More California closures: Tender Greens and Tocaya both file for bankruptcy, citing minimum wage law

This Guy is an Economic Idiot.  By design ? or just an Idiot?

California fast food magnates get screwed, over, and over, and over again by Democrats; don’t forget that Jonathan Neman, CEO and co-founder of Sweetgreen, had his property destroyed by Hunter Biden before being stiffed $80k in unpaid rent, but fast food restaurants continue to shutter at an astonishing rate in the wake of the state’s minimum wage bill that hiked hourly pay to $20.

First it was Pizza Hut nixing all its delivery drivers as it “braced” for the new law.

Then it was the closure of Foster’s Freeze in Lemoore, which had been a neighborhood favorite for around 35 years; from a report via Yahoo Finance:

California’s minimum wage hike blamed for Fosters Freeze store closure — worker says she’d prefer the old wage

‘Small businesses can’t survive a 120% plus min wage increase over the last 10 years. We are all more broke than we were 10 years ago it[’]s clear raising min wage isn’t helping,’ he [business owner Loren Wright] wrote.

…

Monica Navarro, former assistant general manager of that Fosters Freeze location, told Fox Business that she and her former colleagues would prefer the old wage over being unemployed.

‘From the people that I spoke to, my employees, we would have rather stayed at the wage that we did have before, just because now we don't have a job,’ she said. She also observed the impacts of the new minimum wage on those fortunate enough to keep their jobs, stating, ‘Those who are still working in the areas around us that went up to $20 an hour, they got their hours severely cut and it’s a lot less people working on shifts, so their jobs got a lot more difficult.’

After that it was the decision by Rubio’s Coastal Grill to shut down nearly 50 restaurants, which amounted to about one-third of the company’s in-state business.

Now, here’s the latest example, from Kenneth Schrupp at The Center Square:

The owner of fast-casual food chains Tender Greens and Tocaya filed for bankruptcy, citing California’s $20 per hour fast food minimum wage, inflation, and the state’s empty office districts as contributing factors. The bankruptcy effort is aimed at restructuring and keeping stores open and employees at work.

The common denominator between all three of those causes? Progressive politicians, obviously—are they ever not the problem? We’ve got big government intrusion in what should be a free market, getting in between a business and its employees, where consent is the basis of the relationship. We’ve got big government spending; as Murray Rothbard noted, Washington is to blame because Washington is the only one that has the ability to “legally” print paper money without it being backed by anything valuable. And lastly, we’ve got big government taxation forcing residents to flee for a friendlier climate, and big government progressivism creating unsafe and filthy “office districts” from San Francisco to Los Angeles. In 2023, ABC News reported this:

The skyline of San Francisco’s Financial District is about as picturesque as it gets. An area that was bustling with people several years ago, but one that according to the numbers, is now more vacant than ever.

‘Right now in downtown San Francisco, we have a vacancy rate of a little over 35% which is the highest that we’ve ever recorded in the history of San Francisco,’ says Colin Yasukochi who is an executive director of the tech insights center at CBRE, which focuses on the tech industry and how it affects commercial real estate. Yasukochi says that office vacancy numbers in San Francisco were 3 to 4% pre-pandemic, meaning we’ve seen more than a 30% increase and that trend may continue.

Highest ever vacancy rate? Sounds about right.

Yeah, and the trend didn’t continue because of post-pandemic blues, it’s all about policy. I live in the South, and both Nashville and Huntsville are exploding with new construction, residential and commercial; but Nashville and Huntsville don’t allow open-air drug markets, street-pooping, and tent cities outside pieces of prime real estate so….

Here’s more of the specifics, from Schrupp:

One Table Restaurant Brands owns Tender Greens and Tocaya, companies both founded in Los Angeles and with 37 of their 39 restaurants in California, and a total of 1,147 employees. Both brands had annual average restaurant sales of $3.4 million in 2019, but were decimated by the ‘catastrophic’ COVID-19 pandemic, with average restaurant sales dropping to $2.3 million in 2020 and are still struggling to recover.

Let’s be clear though, it wasn’t the “pandemic” that decimated things, again, it was the policies enacted and implemented by politicians and bureaucrats during the season that obliterated businesses, designating certain incomes as “non-essential” and forcing their closures.

Gavin Newsom is the “gift” that keeps on taking, the blight that keeps on rotting, or the dirty diaper that keeps on festering—Heaven save us from California politicians.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/07/more_california_closures_tender_greens_and_tocoya_both_file_for_bankruptcy_citing_minimum_wage_law.html