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Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

southseattleemerald.com

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Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#301

Post by onethought »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #272

Benign dictatorships are almost always easier to pull off than board management models. Board management models generally only work if it the restaurant was individually owned at one point and then that owner left Starting a worker owned restaurant from the ground up is a terrible idea because the end customer doesn't really care and your artificially creating additional managerial barriers to entry when you have to…

I don't see how any of your points don't apply to 'having shareholders' equally.

A board management can elect a leader/ceo/dictator if they wanted (and from the sounds of it probably should).

Just like having a company run directly by shareholders is probably a bad idea.

Having a company that is 100% Owned by the same people that it employs does not make a decision on how it's run, it just aligns workers and shareholder interests completely.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#302

Post by TylerE »

mehlmao wrote: post #299
TylerE wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a great way to turn a business into even more of a hyper-politicized environment than it already is. It becomes not about what you can do, but who you make like you.

versus the status quo, where it's not about what you can do, but making the owner like you?

Easier to make 1 person happy than 50.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#303

Post by titanomachy »

declan_roberts wrote: post #284

The answer is halfway down the article for this particular restaurant: ”they haven’t made a profit yet” You can pay workers a million dollars an hour. If you can’t turn a profit then it won’t “work”

Profit isn’t the only indicator of success for a company like this. If they can break even while paying generous wages and providing value to their community, that’s still a success.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#304

Post by MrJohz »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #290
MrJohz wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except worker cooperatives are noted for being particularly resilient against closures - Wikipedia links to a number of studies and analyses here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Research_on... For example there's a British study that shows that 76% of worker cooperatives tend to survive the first five years, compared to 42% of all companies overall, making them particularly stable businesses. You've…

I do wonder about selection criteria biases, it's not like both types of business were started with the same set of circumstances. I.e. if you flipped a coin on a non-cooperative and if heads made it a cooperative would it's probability of success increase or decrease.

Some of the studies do try and control for the type of business, and the effect still seems to come through. Feel free to click through the sources - that's why I provided the Wikipedia link, because I was too lazy to copy all of their sources into my comment! ;)

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#305

Post by TylerE »

MrJohz wrote: post #281
hot_gril wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, or it works ok at a small scale but you can never expand, and a competitor (maybe your own ex-employees) eats your lunch like what happened to Cheeseboard. Which is still ok, you can be in that cool little niche if that's what you like, but don't tell me it's a better model overall.

Except worker cooperatives are noted for being particularly resilient against closures - Wikipedia links to a number of studies and analyses here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Research_on... For example there's a British study that shows that 76% of worker cooperatives tend to survive the first five years, compared to 42% of all companies overall, making them particularly stable businesses. You've…

It just all seems so very fragile. It would be very easy for institutional culture to slip, or for whatever the restaurant equivalent of technical debt is to accumulate.

You see the same thing with a lot of non-profits - they mean well, but they send so much of their funding right back out the door - and the first unexpected expense ruins them.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#306

Post by MrJohz »

hot_gril wrote: post #289
MrJohz wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except worker cooperatives are noted for being particularly resilient against closures - Wikipedia links to a number of studies and analyses here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Research_on... For example there's a British study that shows that 76% of worker cooperatives tend to survive the first five years, compared to 42% of all companies overall, making them particularly stable businesses. You've…

Because of the big leap involved in "worker owned cooperatives that have been created by workers buying a business." Either the workers are unusually wealthy and dedicated or a rich owner is doing a bit of charity, in both cases their odds are way better with a corp too. If you're starting with nothing, it'll be difficult to find investment for a co-op.

Do you have evidence to back up that claim? I would imagine that only a minority of coops are actually founded by existing workers, and the majority would be new companies - certainly this is the experience I've had with worker coops near me. But it would be interesting if that wasn't the case.

EDIT: the France study is particularly interesting because they specifically talk about this as a potential reason for the surprising longevity, but then point out that "the overwhelming majority of cooperatives are created from scratch, and hence this explanation remains incomplete".

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#307

Post by TylerE »

randomdata wrote: post #271
ROTMetro wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are referring to is a zombie business. It does not offer enough value so it can only survive via low wages, something that is not guaranteed and is externally controlled. I think banks should does including this measure when it comes to financing. If have to pay your people below market wages to survive you don't have a business, you have a zombie that can't only survive as a parasite on others. Figure out h…

> If have to pay your people below market wages to survive you don't have a business How does one pay below market wages? Someone's market wage is established by observing what they are being paid. They will always be equal, unless you mean an employer is illegally withholding funds owed to the worker? > I cannot buy produce from a farmer for less than it costs them to grow it Haha. As a farmer, I have lost money sel…

Well, probably the most traditional way is to hire for approx market rate... and then given little or no raises/cost of living adjutsments. Bam, 5 years from now, you're well under market rate.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#308

Post by kemitchell »

mitchbob wrote: post #237
the_af wrote: post #217

The pizza restaurant (gourmet pizza, not crap) around the corner where I live is workers owned. The previous owner went bankrupt and left his employees hanging out to dry, so they took ownership of the place. Not sure about the legal situation (e.g. whether they bought the restaurant from the owner or what) but it's been workers owned for the past few years and doing well, judging by how full it always is. I eat and…

Zachary's? https://zacharys.com/

Also good pizza! And there's more than one location.

I believe I read that Nick's, up north, is also heading worker-owned.

And of course worker-owned doesn't just mean pizza in Oakland.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#309

Post by deaddodo »

amrocha wrote: post #259
exabrial wrote: post #88

Yes, absolutely, but there are pitfalls: * Somehow finances have to work, which is usually a harsh reality for some. Ex: Hey we can't pay workers $250/hr without raises prices to above what customers are willing to pay * 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…

I love that when it comes to tech companies, managers are all bumbling idiots and should all be fired to allow the workers to get the job done. But as soon as a working class business tries that, it apparently doesn't work in the long term.

In what way? There are plenty of blue-collar fields where this applies. In many of them, when the workers outgrow the competency of their bosses, they just strike out on their own and become another competitive force (GCs/SCs, carpet workers, plumbers, truckers, etc). This isn't as possible with large tech companies since they require large capital to startup/compete and generally have to worry about getting sued for intellectual property infringements; but it does happen.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#310

Post by hot_gril »

MrJohz wrote: post #306
hot_gril wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the big leap involved in "worker owned cooperatives that have been created by workers buying a business." Either the workers are unusually wealthy and dedicated or a rich owner is doing a bit of charity, in both cases their odds are way better with a corp too. If you're starting with nothing, it'll be difficult to find investment for a co-op.

Do you have evidence to back up that claim? I would imagine that only a minority of coops are actually founded by existing workers, and the majority would be new companies - certainly this is the experience I've had with worker coops near me. But it would be interesting if that wasn't the case. EDIT: the France study is particularly interesting because they specifically talk about this as a potential reason for the s…

Created from scratch probably means someone with a lot of money beforehand decided to do it. The same study calls coop formation rare, and it's hard to control things when you're sampling a rare case.
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