From the New York Post‘s “Buffalo Wild Wings Hiking Menu Prices“:

“Current costs for traditional chicken wings of $1.98 per pound are 30 percent higher than our third-quarter average cost,” Chief Executive Sally Smith said.

“Given this trend and known raises in certain minimum wage rates, we are increasing menu prices an average of 3 percent at the end of November,” she said.

From Washington Policy Center‘s “Will Seattle Be Ground Zero of an Automation Nation“:

Just look at how McDonald’s has responded to France’s $12 an hour minimum wage.  In 2011, McDonald’s invested in 7,000 touch screen computers in France to reduce the number of workers needed.  Restaurants around the country are already exploring automation as a means to cut costs; Applebee’s is installing 100,000 tabletop tablets for ordering and payments.

Many food businesses are considering a machine that can freshly grind, shape and custom grill 360 gourmet burgers per hour, no human labor needed.   Alpha, the burger-making robot, can even slice and dice the pickles and tomatoes, put them on the burger, add condiments and wrap it up.  The manufacturer makes the point that cashiers or servers aren’t even needed: “Customers could just punch in their order, pay, and wait at a dispensing window.”  The maker says Alpha will pay for itself in a year.

But it isn’t just fast food workers and waiters who will lose their jobs to automation as the result of an artificially high mandated wage.  In response to the threat of a higher minimum wage, a manufacturing company in Seattle has decided to begin replacing most of its 100 employees with automation in coming years.

The company initially planned to simply leave Seattle and relocate in a neighboring city to escape the impending $15 wage mandate.  But once the Governor and some lawmakers began pushing for a higher state minimum wage earlier this year, which is already the highest of any state in the nation, the company made the hard decision to stay in Seattle and begin moving towards automation.  The company shared their story but requested anonymity because its employees do not yet know they will be unemployed in the near future, thanks to the city’s new minimum wage.

Now hey! We’ve been promised by certain politicians (the featured politician may come as a surprise) and economists that raising the minimum wage wouldn’t hurt the consumer—that it wouldn’t result in higher prices or lose anybody his/her job. Actually—despite all the supposed “empirical evidence”—I thought it would…