The California businessman who owns 140 Burger King franchises plans to cut hours and speed up the rollout of self-service kiosks to reduce labor costs in response to the state’s new $20 minimum wage. is.
Harshraj Ghai, who runs 180 fast food restaurants across the Golden State, including Burger King, Taco Bell and Popeyes, said: told Business Insider last week.: “We can’t move fast enough on this” [rollout]”
“Right now, probably about 25 percent of restaurants have kiosks,” he said. “But the remaining 75 percent will probably have kiosks installed within the next 30 to 60 days.”
“We have kiosks in all of our restaurants,” Guy said.
Several fast food chains have increased menu prices since a new law that increases wages for fast food workers went into effect on April 1.
Mr. Guy, who raised menu prices by 8% to 10% last year, said he plans to reduce work hours, eliminate overtime, pause plans to expand his restaurant empire and add digital kiosks.
Regarding the option of raising menu prices, Guy said, “We cannot accept any higher prices.”
“Anything more than that will have the following consequences.” [a] Significantly impacts our traffic. ”
Before the new minimum wage law was discussed, Guy had planned to phase in kiosks in all restaurants in a process that would take five to 10 years.
“But now we’re in the process of responding to the law and installing kiosks in all of our restaurants so that we can balance out some of these labor costs that are hurting us.” Guy said.
When crunching the numbers, Guy said, “It made more sense to spend the capital expenditure on technology,” which could be purchased in bulk and therefore cheaper.
Lynsey Snyder, In-N-Out’s billionaire president, said earlier this week that she went “head to head” with company executives to keep costs down in the face of sky-high inflation and a $20-an-hour minimum wage. . Wages are rising in California.
Scott Roderick, a McDonald’s franchisee who owns 18 restaurants in California, is reducing store hours and menu prices to offset the impact of the state’s $20-an-hour minimum wage on fast-food workers. The company said it is considering raising prices and postponing renovations.
