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Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

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Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#341

Post by berkes »

rcme wrote: post #328
fouc wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone else had to get it off the ground implying what? that "workers" can't start something? Even if we imagine there's a category of people that are suited to be "starters" or "entrepreneurs" that category is still plenty numerous, easily 10-35% of the population, if not more.

Yes that is the implication. Starting something requires raising money and organizing things. Generally, at the start, only a small number of people care to do this work. And once they do it, why would they give their ownership stake away to their employees when they could just keep it for themselves?

If that's true (I doubt it) the reverse has to be true too: that those great at starting (a restaurant) are bad at sustaining it.

If there are distinct phases, and certain people or topologies are good at just one of those phases, then it follows that people starting restaurants must be bad at running them once they've established.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#342

Post by ghiculescu »

berkes wrote: post #341
rcme wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that is the implication. Starting something requires raising money and organizing things. Generally, at the start, only a small number of people care to do this work. And once they do it, why would they give their ownership stake away to their employees when they could just keep it for themselves?

If that's true (I doubt it) the reverse has to be true too: that those great at starting (a restaurant) are bad at sustaining it. If there are distinct phases, and certain people or topologies are good at just one of those phases, then it follows that people starting restaurants must be bad at running them once they've established.

That doesn’t follow at all. There’s no reason you can’t be good at both.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#343

Post by satvikpendem »

monero-xmr wrote: post #313
asdff wrote: post #222

This model really should be expanded to just about everything. Revenue per employee ratio at Apple is $2.4 million a person or so. If that company were to shift from the present shareholder model to a cooperative model, its not hard to imagine labor seeing some substantial gains. Having more money in the part of the economy that actually circulates more of their income would probably bring on wider economic benefits…

WRONG - it should be voluntarily expanded to everything. One dealbreaker for me and far-left thinking is the required authoritarianism of implementing their ideas in society. If your ideas are so good, go start something yourself, and see if it catches on. If people still want to work for Apple, there must be a reason, despite the lopsided revenue distribution.

I have often had the same conversation with people in that spectrum, that people should just start coops if they feel like it but to not force me into them, and they tell me that it only works when all businesses are coops, ie workers own the means of production everywhere. Well, if it requires such a fundamental change to society, perhaps it's not actually a feasible solution at all?

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#344

Post by satvikpendem »

zem wrote: post #316
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…

you could have a worker-owned business where one person is appointed "benevolent dictator for now" when things need moving fast. "worker-owned" doesn't mean "every decision has to be collective"

I can't tell if this some subtle satire on the 20th century of other similar "benevolent dictators for now" that, any day now, will relinquish control to the masses of workers. If not, that would be some true irony.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#345

Post by berkes »

ghiculescu wrote: post #342
berkes wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true (I doubt it) the reverse has to be true too: that those great at starting (a restaurant) are bad at sustaining it. If there are distinct phases, and certain people or topologies are good at just one of those phases, then it follows that people starting restaurants must be bad at running them once they've established.

That doesn’t follow at all. There’s no reason you can’t be good at both.

Yes. Which is why the comment I replied to is nonsense.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#346

Post by BartjeD »

spookthesunset wrote: post #335
BartjeD wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why cant they hire non share packaged employees? Why do they have to shrink their pie? To me this sounds very annecdotal and intuitive based on what you think you know. I'd like to know if it has been studied and what those studies found.

Well if they start hiring “non share packages employees” it kinda stops sounding like worker owned and more like owners and workers, eh? Seems to defeat the purpose of being worker owned. Maybe if you have a vesting period of something. But even then it is one employee, one vote or is voting dependent on something else like number of shares?

Just because the name says worker co-op doesn't mean every employee has to be vested.

In the Netherlands a coop is an acutal legal structure that businesses may adopt. It will surprise you to hear that we even a big bank which is: A co-op.

The core characteristic of a co-op isn't that the workers all have shares. It's that they have members and that the members instead of the shareholders may receive payouts based on the company income.

I realize this is different than the American case of a worker co-op. Your reaction though speaks to me that you don't consider this a serious form a company might take. Whereby you ignore that some very big and wealthy companies are in fact co-ops. I assert that this is merely because the US legal systems don't facilitate co-ops, and I wonder whether that isn't a missed opportunity?

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#347

Post by ghiculescu »

berkes wrote: post #345
ghiculescu wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t follow at all. There’s no reason you can’t be good at both.

Yes. Which is why the comment I replied to is nonsense.

No it’s not. You haven’t refuted the claim that starting a restaurant requires momey. You just said having money makes you bad at running a restaurant. Which is silly.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#348

Post by larsrc »

Coming from the Socialist Republic of Denmark, this seems like a very silly question. Why should ownership be a problem for restaurants?

If a restaurant is owned by an investment fund, the fund will try to get as much money out of it as possible, regardless of the restaurant's long-term fate. But owned by the workers, they have a common interest in having good and secure jobs for a long time to come, and so can set up running parameters to best ensure that.

Now the _leadership_ is a different matter. If everybody tries to be the head chef,.you get a confusion. But that is distinct from ownership and can be arranged in many different ways, some of which work.

If all business were worker-owned, one would be right to ask whether a nom-worker-owned business could work.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#349

Post by brailsafe »

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…

> Usually consumers are after something niche, unique, artistic, and creative, which is the inspiration or vision of an individual.

Consumers want that in theory, but much of the time choose lifestyles that favor the opposite. Basically every suburb is the most generic horrible place possible with a tiny amount of commercial activity relegated to a strip mall in a parking lot wasteland filled with the same few shitty restaurants; where culture goes to die.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#350

Post by amrocha »

logdap wrote: post #297
amrocha wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 small groups where decisions must be made in a timely and decisive manner, a mediocre leader is often better than the best democratic committee. Even in programming teams, somebody needs to put their foot down eventually or things will be bikeshedded to death. FOSS projects too, generally benefit from a BDFL. Be careful about extrapolating this out to the rule of countries though, dictatorships can make things go…

Sounds like you change opinions to match whatever argument you want to support. No flame intended, that's just what it sounds like.
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