@joshbrez Good points. This is a long post to offer my long view, 40+ years in hospitality. I can only speak to this industry.
I’m old enough to remember when food cost was the biggest expense. restaurants bought mostly raw ingredients and had an army of cooks to prepare everything. In the mid 80s, labor cost became the largest expense while food technology advanced, so there was a switch to pre-prepared foods and less staff. in Hawaii we have compulsory healthcare for employees over 20 hours/week, that and other employment taxes multiply on top of wages.
Restaurant margins are tight and the market will only bear a certain price level per the restaurant concept and the geographic location. I think restaurants are pinched between the realities of running one and society’s current shift. Everyone wants to eat out, at a fair price but do not realize that someone has to pay for what is now called a “living wage”. The restaurant that I manage is part of a group of 25, all but 2 in Hawaii. We’ve inched up wages, but have gone long on benefit. We have tip sharing with the BOH (a rare thing in the industry), a 401K for all, meal credit, discounts for family members, clean well maintained restaurant and few other things.
If you look at the hotel side of the industry, they are union driven, the unions are focusing more on adding benefits than increasing wages. I managed in many places where FOH staff made minimum wage, but took home $200/night in tips. This also needs to figured into the equation.
A restaurant is the only business where you take raw ingredients in the back door, manufacture the product on site and market and sell it to the end user in the same process. There are chef's that are good at the back end, but can't sell or build relationships with customers and floor managers that are good at marketing and relationships, but can't cook. If you've never managed one “soup to nuts”, it's hard to fully understand what goes into it. It's not a definable as retail or manufacturing a product. That's why 80% fail in the first 5 years.
If this is where we are going, many restaurants will just go away, many already have, based on the economic model of the past 50+ years. The restaurants that survive will be the high end, where menu price has no limit and the low end that can pay more, but run with minimal staff and offer minimal service. The middle will get squeezed out.
A bar or pub may be better off, liquor has higher margins, but in Hawaii even a bar needs to have a certain % of food sales to get a liquor license. That's about food tempering the effects of alcohol.
Not trying the create a divide, just sharing what I've seen from the inside.
Have a great weekend, and go out and eat if you can.