“They’re utilizing one person to do the job of two, three or four people,” she said.

Earlier this year, workers formed the California Fast Food Workers Union, which is part of the Service Employees International Union, to bargain with the council. The union has said it plans to push for annual wage increases, predictable schedules and just-cause protections.

Workers can expect to maintain some leverage in future negotiations as growth slows. There is still tight competition for fast-food workers, though not as stiff as at the height of the Great Resignation in 2021-22, when many people quit their jobs and rethought their work and life priorities after COVID-19.

A guaranteed $20 an hour could lure people on the sidelines into the fast-food job market, including teenagers who once dominated the fast-food workforce, economists said.

Over the years, the average age of fast-food workers in the U.S. has been rising gradually as many teens have instead sought enrichment jobs to prepare for college. The median age for fast-food workers is now 22.1, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Zev Brown, a senior at Eagle Rock High School, has worked government jobs and on political campaigns since his sophomore year, earning $18 to $25 an hour.

Although he knows classmates who have jobs at Starbucks, McDonald’s and Burger King, he said most of his friends prefer to work for local mom-and-pop businesses or start their own money-making ventures.

“People want to work in the neighborhood they call home and the neighborhood in which they go to school,” Brown said. “Side-hustle culture and entrepreneurial culture are really big.”

That said, $20 an hour makes a fast-food job “more enticing for a student,” said his friend, 17-year-old Sawyer Sariñana, who has been making money through photography work.

“I would definitely consider it now — I think that’s a big jump and makes a big difference,” said Sariñana, also a senior at Eagle Rock High School.

Fast-food locations in grocery stores, airports, hotels, theme parks, sports venues and other businesses are exempt from the minimum-wage increase, as are employers that operate a bakery on the premises — a loophole that has raised questions about whether Panera Bread and others like it must comply.

At first, it might seem that restaurant employers not covered by the mandate now have an advantage: As the big fast-food chains lay off or hire fewer staff, that could expand the pool of available workers — who could be paid less than $20 an hour. But owners of independent fast-casual and full-service restaurants aren’t sure that will be the case, and anticipate having to raise wages to keep pace.

“Every bump in the restaurant labor market raises the prices for everyone, period. It doesn’t leave us out,” said Jeff Strauss, owner of sandwich counter Jeff’s Table in Highland Park.

West Hollywood’s and Seattle’s experiences with rapidly increasing their minimum wages provide a look at how things might go in California after the April 1 wage hike kicks in.

West Hollywood raised its minimum wage to$19.08 an hour in July after vehement opposition from business owners, and just days before chef Josiah Citrin opened his steakhouse and seafood restaurant Charcoal Sunset.

Over the next several months, Citrin said he did everything he could to make it work, including cutting his staff from 50 employees to 30 and rolling out a more limited menu.

But the high wages and a severe pullback in customer spending due to the Hollywood strikes were too much for the fledgling restaurant to overcome. Citrin closed Charcoal Sunset in February.

“At a point, you can’t trim anymore,” he said. “When I closed at the end, there was no more money to operate.”

Seattle, one of the first in the national Fight for $15 campaign, lifted its minimum wage from $9.47 an hour in April 2015 to $13 in January 2016 — a 37% jump over a nine-month period.

Researchers at the University of Washington found that businesses overwhelmingly survived, said Jacob Vigdor, a University of Washington public policy professor who directed the minimum-wage study.

But overall employment at eating and drinking establishments in Seattle grew at a notably slower pace after 2016, and there was another downside: Employees saw fewer hours of work — on average by about 10%.

In 2017, Seattle made it more costly for restaurant and retail employers to send workers home early and make other scheduling changes. Labor union officials in California are hoping to do the same at fast-food restaurants.

“It was never just about wages,” said April Verrett, the SEIU’s national secretary-treasurer. “This is about empowering workers.”

(Los Angeles Times staff writer Suhauna Hussain contributed to this report.)

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