One thing about that NYT article that I found interesting: they seemed to repeatedly mention that the restaurants had raised their prices. And, this was seen as a good thing. Thus, they seem to be saying that restaurants (small businesses) don't pay the cost of higher minimum wage, their customers do.

In your original post, you compared Walmart to Microsoft... but, perhaps it's Walmart's customers versus Microsoft customers, that take the burden of higher min-wage. Still, not exactly fair, but slightly different anyway.