Well I was at McDonald's when the minimum wage went from $4.25 to $5.15 in the 1990s.
I can tell you exactly what happened. The very first thing the store did was lay off three workers.
The rest of us had to pick up the slack. How did that work? We had one guy that was like a 60 year old, and he would go around emptying trash cans, and cleaning up tables in the dinning area.
So what happened after they laid him off? Well we had to do it. And if we didn't have time to do it, then it just didn't get done. You drive by a McDonald's with trash cans over flowing, maybe they had a part time minimum wage employee that used to empty those, and thanks to the higher minimum wage, now they don't have that guy anymore, and the trash cans just over flow.
And as far as automation, human labor is preferable to automation by everyone involved. The business would prefer people over kiosks. The customers would prefer people over kiosks. And obviously the employees would prefer to have a job, than being replaced by a kiosk.
The reason a store replaces people with kiosks, is because they flat out cannot afford to hire people anymore. If they can make a good profit, at $15/hour, they would rather hire people.
But if they can't make a profit at $20/hour, then they have to replace people with automation.
