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Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

southseattleemerald.com

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Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#421

Post by hot_gril »

__loam wrote: post #377
hot_gril wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-employee owners vs employee owners taking extra profits, same problem. Difference is the un-democratic owners can more easily reinvest to expand the business instead, and in many cases they do.

It's incredible to see the unironic take here that we need undemocratic do nothings to actually make business decisions. Some of the oldest and most successful companies in the world are worker owned and operated. Just look at the Mondragon Corporation in Spain, which has been around since 1956, has 12b in yearly revenue, and has 80,000 employees. The idea that a co-op wouldn't be capable of investing in the business…

Yep, unironic taking is what I do.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#422

Post by hot_gril »

MrJohz wrote: post #381
hot_gril wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more money for the coop, though. Like, enough to not need other investors/banks.

Coops also use banks and can have investors.

A business with stakeholders who aren't employees is not a co-op.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#423

Post by wahnfrieden »

helpfulmandrill wrote: post #385
andsoitis wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this example, someone else had to get it off the ground. The sibling commenter's example of Zachary's is similarly the product of entrepreneurs who got it started https://zacharys.com/about-us/our-story/

A bit of a long read, but the co-operative sector does have some ideas about how to offer "founder incentives" in workers cooperatives. https://jrwiener.com/cooperatives-and-founder-incentives/ The idea is that cooperatives don't have to treat everyone exactly the same. You can have different "classes" of members. You can have ordinary worker members, but also "founder" members. For example, for an agreed number of y…

Thank you for sharing this, great resource and inspiring

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#424

Post by [deleted] »

sdenton4 wrote: post #374
hot_gril wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk how Cheese Board is doing. They were fine last I checked. Just probably would've done way better as a corp. The Avedisyan couple turned their cheese shop into a coop decades ago, and it was basically an act of charity when they could've kept ownership instead. The store didn't expand much despite decades of exceptional work and high popularity, which is a missed opportunity for profit, but that wasn't their goal.…

Arizmendi spun out of Cheeseboard in 1996 and now has six locations... Also, Mondragon exists. Coops can expand.

[deleted]

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#425

Post by hot_gril »

__loam wrote: post #378
MrJohz wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet evidentially, they aren't so very fragile. Clearly there's something about coops that make them viable businesses, even if that goes against our intuition for what viable businesses ought to look like. I think part of it is that workers typically have very good insights into the immediate needs of a business. You bring up technical debt as an example of the dangers that businesses face, but technical debt is…

The only reason we have the intuition that these would not be viable is because we've been indoctrinated by a capitalistic system since childhood. All the evidence, as you have shown repeatedly in this thread, suggests that workers give a shit when they have a stake in the business, and when they have a say in how the business is run. The results should not be surprising.

Most American kids are never taught economics, and if they are, it's a basic version in late high school at best. If you ask a kid who owns a business or how prices/values are determined, they'll probably have no idea. Guessing that the store manager owns the store seems more natural than thinking there are invisible stakes that may have traded hands between entities you never see.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#426

Post by [deleted] »

hot_gril wrote: post #260
DangitBobby wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost certainly a better for the people who are working somewhere they actually care about for more than minimum wage with performance potentially tied to income.

Just because the employees own the store doesn't mean they pay everyone above market rate. If they do, then yeah, some lucky employees will get paid extra at the previous investors' expense. Meanwhile a regular corp restaurant could offer the same pay but fill the spots with higher skill to match, and some do. Same thing except the corp more likely thrives.

[deleted]

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#427

Post by hot_gril »

sdenton4 wrote: post #374
hot_gril wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk how Cheese Board is doing. They were fine last I checked. Just probably would've done way better as a corp. The Avedisyan couple turned their cheese shop into a coop decades ago, and it was basically an act of charity when they could've kept ownership instead. The store didn't expand much despite decades of exceptional work and high popularity, which is a missed opportunity for profit, but that wasn't their goal.…

Arizmendi spun out of Cheeseboard in 1996 and now has six locations... Also, Mondragon exists. Coops can expand.

Arizmendi and Cheeseboard are separate companies though, same with Cheeseboard and Sliver (which is btw not a co-op). Not sure about Mondragon's structure since it's headlined as a corporation/federation of co-ops, which sounds like the workers don't collectively own the entire business and there's a higher level that's just a regular corp.

Anyway, I'm not saying co-ops can never expand while still maintaining collective ownership, only that it's harder. Also harder to start, or to exist in general.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#428

Post by IMTDb »

helpfulmandrill wrote: post #406
IMTDb wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking about a 5% reduction. No one even talks about a "round of layoff for hard time" when the number is that low. What would it look like if the company had to downsize by ~30% ? Would people still be able to pay rent ?

What sort of hard times are you talking about? Like the 2008 crash, for example?

Any. Eg of what's happening next to me: a tunnel has to be closed for repairs, so it's becoming way harder for customers to access your location. As a consequence you are loosing a lot of customer for whom it's really inconvenient to come now. You have roughly 50% less customers for now. Repairs will last 2 years, and insurance helps you pay for the rent until the end of the repairs.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#429

Post by hot_gril »

TylerE wrote: post #302
mehlmao wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not this simple either way. I just feel like a co-op is likely to have more effort spent on politics between employees. It's a lot like a union.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#430

Post by hot_gril »

Turskarama wrote: post #321
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.

Why would the workers be unusually wealthy? They can always get a business loan, a bank is going to be relatively confident if you're buying the same business you have worked in for years and know all the ins and outs.

Most workers can't afford that kind of risk or time. They have bills to pay.
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