I can’t recall the last time I saw more than like 2-3 people working at a fast food restaurant at the same time. A lot of restaurants are getting rid of kids play places since that requires a lot of labor to clean (or just letting them get disgusting). There’s no more labor that can be cut.

At this point if you find a place in retail or food that isn't running on a skeleton crew to barely run the place then it's probably an accident of scheduling. Because about 15 years ago all the business managers decided that quality experiences in stores is expensive and what are customers gonna do? Shop elsewhere? No, you do the bare minimum, keep the employees miserable and try to force them to quit with terrible work environments so you never need to give them a raise because they all quit within a year. The suckers who stick around get promoted to supervisor and given a pittance of like 40k a year to abuse the shit out others so they will continue to quit within the first year. It's the cycle of retail hell.

Who cares? Franchisees are not restauranteurs. They are businesspeople who want to skim six figures off the top of a restaurant simply because they own it. They do this by exploiting workers and making shittier food at incresasingly smaller portions. They will fire people and shittify their product until they eventually go out of business - and because they are participating in the capitalist ideal, they would do this eventually even without California's help - or hasn't anyone noticed that fast food does nothing but get more and more shit.

This will ultimately drive the market back to owners who are restauranteurs - who care about their place of business, their product and their workers. These people too may make six figures in the running of the restaurant, but they are actively involved in running it and they add enough value to it to justify taking that money from it. The franchise model of American food service has been nothing but a disaster for this country - for workers and for the health of the general public - and I for one am glad to see it crippled in any capacity.

Edit: to say nothing of the CEOs of these companies and their obscene pay that the franchisees empower.

Fast food already runs a skeleton crew, I don't see how they can do it without opening later or closing earlier

Some franchisees are for sure but I don't see how they can when they're already all so understaffed