The Seattle Times reports:
SAN FRANCISCO -- [At] Souvla, a Greek restaurant with a devoted following... there are no servers to wait on you here, or at the two other San Francisco locations that Souvla has added — or, increasingly, at other popular restaurants that have opened in the past two years.
[...]
Commercial rents have gone up. Labor costs have soared. And restaurant workers, many of them priced out by the expense of housing, have been moving away. Restaurateurs who say they can no longer find or afford servers are figuring out how to do without them. And so in this city of staggering wealth, you can eat like a gourmand, with real stemware and ceramic plates. But first, you’ll have to go get your silverware.
[...]
On July 1, the minimum wage in San Francisco [was increased to] $15 an hour, [and the city] requires employers with at least 20 workers to pay health-care costs... in addition to paid sick leave and parental leave.Despite those benefits, many workers say they can’t afford to live here or to stay in the industry. And partly as a result of those benefits, restaurateurs say they can’t afford the workers who remain. A dishwasher can now make $18 or $19 an hour. And because of California labor laws, even tipped workers like servers earn at least the full minimum wage, unlike their peers in most other states.
The TL;DR might be summed up as "San Francisco, one of the first places to see a $15 an hour minimum wage, is reaping the rewards of the progress. By pricing low-wage workers right out of their jobs."
Related Stories
Google announces $1B, 10-year plan to add thousands of homes to Bay Area
The housing crisis in the Bay Area, particularly in San Francisco, is a complex and controversial topic with no one-size-fits-all solution — but a check for a billion dollars is about as close as you're going to get, and Google has just announced it's writing one. In a blog post, CEO Sundar Pichai explained that in order to "build a more helpful Google," the company would be making this major investment in what it believes is the most important social issue in the area: housing.
San Francisco is famously among the most expensive places in the world to live now, and many residents of the city, or perhaps I should say former residents, have expressed a deep and bitter hatred for the tech industry they believe converted the area to a playground for the rich while leaving the poor and disadvantaged to fend for themselves.
Google itself has been the subject of many a protest, and no doubt it is aware that its reputation as a friendly and progressive company is in danger from this and numerous other issues, from AI ethics to advertising policies. To remedy this, and perhaps even partly as an act of conscience, Google has embarked on a billion-dollar charm offensive that will add thousands of new homes to the Bay Area over the next ten years.
$750 million of that comes in the form of repurposing its own commercial real estate for residential purposes. This will allow for 15,000 new homes "at all income levels," and while Pichai said that they hope this will help address the "chronic shortage of affordable housing options," the blog post did not specify how many of these new homes would actually be affordable, and where they might be.
Another $250 million will be invested to "provide incentives to enable developers to build at least 5,000 affordable housing units across the market".
They should build an arcology or giant pod hotel.
Also at NPR.
Previously: "It's a Perfect Storm": Homeless Spike in Rural California Linked to Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley Charter Buses Vandalized by Pellet/BB Guns or Rocks
Related: Soaring Rents in Portland, Oregon Cause Homelessness Crisis
City of San Francisco Says It's Illegal to Live in a Box
San Francisco Restaurants Can't Afford Waiters, so they Put Diners to Work
In San Francisco, Making a Living from Your Billionaire Neighbor's Trash
A Rogue Coder Turned a Parking Spot Into a Coworking Space
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:11PM (18 children)
You're just jealous of all the other benefits of living in a leftist utopia. [businessinsider.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:22PM (12 children)
Well, there's an elephant in the room here, and it's not the raising of minimum wages, it's the raising of rents.
A good start to curing this cancer would be to allow only citizens to own property in San Fran (and all of the U.S., for that matter). A good next step would be to buy back all properties purchased by foreigners and put up a few commieblocks to house the Mexicans who serve all these people., and deport all illegals. Some people say, "The illegals are the only ones who will serve us!" No, the illegals are facilitating an artificial depression of wages, and now the equalization is gonna come. Some people say, "well, if we could just develop more property over there, then rents would go down and I could live there affordably." No, it doesn't work like that. The more apartment buildings and tiny houses they can cram into a parcel, the worse the property cost and traffic nightmares will become.
What we should do is mandate that Jewgle, Jewbook, and Crapple all build their own fiefdoms over in Fresno and do their business there without displacing families and shitting up traffic. If military or CIA people can bite the bullet and live on the Aleutian Islands or in Afghanistan for a few years to build their careers, then lily-livered hipster punks should be able to tolerate Fresno for a few years. Bad Mexicans, but good burritos. Hell, the experience of living in Fresno may actually make their nuts drop.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:10PM
What an incredibly stupid comment!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Saturday July 07 2018, @11:52PM (6 children)
We should protect our border, and illegal immigration causes many problems--many of those problems for the immigrants themselves which is actually my primary concern since my capacity for empathy doesn't stop South of the Rio Grande. I'd be more sympathetic with the people who say we need to do more to protect our border and enforce our laws IF THEY DIDN'T ALSO SAY THINGS LIKE THIS,
So when someone starts talking about the need to better enforce our immigration laws I question their motivation, because it's almost always coming from a place of hate and malevolence. I also question their ability to enforce those laws humanely, and given the thousands of children who have been kidnapped and are currently being kept in cages and concentration camps, I'm fully justified. I wouldn't trust you to organize a bake-sale without committing a human rights violation.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:53AM (2 children)
Those poor children, trapped inside these terrible concentration camps. If only someone were able to utilize them...utilize their holes...then this tragedy could be avoided.
