I knew a girl at my last job at Office Depot, she was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Despite being the most valuable employee at their store for many years, she got paid just a tiny bit more than the rest of us at minimum wage. She had nobody else in her life, and had to pay all her bills on those meager wages, she barely had enough to eat. I refuse to accept the idea that huge corporations like Office Depot or Walmart are simply unable to pay their employees, at the very least, a livable wage. There are companies like Costco and New Seasons who pay their employees a respectable amount, and while that might not be feasible for all companies, it certainly is for huge and successful ones.
There are policies in place to lessen the impact of minimum wage hurting small business; I think we can raise it right now, and it was higher decades ago, adjusted for inflation. But if you're worried about companies finding ways to avoid paying that extra money, by say, employing fewer people, I can certainly say that in a lot of retail stores companies are already employing the bare minimum of people, for the bare minimum of hours, and could hardly cut further. Walmart employs 1.4 million workers, they're the largest workforce of any kind outside of the US and Chinese militaries, and they are definitely not paid what they need to live. Nonetheless, getting paid is fairly useless if it's below a certain amount; would you rather have 1000 people employed and none of them able to eat/pay the bills, or 900-something employed, and all getting enough? Maybe wage changes would be best accomplished by unions, who might be able to better ensure employers don't take out those losses on them, but given that so many companies prevent unionization, a higher minimum right now would be better than nothing.