It's not inevitable without additional burden of minimum wage increase, it is inevitable with it There's a level of expense where the business is viable, and the level of expense where the business is not viable, and no investment or loans are going to change that - investments/loans are temporary measures, they do not change the income/expense balance. The only way investment could help is if it could either reduce the expenses long-term or increase the income long-term, this was not possible. In that situation, increase of the expense brought by minimum wage rise took the business from the point of being viable to the point of being non-viable, just as any increase of the expenses that can not be avoided would.