What we need is a modern day hero...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:43AM
Waaay ahead of you.
Trauma continues for immigrant children in US detention [wsws.org].
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund [maldef.org] have some details:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @09:30AM
OMG, the spam lad is evolving!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:17AM (2 children)
"So when someone starts talking about the need to better enforce our immigration laws I question their motivation, because it's almost always coming from a place of hate and malevolence."
FUCK OFF, you stupid SJW piece of garbage.
Illegal immigrants have NO RIGHT to be in the US, period.
If you disagree you are free to leave the US and stay gone.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @09:58AM (1 child)
Exactly! Now tell that to the ~4 million white European illegal immigrants who overstayed their visas. These illegal aliens aren't picking crops, cutting grass or washing dishes, they are taking good paying jobs because they have skills. It's these people who are keeping the under-employed from advancing and freeing up more entry level positions that used to be available.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @11:44PM
The ones that have overstayed since the 17th century. All you white poeple are immigrunts. Go back to Europe. We don't want you. Take your slaves with you.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:37AM (2 children)
I have heard (and in some cases, seen) that Chinese (?) investors are buying a decent amount of property in the San Francisco bay area and renting it back out. I don't know if/where you could get more detailed statistics on it though.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 08 2018, @05:24PM (1 child)
Last I heard a lot of those properties were just sitting empty once bought out by Chinese, the sole purpose of the Chinese purchases is to hide wealth somewhere else.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bootsy on Monday July 09 2018, @09:35AM
Owning property abroad is also a hedge against inflation or a drop in the Chinese currency. See most of central London....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @04:12AM
I'm pretty sure I actually, unironically saw this posted on /g/ or /pol/.
Why in hell would you actually attach a username to garbage like this, or post it elsewhere?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:23PM (3 children)
Objection: leading the witness.
Draw your own conclusions. For me, it's not so much about the $15/hour wage (how do they apply this to tipped staff? Waiters at any decent restaurant make far more than $15/hr in tips.) and more about the hard cutoff 20 employee threshold for benefits. Drawing a line like that strongly encourages people to play just under it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 08 2018, @05:00AM (2 children)
From the quote in the summary:
and later:
With less income, the pressure to move away would be even harder.
Remember, it's not the absolute number of dollars you get that counts, but the value of those dollars. And in a region with high prices, that value is low.
This is also confirmed by the following line:
Note that this is clearly above the minimum wage. Which means that this wage would likely be exactly the same even without any minimum wage. Reduced competition raises the prices, that's a general rule, and the work market is no exception. And people moving away because of the housing costs certainly reduces the competition.
Or in short, the root of the problem is in the housing market.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:36PM (1 child)
In the Florida Keys, fast food joints will run buses down from the mainland to get employees, because nobody who can afford to live within 50 miles is willing to do the work, and the bus is much more reliable transportation than whatever fast-food workers can manage for themselves.
Again, I think we have some non-continuous economics going on here. A difference of a few bucks an hour isn't going to bridge the gap and enable more people to stay in the area. What will enable people to stay in the area is a continuous curve of available housing prices. When there's nothing on the market for less than $5000 per month, then it really doesn't matter if you make $8/hr, $18/hr, or even $28/hr, it's just out of your league as an independent. Maybe trailing spouses / SOs can enter the workforce at any price, but what's their motivation to do so when their source of money is on the high side of the class divide?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:48PM
"because nobody who can afford to live within 50 miles is willing to do the work,"
More like "because anybody willing to do the work knows full well they won't be able to afford living within 50 miles of the job location".
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:40AM
I am also naturally pretty sarcastic in tone, a shortfall that I ask the reader to generously overlook if it does not contribute value in his individual case.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:18PM (14 children)
Better food, faster, less expensive, better quality control, more social
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:36PM (13 children)
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:45PM
It was a relatively small, quiet city. If it weren't for one thing - one man - it would be an entirely unremarkable place. Who was this man, who could single-handedly increase the importance of an entire city? He was a miracle. No, to be more precise, he was known simply as "The Miracle." Wherever this man went, miracles were certain to occur. The location where the man existed now was no different.
It was a seemingly ordinary sidewalk in a similarly ordinary neighborhood. A coughing sound was heard, and something white that was covered in a thick red liquid went flying across the cement. "Hm! I see you still have one left." said the miraculous man. The Miracle then took his hammer and smashed it into the last target, which broke and fell onto the cement. A mix of gurgling and whimpering was heard; it was a little girl trying - and failing - to beg for mercy. After all, it's quite hard to speak when your mouth is filled with blood and your teeth have all been smashed out.
"Silence!" bellowed The Miracle. As he issued his command to the thoroughly-violated child, he kicked the girl's head one more time. "I'm getting tired of this..." muttered the man. Yes, now that the girl was falling silent and had already been fully utilized, she was of no use any longer. Thus, the man brought down his foot and put an end to the nuisance.
At last, the last sign of motion in this place was gone; it was a true miracle. With that, the one who could effortlessly bring forth such wondrous events departed. What he left behind were dozens of little miracles that would eventually rot away; they all bore a stunning resemblance to that little girl...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:48PM (2 children)
Or just have friends. And subway is about as far away from fresh as you can get. And other than leaf vegetables, most foods remain fresh a long time. I've been doing this for thirty years, so have some experience with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbWo5Srm_M4 [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:52PM (1 child)
Working people don't have time to cook and don't have time for friends.
