Restaurant workers quit at record rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#641

Post by crooked-v » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #506

Aloha wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable. Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples da…

Healthcare, retirement, everything required for living should be socialized. Old people today have Medicare and Social Security, but we need to finish the progression to Star Trek and just make sure there's enough to go around and that it does go around. The other part is that misery, fire bad customers and bad managers. It really isn't that difficult to be polite.

Socializing those things would also make basic entrepreneurship much more practical and make failures of entrepreneurship much less harmful (such as the many restaurants that fail in their first year), hugely benefiting the economy as whole.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#642

Post by armchairhacker » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 1:59 AM UTC

Not trying to sound unsympathetic to those with struggling businesses, but: I don't get why there were so many restaurants in the first place.

Everywhere I've been, it seems like there's literally 10+ restaurants per square mile. In cities it's 100+, not exaggerating. And it's not even unique restaurants either: in my local town there are multiple Mexican restaurants, Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants, American restaurants, with a lot of overlap in the menus.

Why? My parents hate to cook and get takeout almost every night. And even they don't get every restaurant, in fact they like to get the same few. Meanwhile, I cook for myself and almost never get takeout because it's healthier, cheaper, easier, and even IMO it usually ends up tasting better anyways. It's mostly common knowledge that the restaurant business sucks to get into anyways. So why are there so many restaurants?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#643

Post by an_opabinia » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 1:59 AM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #582

itsoktocry wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages I'm skeptical that a business would choose to go out of business rather that give raises. Have you considered that margins are tighter than you think? I know small businesses like that.

Naive question: why not raise prices?

Prices are rising.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#644

Post by coldtea » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 1:59 AM UTC

brandmeyer wrote: post #593

chrisseaton wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only person who thinks restaurant prices are pretty low? I'm sure they could go up quite a bit. Lunch out costs me maybe £15. Surely that could be £20 or so?

20 GBP for lunch? Even at 10 USD I'll buy lunch only once in two weeks. A 20 USD lunch is a rare treat for special occasions only.

Surely it depends on the income level? There are people for which a $20 USD lunch everyday or close, is nothing to write home about.

In fact their time can be far more valuable (into what money they can command by doing some extra work), so that the opportunity cost between cooking and buying lunch to make it not worth to cook.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#645

Post by kelnos » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

greedo wrote: post #589

fragmede wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your numbered points stand - no healthcare, no retirement, or other benefits a FAANG employee would have, but your numbers are low for a high end restaurant. A good steakhouse for 4 might cost closer to $500, $800 for just food at the highest end, with booze being another couple hundred on top of that. And then there's the cash aspect of it. Each night's tips are required to be declared to the IRS, and not reporting…

A "good steakhouse" doesn't charge $200 per customer unless it's selling Kobe/Wagyu. And the percentage of customers buying Wagyu over the $50 ribeye is very small.

Even with the $50 ribeye, that four-top is still generating $200 on food per turn, more than the grandparent's original $120 estimate.

Maybe my view is skewed from seeing prices in expensive cities, but I think the beef alone at a good steakhouse is gonna run you more like $75-$100 per person, and that's not even for the high-end wagyu (which will probably run $150-$250 for most cuts). Then add another $10-$30 per person for appetizers and side dishes, and maybe dessert on top of that.

I feel like it's pretty hard to walk away from a good steakhouse spending less than $80 or so, even if you have nothing to drink. And the more common case is probably quite a bit more than that...

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#646

Post by crooked-v » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

mirkules wrote: post #596

robotresearcher wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive question: why not raise prices?

Because if everyone raises their prices, the wage increase then effectively makes no difference. If everyone raises wages, they have to raise prices. For the restaurant, this means they have to charge more for the same service, and they have to pay more for their supply chain (because they also increased their prices). For the worker, that means they will pay more for things and services they need/want, because every…

> Because if everyone raises their prices, the wage increase then effectively makes no difference.

