• Researchers find small one-time price increases in the restaurant industry (of about 0.7 percent following a 10 percent minimum wage increase), but not in other industries.
from "University of California, Berkeley study: Who Would be Affected by an Increase in Seattle’s Minimum Wage?" which is one of the two pieces of research commissioned in the development of the Seattle ordinance.[1] The research explored empirical evidence provided by similar minimum-wage increase ordinances in other cities. (9 total, I believe, including San Francisco.)
[1] http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC-Berk...
In any case, you should realize that this is a major increase in costs to restaurants, not just 1 or 2 percent.
The numbers I've seen for profit margins in restaurants range from 2 to about 3 percent. Since 1/3 of costs in restaurants come from labor, a 30% increase in labor costs will mean that restaurants will have a negative profit margin of around 7 or 8 percent after the new minimum wage goes into effect.
This means that eventually there will likely be less workers, higher prices for food, and less restaurants.
If they could raise prices to completely offset an increase in costs, they would have done that already, and have higher profits as a result. They may raise prices, but it will not be revenue-neutral of profit-neutral for them.
also, for me it is far more improtant to note that, if i may guess, >90% of companies paying most of their workers a minimum wage do not operate on zero profit.