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Here in Pennsylvania, the minimum wage is still $7.25/hour, but the Burger King near me is paying $11.96/hour for new "team members." Every fast food place and gas station around here started paying over $10/hour and often $15/hour for new hires during COVID. Retirees earning some extra cash made up a good number of their staff before that, but I rarely see them anymore. I guess they quit to stay safe and have since adjusted to their new budgets. That plus the tight labor market following COVID meant competition for employees was fierce.

>It's gotten so bad I just don't eat out nearly as much, which is probably just accelerating the downward spiral.

I've also noticed a quality drop in almost every aspect of fast food here: slower service, more mistakes, higher prices, shorter hours. It's like the owners are trying to inch more into cutting costs without going over the edge and losing too many customers. Personally, if I want something "familiar" while traveling, I now do take-out from a steakhouse chain. Only costs a small amount more, but accuracy and quality are so much better. At home, fast food is just too expensive to make sense.

>"*RETIREES* earning some extra cash made up a good number of their staff before that

Are you sure they were retired? Almost every senior citizen I've spoken to in service jobs has told me that they're hired there because it's the only job that would take them - and they didn't get to see retirement.

The $20/hr wage is only an 18% bump over the normal CA minimum wage, and it came at the tail-end of the pandemic... So A) it just replaced the "hero pay" and B) fast food prices had already been climbing due to supply chain issues, inflation, and veiled corporate profit-taking.

The kiosks were just the threat fast food companies used to try to push-back on the proposed law, and when lawmakers called their bluff, there were some deplyments, but not everywhere, and in general fast food employment has gone UP (not down) since then.

"the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed California had approximately 750,000 fast food jobs, roughly 11,000 more than when the higher minimum wage law took effect."

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/california-minimum...

I'm not seeing the shorter hours you are. Might be unrelated to wages. There was a general decline in fast food sales across the country (not just in CA) because of the crazy corporate price hikes (which consumers pushed back on).

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/10/03/californias-20-fast-food-m...

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-10-10/column-the...

I mean, I'm a Housing Theory of Everything guy, so, yea, the high minimum wage here is just part of the over all inflation spiral that is being fueled by the fact that there isn't enough housing for the people who want to live here, in places people want to live. It makes sense that we'd end up with more employees making these higher wages, because it's an inflationary spiral, not a supply-demand issue.

It's just the effects of everyone here trying to address this inflation for folks at the lower end of the earning spectrum, but without actually addressing the underlying issue (god forbid we allow multifamily housing next to major transit corridors), which is obviously the massive inflation in housing costs caused by the massive, near-statewide shortage.

> the high minimum wage here is just part of the over all inflation spiral

Inflation in the west is lower than the rest of the country:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-annual-inflation-rat...

Even going by CPI, inflation in California is lower than Texas, Florida, Alabama, etc.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/04/09/states-highe...

I agree with you that restrictions on new housing is a big problem, but it is NOT just a California problem.

Looking at the quarterly inflation rate makes little sense when discussing the cost inflation over the last decade and a half.

By all means, point us to your sources that show California's inflation is much worse than all other US states, "over the last decade and a half".

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUURA422SA0

37% increase in the last decade vs about 34% in all urban areas. I see your point.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL

I don't begrudge folks trying to make a decent wage. I also have to agree that it seems a few factors have all combined to make the experience pretty bad for the consumer.

Order kiosks, long waits for food, skyrocketing prices all contribute to choosing other options. If you're going to spend $15+ per person and it still takes 30 minutes to order, wait, and eat youre alternative comparable options are greatly expanded and people are chosing to go to independent cafes for better food and experience at the same price point.

> Here in California the cost of fast food skyrocketing and the service experience plummeting started after the introduction of a $20/hr minimum wage for fast food jobs made replacing workers with kiosks, automation and AI more economical.

They've also done it in places where minimum wage is still $7.25, so it's not the wages that are the issue.

The problem is that the economy is good. Hot waitress index is objectively correct and all the servers I get are ugly as fk and low quality.

I’m waiting for the next recession and desperately wanting myself to not be impacted so I can finally expect shit to stay open late again and not be ran by a skeleton crew.

I do think some automation is useful. For example, being able to order a sandwich online is very convenient because the visual UX makes it easy to be specific and clear about what should and shouldn't go on the sandwich. Communicating that verbally is more prone to mistakes.

I live somewhere where the minimum wage is below $7 and every fast food place has still introduced kiosks, I think the timing is just a coincidence.