Admit you live in your retired mother's basement. You don't cook. Your mother cooks for you.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday July 08 2018, @04:26AM
Bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:26PM (7 children)
There are numerous solutions to this. For example:
-- Buy less/smaller portions
-- Learn to manage your "inventory" when you buy fresh foods so it doesn't go bad (just takes a little thought)
-- Learn to cook simple dishes that use up ingredients in a way that you can save for multiple days or even freeze for longer.
-- Use frozen or preserved products for applications where the quality difference isn't important. (Canned too, though except for a few things, canned food is a worse option quality-wise.)
-- Learn to preserve food yourself, as all humans did until a couple generations ago. Having fresh food all the time of all varieties is a very modern and odd phenomenon.
I lived by myself for quite a few years as an adult and I never had the problem of using up fresh food with minimal planning. If you're not a moron, this is a non-problem.
LOL. That's all I have to say about that.
Restaurant food is generally more "convenient" for almost anyone who lives or works near any restaurants. That's not the question. It's most certainly cheaper for a single person to cook for yourself, and with just a little practice, it is often higher quality than most restaurants (at least cheaper ones). And you know what you're eating, have more choice/flexibility in ingredients, etc.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:47PM
Did he spin around reality, or did reality spin around him?
It was a dark room, in which the only sources of light were several computer monitors. A single man existed in this inhospitable darkness. At first glance, one would assume that this man was entirely ordinary; such an assumption could not be more wrong. In truth, this man was extraordinary, to the point where he had earned the title of "The Reality Spinner". But what means did he use to attain such a grandiose title?
There was a chair, upon which the man existed. And he spun. He spun and he spun and he spun. He spun even when they screamed. He spun even when they bled. He spun even when the last scraps of their wretched lives were extinguished. He spun, and he did not stop. No one could stop this man. No one dared to try.
The violated women and children surrounding the chair rotted away over the months, but the man who moved reality itself simply continued to spin...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:54PM (1 child)
Use frozen or preserved products
...and you can make your own, at multiple levels up to the TV dinner type thing.
Purposely cooking in large quantities and freezing the "leftovers" in small containers can save a lot of labor.
(Buying your food in the produce aisle reduces the cost of food significantly.)
A number of people have asked themselves "Do I|we really need to cook for 1 (or 2)?"[1]
To address that, there's the communal meal. [google.com]
[1] A number have also asked "Do I|we really need to have a giant residence?"[2]
A thing which can be related to communal dining is communal living. [google.com]
One such plan has the responsibility for cooking rotating among units|couples|families|groups|whatever.
[2] ...and with the typical suburban home, there's that giant lawn that never gets used but needs to be mowed constantly--instead of using that land to grow food.
That last thing is the real shame/revelation.
Being able to harvest exactly which fresh stuff you want in exactly the quantity you need right now would be ideal.
It's sad that the victory garden notion lost its popularity.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:59AM
This is the way to go. Anything I cook ends up being somewhere between 3-8 meals. One really easy thing to make with a rice cooker:
2 cups rice
2¾ cups water
4 tablespoons Tony Chachere or similar creole seasoning
1 lb thinly sliced smoked sausage rope
Quick prep and makes about 4-5 really tasty breakfasts. No reason it can't scale for a bigger rice cooker. Divide it up into plastic baggies and throw into the freezer. In the morning grab one from the freezer, put in the fridge, grab thawed one (from day before) from fridge. Then add a slight bit of water and warm in a loosely covered container.
It's way cheaper than buying Uncle Ben's ready rices.
Plenty of crock pot recipes floating around Soylent too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:01PM
It's sad when what used to be common sense becomes insightful. It was actually more SOP than common sense.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday July 09 2018, @10:05AM (2 children)
>It's most certainly cheaper for a single person to cook for yourself
It's cheaper if your time and effort is free. See that long list in your post? That takes a lot of time and effort. The two factors that make cooking viable are if you make less than a certain amount of money (your time is not valuable enough to exceed the money saved) or you enjoy cooking, in which case the time investment isn't a straight loss.
That's precisely why cooking is rare for the rich/middle class in California et al, because their time costs more than a restaurant meal. That's why there are startups like Blue Apron, who try to cut out some of the time and effort out of cooking, for a service fee. (I don't promote or advertise Blue Apron, I have heard both positive and negative things.)
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday July 10 2018, @06:09AM (1 child)
There are plenty of ways to save time. Cooking doesn't have to be time-intensive. One of the most common ways are slow-cooker meals -- dump a bunch of ingredients in a slow cooker on a weekend, freeze meals for the week or more. Do this several times with different dishes each week, and you have a freezer full of choices for homemade lunches or dinners. All with maybe 30 minutes active time once per week (estimating 15 minutes for prep to throw things into the slow cooker and 15 minutes for portioning it to freeze).
That's the basic level. If you actually know how to cook, there are plenty of other shortcuts that can make quick prep on a weeknight reasonable.
Blue Apron is fine (from what I've heard), but it's basically for people who don't know enough about cooking to choose a recipe, buy ingredients, and measure them... All of which take minimal effort if you have a little experience.
