Five Guys, the national burger chain, is about to raise burger prices at certain outlets according to Mike Ruffer, an eight-franchise holder in North Carolina. According to Ruffer, he will spend all the profits from at least one of the restaurants in order to pay off the bills on Obamacare. That means more expensive burgers. “Any added costs are going to have to be passed on,” Ruffer reported to the Heritage Foundation. “I’m in a holding pattern [with regard to building new outlets].” Ruffer said that his choices were to do that or to fire a bevy of employees to attempt to clear the limbo bar of Obamacare employment numbers.
This has become a common complaint among chain restaurants. Founder and chief executive of Papa John’s John Schnatter famously said that he would have to up the price of his pizza thanks to Obamacare. Wendy’s cut employee hours and drew the ire of the left thanks to Obamacare. The left, which purports to stand for employees in low-wage positions, is instead standing for cutbacks in their hours and pay, and for rising prices on consumers – prices that hurt low-income consumers most.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the book “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).