Nuts!

[letzrockexpress]

That's what I used to do for a living, every day - work with the bottom line. I saw it, and I saw it at several different types of restaurants in both the big and small picture. I'm not talking generalities, theories or long-held beliefs, I'm talking about real-world applications cause and effect. I saw what happened when labor or material cost got out of whack, and it was, in fact, sales that determined what the labor costs and materials had to be.

Oh.... ok then.

BTW, I'll have you know that Bob's Budget Widgets are of the highest quality.

No disrespect to Bob. He's the man!

 

[letzrockexpress]

I don't think you could use gas as a comparison. That is a staple necessity for most to go to work and the like. I don't think a fast food place would fall in to that catagory.
But from a competition standpoint, the cheapest station on the corner gets the business. If they raise the price for wages, customers will go to the cheapest long before they will pay extra.

As for restaurants, you have the same wage battle going on in the mid-scale restaurants. Darden(which owns Red Lobter & Olive Garden) is slashing hours to avoid paying for healthcare. Several others are going to follow. Just raising prices isn't going to work. Darden did that a year ago and their sales crashed. McDonalds will take the same hit if they were to pay that kind of wage. People will go to Burger King for the 2 dollar Whopper before they pay 6 dollars for a Mac.

Yeah, gas isn't really a great example as we all depend on it, but my point was that we do find ourselves paying more for things than we ever thought we would. As far as competition as it pertains to something like gasoline, it is more of a general commodity than it is a branded product. Oil companies might beg to differ but that is the case.