Look, I'll agree there's effort to learn how to cook efficiently. But once you can do it, you don't necessarily need to spend more time than it would take you to call up the take-out place, and drive to and from it to get your dinner. (Probably less time.)
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday July 10 2018, @05:22PM
You're leaking Dunning-Kruger, the often overlooked side of the effect, where experts forget just how little most people know about a subject.
> One of the most common ways are slow-cooker meals
A lot of people haven't heard of slow cookers, and even more people have only heard of it and don't really have a good idea of what to do with one.
> dump a bunch of ingredients in a slow cooker on a weekend
Like what? Cake, fish, canned fruit, yogurt?
> freeze meals for the week or more.
Freeze meals? Why do I have to do that? Do I put it all into a bowl and stick it in the freezer? Why is it all dry now?
> Do this several times with different dishes
Oh great, so I need to come up with different recipes? Let's see, cake, cake+fish, fish, cake+fish+canned fruit, fish+canned fruit, there, five different dishes, right?
> But once you can do it, you don't necessarily need to spend more time
Indeed, once I have a multi billion dollar inheritance, I don't need to go out of my way to make money. Step one's the hard part.
Look, I think cooking is great, but you're underestimating how much of a time and effort investment it presents. It's not just time, but also effort. An office worker working more than 40 a week with a long commute doesn't want to learn how to cook, even if strictly speaking they had the time for it, because they don't have the effort/energy for it. Also, if you haven't seen a perfectly functional person completely wreck a simple omelet, you can't really appreciate just how much intuition is involved that is not common sense. If you have that intuition, cooking is a lot easier.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:27AM
Amen. You should do what I do. There are four local restaurants where I trade "advice" for a free meal once a week. They feed me a big lunch and they can pick my brain while I eat. I try to stop by one of them for dinner one time each week, and when I do I pay for my meal. That way each one gets a visit each month where I pay for my food (so I don't come off like a total mooch).
If I can get three more I'll have a free lunch every day of the week.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:21PM (49 children)
The solution to these restauranteurs' problems:
1. Pay their people a wage sufficient to keep them.
2. Raise prices as needed to pay for the higher wages. If the place is really that popular, that shouldn't cause a problem.
"But wage-price spiral", I hear you cry. The difference is that there's no reason why these particular workers need to eat at these restaurants or not get a heavily discounted meal from the restaurant they work at.
But the real proof that the owners' claims that they're financial struggling are total BS is that they're expanding to new locations at the same time. You don't expand your business if you have a cash flow problem, you expand your business when your profits have turned into a pile of cash and think you can make more by reinvesting some of that pile of cash. When your behavior doesn't match your rhetoric, I know you're full of it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:31PM (5 children)
I think the final solution to the Bay Area's problems would be for all those low-rent service workers to move elsewhere (like Fresno) where they can find a better standard of living. Of course, being an employee of Boston Dynamics, this would work well for me because it would accelerate automation in the areas that need it. And we make the finest and snottiest waitron-robots bought my money. One of our robo-Mexicans can do the job of 5 human Mexicans, With a high up-front cost but low maintenance expense costing less than the most basic Obamacare plan for one human Mexican, even without the coverage for their 4 kids and their Pinche Lupita.
My, aren't these exciting times in which we live, aren't they not?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:12PM (1 child)
EF is stupid and gay.
(Score: -1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:20PM
So stupid was EF the Gay that he shoved his rigid unwashed cock into the female pussy of a woman by accident one day, but he could not even tell he was not balls deep in a male man butt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @12:17AM (2 children)
If mass transit, in particular high speed rail, [wikipedia.org] gets going in Cali, what you said could be an option.
That thing going down the vertical middle of the state, [wikipedia.org] and augmented locally by bicycles, electric scooters, municipal buses, Uber, and/or company shuttle vehicles could make things work.
.
WRT SillyValley companies, I like the suggestion by Thexalon. [soylentnews.org]
Move your businesses to a place with a lower population density.
What exactly is keeping those businesses in SillyValley anyway?
It's not like they need physical proximity to other tech companies.
The hardware production facilities and the corresponding supply chain moved out of the USA decades ago.
All that's really needed for these "tech" companies[1] to do what they do is a decent internet connection.
[1] Actually, intellectual property companies.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by tftp on Sunday July 08 2018, @04:33AM (1 child)
Availability of skilled workers. They rarely live farther than Gilroy. They are paid big bucks, why should they live far away? They can afford it. The businesses have to come to where the workers are. Sure, the companies are free to open shop in Alturas (Modoc county,) but too few data scientists and C++ wizards live there, and none will want to relocate. Among other issues, this will tie them to that particular company, and it will be very expensive to change job. The same worker can live anywhere in Silicon Valley and have easy access to most high-paying employers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @09:06PM
This is only part of the answer. There's also network effects, and path dependency, both of which are also helped the by the local climate. Mind you, I think the main things keeping it there right now are sunk cost fallacy and status effects (managers and execs of tech companies still get status boosts from the location). Get rid of the proposition 13 property tax protections and I bet this would change fast, though. Of course, if they don't get rid of prop 13 they'll never be able to lessen the NIMBY and BANANAs enough to even make a dent in their housing problems, which will blow things up in a different direction, but one that will effect the execs less.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:41PM (22 children)
Why so? What makes you think that a popular place can charge whatever they want? It's only the poorest who got more cash, the rest saw no difference. If the people really like the place, they will be coming not every other day, but every other week - and the restaurant is dead, buried beneath the mass of fixed costs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:51PM
They really should raise the price of a Big Mac to $147.00 there if that's what it takes to even the playing field. Zuckburger and the other 1% can pay up or starve. Look at any gold rush area, $100/night for a room 160 years ago was fair game.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:05PM (20 children)
The kind of people that eat out a lot are not generally in a financial situation where an extra couple of bucks here and there are going to make a difference to their decision-making. I know, because I've been that person, and even a 25% price increase probably would not have changed my behavior all that much.
