What the minimum wage does is create an unmoveable barrier that can't be negotiated away. Minimum wage lowers the maximum rent the landlord can charge without killings the tenant. The wages come out of the landlord's pocket, not the business's.
I was referring to this claim. If rent is a relatively modest expense, how does a minimum wage come out of a landlord's pocket?
Profits for most restaurants are razor thin relative to the amount of work the owner puts in and risk taken, so I'm not sure what the relevance of what you're saying is. The average restaurant owner isn't that much better off than their employees.
It's also a matter of a return on capital vs return on labor. Business ownership can grow exponentially as profits are reinvested. For the worker, though, returns are linear based on hours work. And since they mostly live paycheck to paycheck, they can't exactly invest much free cash without living with their parents or something, which many workers don't.
"Let me catch up with you. What we're seeing here is the research shows if workers get paid more, to earn the same profit, businesses need to cut on something and where they're cutting is around the edges on hygiene?"
The issue is business owners who want to earn some ridiculous multiple of what their employees do. The haircut should come from their profits.