High wage countries don't seem to have a shortage of places to eat. if competitors are subject to the same labor market, all prices should go up together which would not give you a competitive disadvantage. certainly a lesser disadvantage than not being able to open because you are unwilling to pay the market labour rate.
That's a textbook example of price elasticity from economics 101. You can also think about it this way: if that weren't the case, they would have already raised their prices even before there was a labor shortage.
> all prices should go up together which would not give you a competitive disadvantage
Not a competitive disadvantage, but still a disadvantage. Take restaurants for example. If every restaurant in the world raised all of their prices by the exact same amount at the exact same time, they wouldn't lose any business to each other, but they'd still lose a bunch of business to people eating at home.
High wage countries don't seem to have a shortage of places to eat. if competitors are subject to the same labor market, all prices should go up together which would not give you a competitive disadvantage. certainly a lesser disadvantage than not being able to open because you are unwilling to pay the market labour rate.