This only holds if a restaurant's costs are entirely wages, but actual average labor costs for restaurants (at least in the US) are only about 30%.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#647

Post by chaostheory » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #500

browningstreet wrote: post #498

I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages. In the vacation community where I live, there are two grocery/delis about a mile apart from each other. One is at a marina, the other is at a beach. They have almost the same business offering. Traditionally, both are fully mobbed during the sunny seasons. Two weeks ago, I visited the one I usually go to -- at the…

It's not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable. Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples da…

All of that costs money. Are we as customers willing to pay for it? While a lot of us on HN can afford the price increases, not everyone else can.

I have a feeling that wage increases will come, but there will be less employees and the remaining better paid employees will be augmented with technology in order to serve more customers ie more automation

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#648

Post by pempem » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:05 AM UTC

seriousquestion wrote: post #608

browningstreet wrote: post #498

I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages. In the vacation community where I live, there are two grocery/delis about a mile apart from each other. One is at a marina, the other is at a beach. They have almost the same business offering. Traditionally, both are fully mobbed during the sunny seasons. Two weeks ago, I visited the one I usually go to -- at the…

Given that we are outside observers, is it possible that they know something we don't? What might be some charitable explanations for why they don't raise prices?

Restaurants that are not franchises have a 50% failure rate. Margins are intensely tight and the largest cost is labor, not food, spoilage, advertising, interior design, or whatever else.

The central government and state government take limited to no responsibility for healthcare, child care, retirement, sick leave, pto etc.

The central justice system has agreed that corporations have a duty to their stakeholders above their business and so growth is paramount.

As a result, restaurants, esp independent ones, struggle to find ways to make ends meet and corporations (aka McDonalds) see no incentive to raise wages. The easiest and most obvious example of this playing out is imo that McDonalds pays labor more elsewhere than in the US.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#649

Post by smegger001 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

mdavis6890 wrote: post #372

yepthatsreality wrote: post #4

The restaurant industry has known the solution for a long time but everyone wants to pretend it would be too difficult. Stop the tipping guilt trip placed on the public, raise your prices 20%, and pay your employees a livable wage. The public will still show up to eat in your restaurant.

What we are observing is the Demand Curve shifting left (people less interested in eating out) and the Supply Curve shifting down (the people willing to work in restaurants for any given wage is going down). Remember that supply and demand curves cover all wages/prices and quantities, they are not specific to a certain price/wage or quantity. This is observed as a shortage - more customers willing to buy a restaurant…

I think the market is going to split soon. The lowend local resturant will die because they wont have access to the ecconomyies of scall that will allow them to raise wages and the market wont pay more just for being "local". so small burger joints cafes and such will suffer. the mid to hig end will raise wages and most will survive.

Then those the are unwilling to raise server wages will either die due to lackmof labour or become ghost kitchen fire the serving staff and do take out and delivery exclusively.

I think delivery and take out is going to stick around in a big way. there is less expectation to tip the restaurant when not eating on premises. and it think wage regulation of gig work is coming for the likes of ubereats doordash and grubhub

on the cheap end you will have take home food with no tips and on the high end a living wage will become standard with less pressure to tip

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#650

Post by crooked-v » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

jackson1442 wrote: post #625

ahallock wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In high school, I worked at a fast food joint to make a little extra money. There were no expectations to pay rent or other essentials. But you'll say that it's not kids working these jobs, so we need to provide a livable wage. What about getting these people skills for better jobs? I'd rather attack that problem than make Wendy's sandwich maker a viable career.

What skills does a line cook at Wendy’s learn aside from “how a job works?” Also, who staffs Wendy’s from morning until schools let out during the day? I haven’t seen seasonal fast food restaurants anywhere near me.

General multitasking, team coordination, cash handling, basic restaurant dishwashing, stock management, industrial cleaning, pacifying unhappy customers, dealing with druggies and harassers, and a whole bunch of other things I've probably forgotten from when I worked fast food as a teenager.

The simplicity of each individual job means that nobody ever has just one job at a fast food place. Stick around for any amount of time and you'll get rotated through every available position.