The technical term for this sort of thing is Price Elasticity of Demand. If you have plenty of customers at your current price, and you raise your prices, you may lose a few of them, but how many you'll lose depends on a lot of factors that are often hidden from you, like whether there's really a big difference in their minds between a $20 meal and a $25 meal.
And if the place is really really popular, to the point where people are lining up to get in, or battling for reservations and such, then raising prices will actually make things more convenient for your best customers because they'll have less competition on the demand side, and that solves the "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" problem.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:25PM (16 children)
We used to take the family out weekly, or more often, when we could get a decent sit-down served meal for $30 including tip. These days it seems anywhere we go the bill for the four of us is running closer to $80 after tip, and consequently we eat out more like monthly instead of weekly now.
Stick that in your elasticity theory and smoke it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)
His theory already makes allowances for Jews.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:32AM
What does a Jewish mother make for dinner?
Reservations.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:25PM (2 children)
It's augmented from the garden (fresh produce), but we eat very well and very healthy. There are a few main staples in cooking that are very cheap and make up the majority of volume. The high value foods add taste. The trick is really knowing how to prepare and spices.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:02AM (1 child)
Sure can do that, yep. Run your own goats and save on milk costs too...
Bring 2 adults and 2 teenagers into an "average" restaurant and just let them order without being overly cost conscious and that's where the $80 bill comes from. Which is why we control our restaurant expenditures by eating out less, a lot less than we used to.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:14PM
http://assets3.sparkpeople.com/blog_photos/DSimages/vre_buy3.jpg [sparkpeople.com]
And with a $20 slow cooker, it takes 3 minutes to prepare.
https://www.amazon.com/Crock-Pot-SCR300-SS-3-Quart-Manual-Cooker/dp/B003UCG8II/ref=sr_1_27?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1531058990&sr=1-27&keywords=slow+cooker [amazon.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:17AM (10 children)
Now, let's see what the staff cost. You no doubt had a waitress handling 6 tables and a cook spent perhaps 15 minutes dedicated to your meal. The dish washer might spend 5 minutes on you if you're really messy. So that's 1 hr/6 + 15 min + 5 min = 1/2 hour. Minimum wage went from (let's say) $5/ht to $15/hr, so the cost of humans to serve you went from $2.50 to $7.50. That accounts for $5 out of the extra $50 you're paying today.
So yeah, it's that extra $5 to the staff that's killing the whole thing, not the other $45 for food, rent, and profit.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:39AM (9 children)
A big part of what's killing it is the kids going from "under 12 eats free" to full meal participants... still hits the point of price elasticity, when we could eat for $30 we were spending $120/month in the served food market, now that a single meal is costing $80, we're down closer to $80 per month in served food.
I'm not sure that a significant minimum wage increase has happened in Florida, and even if it did I don't think it would impact server costs, that $30 meal was including a $6 tip, just for our table - 3 tables like us per hour and that's making more than the highest minimums - maybe cooks, but line cooks at most decent restaurants are already making far more than minimum wage too.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 08 2018, @05:13AM (8 children)
So the problem was your kids getting older? I'm not sure how this is relevant to the discussion here.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @10:06AM
It was an unforeseen inevitability, yet no one noticed as they outgrew their clothes. And then, one day, the law of unintended consequences delivered the birthday message no one wants to hear: your children are now old enough to pay full price.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:56PM (6 children)
There's no problem here, I don't mind eating out once a month as opposed to once a week - it's got pluses and minuses, but overall I'm happy with either situation.
There is a point, however, and that is that when meals out were available to us at $30 a pop, we'd consume about 4 per month. Now that they're closer to $80 each, we're only consuming about one per month - that's price in-elasticity: the rising cost (to us) of served food driving us to do our own shopping, cooking, and dish cleanup more often. It's nothing we sat down and calculated or planned, looking back across the last 5 years it's just what happened.
