The wage increase didn't raise your labor. Your schedule did.

Most operators just lost $6,900 a quarter and blamed the minimum wage hike.

At $17.75 an hour citywide, every scheduling mistake costs more than it did last year. Most operators respond by cutting hours. Wrong lever.

Pull your labor report and sort by hour of the day. Watch what happens at open and close. You've got four servers scheduled at 4:00 for a 5:00 dinner service. The floor doesn't turn until 5:30 on a weekday. That's four people at $17.75 folding napkins for 90 minutes before a single table sits.

Run it: 4 staff, 1.5 idle hours each, 5 weekdays. That's 30 paid labor hours a week with no revenue behind them — $532 a week, about $6,900 a quarter.

The fix: stagger your ins to your actual seating curve, not the clock. One server at 4:00 to set the room. The rest at 4:45. Cut the same way on the back end — off the floor as sections close, not all at once at 10.

The wage went up. Your sales-per-labor-hour target has to go up with it. Same headcount, tighter windows, and you protect the margin the increase just ate.

Your labor line isn't too high because you pay too much. It's too high because you're paying for hours the room isn't using.