News and Commentary

ANOTHER MINIMUM WAGE FAIL: Red Robin Restaurants Eliminate All Busboys

Hank Berrien

On Monday, the national restaurant chain Red Robin announced it would eliminate busboys at all of its 570 restaurants, as the company expects it will save $8 million in 2018 by doing so. Red Robin’s chief financial officer Guy Constant told attendees at the ICR retail conference, “We need to do that to address the labor increases we’ve seen.”

Michael Saltsman, director of the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), told FOX Business, “I read that as minimum wage. Somebody like Red Robin, which has a lot of exposure in western states [where the minimum wage is rising faster] … this is sort of a burger and beer chain. If they can’t pass those increases off in higher prices … they have to find a way to do more with less.”

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