Our local grocery mega-chain has been attempting to practice price elasticity on us the past couple of years, too. 5 years ago, we did 99% of our grocery shopping with that chain, convenient one-stop and all that. In the last few years they've been bifurcating their product line, staying cost competitive on the low-end foods and building in a 50% or more markup (feels like about 20% annual inflation) on the foods that we prefer to eat (sugar based instead of HFCS, hormone free farm products, etc.) So, in the past year, we have mostly abandoned our one-stop grocery chain and now about 85% of our grocery dollar goes other places. One simple, in your face example hit me the other day: Ginger Beer - same brand, commodity product, $4.39 at our new store, $6.49 at the big chain, and this kind of pricing pattern is replicated in corn chips, cheese puffs, jellies, waffles, cereal, yogurt, burgers, milk, eggs, blueberries, oranges, nuts, etc. The big chain claims a better shopping experience, but their staff:customer ratios are lower, checkout lines are longer, staff is genuinely less happy to serve, etc. All the big chain really has to its advantage is more locations and a broader product spectrum. And, I guess price elasticity is working for them to some degree or they wouldn't continue to practice it, but it passed our limit of acceptability and now they're on the other side of the discrete decision: to shop there or not to shop there.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday July 08 2018, @06:50PM (3 children)
That's their decision to take more profit costing them. Unlike a hike in minimum wage which would affect all stores in the area abvout equally.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 08 2018, @07:57PM (2 children)
Well, I actually used to work for that big chain when I was in college. Walking in off the street I started doing part-time stock at $6/hr when minimum wage was $3.35. They were starting most baggers and other bottom-end-wage jobs around $4/hr, so about 20% above minimum to start high school kids with zero experience. I doubt that a 20% increase in minimum wage would have had much effect on them at all.
The new store that we shop at has more, and happier, employees per paying customer - and part of the happy comes from the fact that they can afford some kind of real life while working their job, so they're already earning quite a bit more than minimum wage there, if rumors are correct their front-line customer service pay is about 25% higher than the big chain (though, the big chain has more big earner store managers, simply because they have more stores... doesn't seem to be helping the customer experience much, but even in the 1980s my store manager was making six figures...)
So, while there are plenty of minimum wage jobs going around (fast food seems to be one, retail like the Dollar Tree another), grocery and better full service restaurants aren't part of our local economy that's going to be seriously affected by incremental minimum wage increases.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday July 10 2018, @03:57PM (1 child)
But the low payers are largely in the same class as each other, and know their competition is dealing with the same increasing cost. They won't likely be losing customers to others in their class by increasing their prices to cover the wage increase.
As for those who aren't really affected, they need do nothing different.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 10 2018, @07:56PM
And... while a labor intense minimum wage business like fast food might need a price bump to cover rising costs, many minimum wage employers aren't actually going need much of a price increase at all since labor is just a small part of their overall overhead (rent, insurance, cost of goods, etc.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 08 2018, @08:05PM (1 child)
So now they get 2/3 of the money ($80 instead of 4*$30=$120) at 1/4 the cost (serving your family once per month instead of four times per month). Sounds like they now make more profit from you.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 08 2018, @09:01PM
Maybe... maybe not. The kids are bigger, eating more and more expensive food. We definitely occupy less table space-time, so there's that. To get to $30 we were pretty careful about not ordering extras, desserts (unless free with the kids meals) etc. and lately we do tend to just get what we want instead of trying to save $10 on the bill - so that does put our table-time for the $80 meal at about 125% of what we'd occupy for the $30 meal. Oh, and the $30 meals were also non-peak day (typically Tuesday) discounts, so there's another increased cost to the restaurant that we're no longer filling their slack time, although we still tend to stay away from peak crowds.
I think the servers are the most impacted, getting ~$16 for serving one drawn out meal instead of ~$24 for serving 4 more compact ones - they definitely work less, but also get less money overall.
If you want to look at the restaurant side, trim off tip and tax, they used to get ~$88 for 2 adult and 2 kids meals 4 times, and now they get ~$60 for 4 adult meals one time. I'm guessing after their costs of food and prep, they've got 50% left over to cover the building costs, so that's $44 for serving 4 times vs $30 for serving one time. You can take the perspective that they're getting over 2x the profit per hour from us now, or you can take the perspective that their overall profit has reduced by about 30%.
You'll also have to lump all restaurants into one pool to make these kinds of generalizations, because we were rather focused in the 3 or 4 local places we went to on a weekly basis, whereas now we're much more scattered and tend to only eat out while travelling.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:38PM (2 children)
A really good example of that is a place called Pappadeux Seafood Kitchen in Houston. A nice dish there was less than $10 at one point, but getting in was nearly impossible. People waiting in the parking lot, reservations made a week in advance. The response was to keep raising the prices. That dish, became over $20 in price. It made a dent in the number of people coming in, but they never sat there with empty seats at any point. It just made the parking lot easier to get into.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:24PM
A really good example of why San Diego is not yet pozzed with San Francisco AIDS is because we have the same story, Except that the place-in-question didn't raise prices or do anything else. They kept their prices low, and their food good, but simply decided that the rate-limiter was how early you got in, if you could get in at all that night. And there are always lots of hungry hipsters looking to crawl into that place.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:04AM
All the Pappaduex chain restaurants in Houston are ridiculously successful, I forget the whole tableau but one of them is in Hobby airport, another Greek down by Galleria, there are tons of them sprinkled all around town.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:47PM
"But the real proof that the owners' claims that they're financial struggling are total BS is that they're expanding to new locations at the same time."
Indeed. I would also add that the other proof that they are talking shit is that soon someone else--perhaps an immigrant?--will move into the neighborhood and quite literally eat their lunch. Ain't capitalism grand?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:57PM (12 children)
But after 7 years of post high school education, I demand to earn significantly more than people who never graduated from grade school.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:06PM (7 children)
You expect to earn more than other people simply because you have a piece of paper and they don't? What if they are better at the job than you are? What if some of them are even - gasp - more educated than you are, having attained their educations using alternative methods? Ah, I forgot: One-size-fits-all, top-down authoritarian schooling is the only way to get an education. Silly me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:12PM (3 children)
Sure that's one point of view. Here's another: education is an investment. Educated people expect a certain return on investment since they spent so much time and money and effort getting an education.
