line of cars always seems to move quickly, and they never seem to be short -staffed.
Like it or not, the business world has changed. If anyone thinks they can attract workers by paying minimum wage, they're mistaken.