A 55 year-old restaurant in Hollywood just closed down because of California’s fast food minimum wage hike.
The owner of Arby’s Roast Beef said that with inflation causing food costs to be so high, the $20/hr minimum wage was just too much cost for the restaurant to handle.
Here’s more from the New York Post:
A family-owned Arby’s Roast Beef that has been a fixture on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood for 55 years shut its doors, blaming California’s recently enacted $20-an-hour minimum wage law as the final “nail in the coffin.”
The fast food joint’s iconic cowboy hat sign was captured by FOX 11’s SkyFOX camera on Tuesday reading, “Farewell Hollywood. TY for 55 great years.”
The restaurant, near Bronson Avenue, closed on Saturday, according to local reports.
“With inflation, food costs have gone way up and the $20-an-hour minimum wage has been the nail in the coffin,” Gary Husch, general manager of the Arby’s location, told Los Angeles Times.
Husch is the son-in-law of 91-year-old Marilyn Leviton, who opened the Arby’s franchise at 5920 Sunset Boulevard in January 1969, six months before the moon landing.
But on Friday, Arby’s workers arriving for their shift were told they were being let go.
A hand-written sign placed in the window reads “Permanently Closed,” and plywood was used to board up the restaurant.
“I’m awfully sorry that it came to this. I think we did a good job for 55 years,” Leviton told KTLA-TV.
It’s the latest restaurant to shutter since the state boosted the minimum wage for fast food workers on April 1 to $20 an hour from $16.
California is full of a bunch of socialist dunces like AOC who destroy everything. Your average fast food was never meant to be a career, at least in this country. It’s entry level and the idea of paying someone that amount of money for a basic, starting job is just dumb. To do it without thinking through the consequences is disastrous. Now, instead of these employees making $16 per hour, they make nothing because the business shuts down and they are out of work. Genius.