The trouble is education doesn't necessarily provide a return on investment. In net outcome, the return can be negative.
So here's a third point of view: education is a gamble. Hope that education pays off, luck willing.
But a negative return on investment doesn't just occur for educated people. The self-taught can also find all of their hard-earned skills are not valued.
By far the least successful people are those who are both educated and self-taught, for they receive prejudice from intellectuals and anti-intellectuals alike.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @11:00PM (2 children)
Sure, mostly because of credentialism. But the answer to that is not to surrender and follow The Life Script, but to fight back against this viewpoint with everything you have.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @11:28PM (1 child)
Good luck fighting back with your total lack of influence. Nobody will listen to you and you will have nothing. You won't even be able to afford a bullet to put yourself out of your own misery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @04:22AM
You can at least improve your own life. There are still some employers who care about education over degrees, and self-employment is an option. The latter has worked well for me, despite what you say.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @10:08AM
You mean like a green card or a US birth certificate? Because those two pieces of paper certainly let people earn more than those who do not have them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:27PM (1 child)
No I expect to earn more because I've designed and built things that have given hundreds of people employment and that thousands, if not millions, of people use and pay for. I can make my own Bologna sandwich.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @02:45AM
Then you should've said that, instead of commenting on the amount of time spent in schooling.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:07PM (2 children)
And there's a decent chance you do. For instance, me with substantially less post-secondary education, I used to earn about twice what those dishwashers earn per hour, and now earn closer to 4 times their rate.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:59AM (1 child)
But in real terms, has your income doubled or has theirs halved?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:09AM
Mine's doubled, mostly because I've managed to cut some middlemen out of the equation.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:08PM
You can earn more than anyone else in your graduating class if only you learn to code. Coders have the highest pay ever at $0.
Get paid what you're worth. Learn to code, today.
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:34PM (5 children)
You've all missed the 600 trillion pound fucking gorilla in the room. It's the #1 problem in Northern California, and one that has a rather simple solution:
FUCKING RENT CONTROL + ANTI-MONOPOLY REAL ESTATE LAWS
When you have extremely diverse ownership (3 different owners for Pacific , North Carolina, and Pennsylvania avenues), rents will decrease through competition. They will be affordable for the PEOPLE, and not just the Elite scumbags. Once you allow property ownership to contract to just a few very large players, and FOREIGN ones at that, rents go up. SHARPLY. Like over 400%, which is a knife to the necks of the working classes. They become unaffordable, and your ass will be bankrupt trying to stay there.
This happened because the Middle Class lost a huge chunk of wealth, and property ownership contracted to the people who knew the right people in banks that never renegotiated in good faith. When you don't even live there, why do you give a fuck about the people and the community? You don't. It's a game, and Capitalism demands financial growth irrespective of any long term, moral, or ethical considerations. It's a disease.
What needs to happen is, and yes it needs to be forced, is demanding that ownership becomes more diverse again. Create strong rent control laws that force rents to be within 20-30% of prevailing wages. Otherwise, this ridiculousness will continue, and it won't be waiters and waitresses, but teachers, firemen, police officers, city clerks, etc. It's so bad that people have to commute hours to get into SF.
The only other alternative is a maglev train that can ferry in the working class from hundreds of miles away where toxic groups of property owners haven't "salted the Earth" making living impossible for those unlucky enough to be without a living wage. We don't have the transportation infrastructure to afford this kind of bullshit. Only future that works is one where the workers can live in "fly-over country", but commute cheaply, easily, and speedily to the valuable Elite cities on the coastlines of our once great country.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:53PM (2 children)
Rent control destroys a city just about as well as bombing it, though slower.
With rent control, would YOU want to be a landlord? If you were, would you bother to keep the place nice, knowing that you would not benefit any from the upgrade and knowing that you'd be even less likely to get rid of underpaying tenants? If you got a chance to find a new tenant, would you price in the fact that you might not be able to raise the rent for the next 50 years?
Not that you would ever be a landlord, because socialists leach off of others and fail to invest, but if somehow you were... you'd probably say "fuck it" and do your darndest to find some loophole to evict people and repurpose the property. Maybe you'd even get an insurance payment from a mysterious fire.
(Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Sunday July 08 2018, @04:23AM
Capitalism without limits is far worse than any alleged detractions of Socialism, which isn't what I proposed. According to that logic, ALL regulations are Socialist in nature. Your logic is flawed anyways, and Socialism is used as a barb, not a logical retort.
Regulations DO NOT equal Socialism. Try again.
Notice I said link it to prevailing wages, or some sort of index. I was a landlord for awhile, and I would have no problems at all putting in improvements. That's because I could raise the rent a little bit each year, but within reason, and within the boundaries of the local economy. Las Vegas didn't have any laws that I was aware of that limited what I could do. I chose to limit myself. That's because I'm smart enough to know that I don't actually want to milk the cow to death, but get milk from it over a lifetime.
400% increases in rent prices in four years is not intelligent Capitalism, but avarice without discipline, or regard for the future. Again, short term thinking. That doesn't work if you actually want a working city.
