Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

Horatio Alger was a pedophile who preyed on young homeless boys and orphans.

It is very easy for the best burger flipper at McDonald's to remain the best burger flipper at McDonald's forever. His job is safe. The harder he's willing to work without getting a raise, the longer he will be working without getting a raise. One day, he will probably become assistant manager, and his promotion will mean a pay cut because now he's on salary, and his responsibilities will become greater because he has to show up when others don't. They know he will, which is why they gave him the job. Meanwhile, he works under a series of managers transferred from other locations, or hired from other companies. Eventually he gets sick, and his awful health insurance runs out almost immediately. He's demoted, then fired because he can't keep up at the job anymore. Then he's homeless, then he's dead.

Goofus, however, did the least possible in order to keep from being fired, and went to community college at night. He eventually was able to wrangle a paid internship at a company where there was a career path, and quit McDonald's. Everybody was happy to see him go, because he was a person like them who managed to get a good job, and also because he was terrible to work with because he was always so tired from school and didn't put a ton of effort in. Goofus is now middle-class.

postscript: Goofus later also got sick, his insurance ran out, and he became homeless and died. US healthcare is terrible.

Works on open source stuff, like Linux kernel, GStreamer, etc.

If it was worker owned wouldn't you just pay everyone some reasonable wage that the business can afford and then also split profits evenly?

> Somehow finances have to work, which is usually a harsh reality for some

At most places I've been involved in the workers are more careful with money because they are standing together and want the business to succeed. They have transparency into the finances, so they know what's possible and try to make sure not to go overboard.

> Consumers despite "Least common denominator" which is often the result of "design by committee". Usually consumers are after something niche, unique, artistic, and creative, which is the inspiration or vision of an individual.

All of the worker owned places I've been have been exactly this: creative, interesting, and individual. These aren't giant chains designed in a megacorp boardroom.

> I don't see this working in the long term unfortunately unless a majority of the workers have a lot experience with business, especially something as cashflow-sensitive as a restaurant (which typically operate on razor-thin margins). But I do wish them luck in their experiment.

There are many of these and though I don't know the success rate compared to hierarchical businesses in the food industry in particular, co-ops have a higher success rate than hierarchical businesses in general and there's been a lot of research into it, though I don't know if an exact "why" has ever been established. I suspect it's that there's no handful of individuals who can get greedy and ruin things by trying to maximize profit. Even for-profit co-ops generally have a better sense of balance since the workers don't want their business to dry up and if one person gets greedy there are lots of other people to keep them in check.

which restaurant workers is this true of? tipped FOH workers make a little to a lot more than minimum wage depending on the shift. BOH workers are indeed getting minimum wage or a little more, but wage theft to the tune of 50% of a paycheck is incredibly rare.