Newsom Grants Minimum Wage Exception to Donor, Second-Largest Panera Owner

California Governor Gavin Newsom granted an exemption to the state’s $20 per hour minimum wage for fast-food employees to national fast-food chains with bakeries, a category that only includes Panera. Billionaire Greg Flynn, the largest franchise owner in the United States, is the second-largest Panera operator in the world and a classmate and major donor of the governor’s, leading Bloomberg to report that Flynn was able to get Newsom to secure a carve-out from the new wage for his stores. On September 14, 2023 the California legislature passed AB 1228, a bill raising California’s minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 per hour and creating and a new Fast Food Council that will establish working conditions and minimum wages that would rise each year by the lesser of 3.5% or the past year’s inflation recorded in the Consumer Price Index.