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Comment by tromp | Hacker News Reader

Slightly misleading title. The exemption is not granted to Panera specifically.

> Panera Bread is poised to get a boost from a bizarre clause in the fast-food minimum wage law that exempts "chains that bake bread and sell it as a standalone item

Expect to see lots more franchises offering standalone baked bread...

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The law specifies that you had be operating a bakery that sells bread on the premises as of Sept 15, 2023 in order to qualify for the exemption.

Ideally, any law specifying an exception whose conditions had to hold in the past should list all known qualifying entities if they number less than a dozen.

I think any law that includes grandfathering like this should also include a sunset date on that grandfathering.

How is a new bakery supposed to compete if the old bakeries have a competitive advantage due to being grandfathered out of regulation that raises their costs?

Location ?

How will the old bakery keep its employees if the new bakery pays more ?

Really? Might as well specify that the name of the establishment has to start with "P" and end with "anera".

Easy loophole for Subway

I don't think Subway sells bread as a standalone item. (And I can't imagine anybody buying it.)

Subway in Ireland lost a court case about VAT because the bread they sell is not bread but cake because of the high sugar content. Bread is VAT exempt because it is a staple food while cake is not.

Wow that's hilarious:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/irish-court-ru...

I'm actually shocked that Subway bread is ~10% sugar. Because it's not like it tastes sweet. It just tastes like bread. Not great bread, don't get me wrong. But I would have thought that a 10-to-1 flour-to-sugar ratio would be very, very noticeably sweet. But I don't bake bread so I guess I just don't know these things.

Likely the high sodium content in the highly processed cold cuts and sauces balance out the sweetness.

Most of the bread I have had when visiting the US tasted sweet to me. Even my children (brought up in Norway and aged then between 5 and 15) complained that everything was too sweet.

They didn't USED to offer it, but now they may choose to.

Oh wow -- OK, so then it's pretty easy to imagine that suddenly McDonald's, Taco Bell, Starbucks -- they all start installing little miniature baking ovens in the corner and adding a "fresh-baked bread roll" at the very bottom of the menu.

If that's all it takes to avoid paying minimum wage?

"The law specifies that you had be operating a bakery that sells bread on the premises as of Sept 15, 2023 in order to qualify for the exemption."

Nobody would need to buy it. They'd just need to offer it for sale.

When I was in college, the city where my university was located had a requirement that a drinking establishment had to sell food to have a liquor license. This meant that the local bar, which was actually a hollowed out house, had a menu which consisted of $20 cans of soup and $50 hot pockets. I was drunk enough to buy the hot pocket once.

I think some franchisees will sell day-old loaves for fifty cents. Some gen-x YouTuber was using it as a cheap food source in college back in the day.

They're about to start!

They do. $1 a loaf at some locations.

Bread is kind of a broad term like biscuits, bagels, and buns are bread and lots of chains sell those.

Grocery Stores with Delis that also have a Bakery, most likely exempted too then?

It’s only for fast food so it already didn’t apply

Agreed. Do you even have to have it in stock?

"We sell exactly one loaf of baked bread per day. And it's a micro loaf. So one person per day gets a mini muffin sized loaf. Oh, weird! No we can ignore the law."

I absolutely love this. But of course I believe any minimum wage policies are terrible.

> I believe any minimum wage policies are terrible

Any? You barely have to peruse a history book to see countless examples of exploitative labor processes.

"On The Historically Racist Motivations Behind Minimum Wage"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-t...

I was unaware of the racial motivation. Interesting insight.

However the point is exactly why it is bad policy. At any minimum wage, the government has structurally unemployed anyone that can't provide value at or greater than the minimum wage. It's basic economics.

That is correct. I think it's bad policy for the government to disallow voluntary transactions between private parties with no third party harm.

Just charge $1000 for the loaf. No issues with running out of stock

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