When San Francisco’s Corridor restaurant opened two years ago in the city’s Mid-Market neighborhood, it billed itself as “fine-casual,” an elevated 70-seat restaurant that eschewed the cadre of servers and staffers common at most ambitious San Francisco restaurants.

The neighborhood’s pre-opera and symphony crowds flocked to Corridor. But instead of making reservations and being served by a coterie of staffers, diners instead stepped up to a register to order dishes like truffled asparagus risotto or garganelli bolognese before finding their own seats.

The initial reasons — and benefits — were largely economic, driven by rising costs throughout the region, particularly in preparation for the rising minimum wage. Shifting to the nontraditional concepts also helped combat citywide staffing shortages, while allowing for more employee benefits.

On July 1, San Francisco’s minimum wage will climb from $14 to $15, the culmination of a four-year process set in motion by more than three-quarters of San Francisco voters in 2014. Increases beyond 2018 will be dictated by a metric of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Price Index, which also determines Oakland’s minimum wage.

San Francisco restaurateurs have been preparing for the $15 mark and its corresponding fallout for four years. Despite the anticipation for what has finally arrived, many continue to struggle with finding a balance, because tactics such as adjusting service models, cutting staff and raising prices can only go so far.

“It’s a catch-22. People need to live, and the business needs to survive,” says Corridor partner Ryan Cole. “You can only charge so much for a burger to adjust before people are leaving to go find a better value. It’s the same challenge we’ve been facing for a while.”

For nearly two decades, Memphis Minnie’s was anchored in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood, serving slow-smoked barbecue to the city’s masses under the guidance of owners Gail Wilson and her husband, Bob Kantor. The owners saw three presidents in the White House while running the business and survived a tech bubble collapse, a housing market crash and a new tech boom emerge.

This year, Wilson decided it was time to sell the business. She said minimum wage hikes made the business untenable.

“When you have a small restaurant, the minimum wage is a huge part of the finances,” Wilson said at the time. “Even a small dip in sales” can be stressful financially. “It makes it hard to keep going.”

Former San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee initiated the city’s move toward higher minimum wages in December 2013. After unanimous approval from the city’s Board of Supervisors to put the measure on the November 2014 ballot, it was approved by 77 percent of San Francisco voters.

The first step consisted of raising San Francisco’s minimum wage from $10.74 per hour to $11.05 per hour in January 2015, which made the city one of the region’s earliest adopters of a minimum wage higher than federal or state levels. At the time, the average hourly employee in San Francisco made $33.98, according to data from California’s Economic Development Department.

In a 2018 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, workers who were making the city’s $14 per hour minimum wage would have to work 171.5 hours per week to afford to rent a two-bedroom home without it exceeding 30 percent of their income.

Finding a correlation between minimum wage and restaurant closures has long been a murky affair. A Harvard Business School study in 2017, which used data from Yelp, showed 8.7 percent of San Francisco restaurants open at the start of 2016 closed by December.

It’s clear, however, that the minimum wage increase has been reshaping the food business landscape in the Bay Area for years.

Within the industry, the minimum wage issue has been compounded by an ongoing staffing shortage. Ask any chef or restaurateur about staffing, and odds are you’ll get a similar answer.

“It’s a really challenging environment,” said Jay Foster, owner of San Francisco’s Farmerbrown. “You have to deal with a lot but in this city, it’s just hard to find people who can afford to live here and can work for an hourly wage.”

The staff shortage has been particularly evident in Wine Country this year: St. Helena’s 30-year-old Terra, one of the most influential restaurants in the country, closed on June 2.

Its owners, Lissa Doumani and Hiro Sone, said the restaurant was profitable — but couldn’t find workers. “We’re making money (but) we can’t get staff,” Doumani said at the time.

While increased costs have spurred the popularity of the fast casual restaurant genre, there have been other side effects.

More business owners have tried to lure — and retain — workers with added incentives beyond higher salaries. For Farmerbrown’s forthcoming spinoff at San Francisco International Airport, its operators are offering new hires a signing bonus up to $500. New hires are given a $50 gift card to cover transportation costs associated with the airport badging process.

But some say that the minimum wage increase will continue to force innovation.

“Our model allows us to give additional benefits that other people aren’t,” said Corridor’s Cole. “But that minimum wage increase is going to have a huge impact. Employers aren’t going to be able to give those fringe benefits when you add a whole dollar to every employee and you can’t really raise the prices on your menu to match.

“We’re going to have to find nonmonetary ways to take care of them from here.”

While independent restaurants scramble for solutions, chain restaurants are finding the business climate in San Francisco accommodating enough for expansion.

Burger outfits such as New York’s Shake Shack, which has more than 160 locations worldwide, and Mark Wahlberg’s Wahlburgers, which has outposts in 17 states and Canada, have announced plans to open in San Francisco within the last six months.

Asian restaurant chains are exploding across the city, such as Ippudu, Marugame Udon and Bake Cheese Tart, all seemingly immune to financial constraints.

Ben Conniff, co-founder of Luke’s Lobster, an East Coast sustainable seafood restaurant chain with 29 locations in the continental United States, is opening in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. He said industry leaders such as Charles Bililies of Souvla and Charles Phan of the Slanted Door were frank with him about the challenging financial obligations associated with San Francisco.

“These issues are unique to San Francisco. You just have to find ways to adapt to them,” said Conniff, adding that it was nonetheless an “easy decision” to come to San Francisco.

“San Francisco has a rich history with its restaurants and some really talented chefs,” he said. “Looking ahead, we’d certainly love to have more locations in this area.”

Still other businesses are doubling down on automation, the most notable of which is the newly opened San Francisco restaurant Creator, the world’s first robot burger restaurant.

At Creator, a machine with 20 computers and 350 sensors prepares $6 burgers without the assistance of a human employee, thus cutting substantially the cost of labor. Still, the restaurant employees a limited number of concierges — human employees, that is — to facilitate ordering and operate machinery.

Similarly, Cafe X is a robotic cafe with multiple locations in San Francisco and a cult following among the city’s younger populace. The Cafe X robot barista consists of a $25,000 robotic arm pouring caffeinated drinks.

For existing restaurants, adaptation continues to be the name of the game.

Tanya Holland’s Brown Sugar Kitchen is in a state of rapid expansion in the Bay Area, despite the minimum wage hike. Holland has plans for projects at the Ferry Building, Levi’s Stadium, the Warriors’ future Chase Center and potentially the San Francisco and Oakland airports.

All will feature grab-and-go service rather than the traditional dining format, which Holland’s flagship Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland used. The restaurant recently closed and reopened as a test kitchen.

“Costs are escalating as minimum wage is changing. We’re trying to still give folks value and make sure wage equality within the restaurant was maintained between the back and front of the house,” she said earlier this year when explaining the changes to her Oakland flagship. “That had a cascading impact of on service, offerings and pricing.”

Still other chefs are taking the increased costs in stride.

“We’re trying to give as much to our workers as we can,” said Dominique Crenn, who owns three San Francisco restaurants. “One day you’re going die. It doesn’t matter if you have $3 million or $10 million in your pocket, you have to take care of people around you.”

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips