Burger King Founder Warns Higher Wages Will Kill Off The Dollar Menu

As fast food workers continue their "Fight for 15," or the struggle for fair wages, there have been small battles won, such as McDonald's increasing employees' wages at corporate-owned restaurants. But Burger King co-founder David Edgerton, 87, has warned that higher wages will force fast food restaurants to become less cheap, and predicts that if the minimum wage does go up to $15 per hour, menu prices will skyrocket, with $10 burgers common on Burger King and other fast food menus.

"What's going to happen, really, is you're going to see less and less of the quick and dirty kind of places," Edgerton, who founded the fast food giant with James McLamore in 1954 and now serves on the board of a nutritional company, told Time. "You're not going to be able to run these places [paying workers] $15 an hour or whatever it will be."

That being said, Edgerton predicts that, despite their demonstrations, fast food workers will not achieve their $15 per hour goal. At most, he said, they're looking at $12 or $13 per hour, which will still put a sizable hole in fast food companies' pockets. The future of fast food, in Edgerton's opinion, is not quick and cheap like it was in the past. He could be right. After all, McDonald's is rolling out the premium "build your own burger" concept and brought back the third-pound burger, both of which will cost more than the average Big Mac.