Where else do you think they are coming from? Did restaurants suddenly become a money-printing business with 30% margins overnight, or something? Because for the past 50 years, running one was a great way to:

* Do a ton of work

* Make very little money

* With a constant risk of going out of business and losing everything hanging over your head.

The reality is that rents are in the stratosphere, low-end wages are growing, and so are profit margins for many (but not all) producers of goods that the economy runs on. All of these costs get passed up the supply chain to you, the customer.

It's very sad and all that a senior SWE no longer gets paid 15 times what their barista does (It's only 8 times now!), but we all have to tighten our belts and adapt to this brave new world.

Or we could eat the landlords, but that's not a hugely popular sentiment at the moment.

In my experience McDonald's prices have gone up 50% and McDonald's wages have gone up 50% in the last 5 years. Coincidence? I don't think so.

It can and the reason is plainly obvious regardless of how difficult the answers are for you to accept. A restaurant is at the apex of the supply chain, and reflects all of contributing cost increases, direct and indirect. Whether it's higher fuel prices, higher labor prices, higher equipment prices, higher real-estate prices, higher food prices, higher shipping prices, higher taxes, higher healthcare costs or any other increasing cost the restaurant has to cover it all, or go out of business.