Moreoever, Capitalism would still be at play in a rent limited city. Perhaps rent control was incorrect, because I don't mean something like New York where it can *never* change. What I mean is within the boundaries of the local economy. Some sort of index to ensure that if wealthy real estate owners wanted greater property values, they might want to invest in the local economy to raise that "ceiling". Either that, or it has to be rate limited. You will get ROI, but NOT short term flipping, or worse, long term permanent increases to over 100% of the prevailing wage. That's how you get roommates living together, which is not nearly as preferable to a family.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 09 2018, @05:21PM
And that's why New York City no longer exists.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:31PM (1 child)
The price of a home in the Bay Area is indeed ridiculously out of whack. As in I was being recruited for a job there, and I noticed that despite my pay going up to triple my going rate where I was, my standard of living was going to go down substantially because a tiny studio apartment was going to cost me about 2-3 times the rent for the lovely 4-bedroom home in a fantastic neighborhood I was living in at the time.
What will actually change that is finding some way of reducing demand for housing there. And the only way I can think of is for the big tech companies and venture capitalists that are driving the economy in the area to uproot and move to another city where both housing and office real estate are much cheaper. For instance, it would be entirely doable to put a concentration of tech companies in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina. Or you could pick a Rust Belt city and have, say, Google, completely do basically whatever they want in the area around Detroit, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh. Or you could pick cities in the middle of the country that you don't think about very often if you live on the coasts, and dominate Des Moines, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, etc. Or you could build a headquarters in some place nobody's ever even heard of and create a "company town" around it, which I can guarantee you would absolutely delight the governments of whatever area you chose to do that in.
But right now, there's no incentive for any of the tech firms to do that: They have more than enough money coming in to pay their people whatever they need to for them to make ends meet, and if that's driving the former residents of the area out that's probably not seen as a drawback.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @05:35AM
Yes, and when the hordes of their employees descend upon an unsuspecting state and say "Wow this place is great, but I think it could use a little bit more Socialism," then what? They end up fucking over virgin territory.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:43PM (8 children)
I hope restaurants everywhere take up this model. "Service" at most cheap eateries and even most mid-priced ones is often variable. Unless I'm paying at least $50/head BEFORE drinks, I have no confidence that I'm going to get decent service in most restaurants.
Just put out the water pitcher on the counter and I'll fill it when I want some. I'll come to the bar if I want another drink. Why am I paying for some 20-something distractable moron to tell me her name and bat her eyes at me but forget half my order and never refill my water?
I'm serious. I was turned onto this idea after eating in some rather fine BBQ establishments in the South (including many that would be considered "gourmet" by any reasonable standard), which often have a "order at the counter and we'll bring it out" model like the restaurant in TFA. Some of the best meals in my life have been in scenarios like that. And they were often half the price of what might have paid at a "full service" restaurant.
On the other hand, there's something amazing about truly great service. If I'm having the seven-course tasting menu with paired wines and have multiple servers tending to my every need and discussing the food competently, that's a different scenario.
Leave true table service to the professionals. (And yeah, I'll include "lifer" waitresses in some cheap diners in that group, who are often supremely competent and provide excellent service.) If you're paying crap wages to a 20-year-old idiot who doesn't understand what "service" means, maybe just skip that entirely and invest the money into giving me better food or lowering your prices.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:18PM (2 children)
There is a non-finite chance lots of people go to restaurants *because* a twenty-year-old bats her eyelashes and giggles at the same jokes the last 200 customers told.. and eat the barely-third-class food..
The ultimate version of this is Hooters, but men, especially, are easily pleased ("She liked me! I'll give her a big tip!")
So the cycle perpetuates. You get stereotypically "pretty" (boobs, long hair, young, giggly), rather than "competent", because people (men) tip the boobs.
The restaurant in TFA has found a way to cut an expense. They have done away with what, in many places, is a liability (attention paid to likely big tippers, rather than *every* customer) *and* they have given it a spin/excuse based on cost of labour; BUT:
There will still be cooks, and servers, and dish cleaners, and floor moppers and someone pouring drinks. So they have cut staff by, at most, 20%, likely less, and costs by, likely far less than that. But 10% is a good saving, provided customers keep coming through the door.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday July 08 2018, @12:40AM
There are restaurants like Hooters, etc. that cater to that, sure. But relatively few people go to those sort of restaurants for the FOOD.
TFA is about a nicer restaurant known for its food. I was talking about such restaurants. And people who like said restaurants.
I understand everyone has their interests and reasons for dining out, and this is just my own opinion. Hooters can keep up its business model. For a place I might actually go to eat, I'd be happy if it prioritized things that matter, and the staff for front of house is a big expense.
Also, note that said restaurant can still employ "eye candy" for counter staff, bartenders, etc. For men who want to go and just ogle a woman and pretend to chat her up even though they have no chance, they might still sit at the bar and do so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:20AM
Hooters is dying in my state. Sadly, it's via slow suicide.
My work buddy's and I used to go once a week to meet there for lunch. When we first started the place used to be packed to the point so there was a half hour wait for a table at lunch. One of us would leave a half hour early to get a table for when the rest of us arrived.
The management then lost their damn mind and forgot that men don't go to Hooters because of the great cuisine. They dropped the wildly successful monthly dress up days where the girls wore a theme costume. Then they dropped the rewards lunch cards. Then they dropped the bikini car washes. Then they raised prices, a lot. Soft drinks and iced tea tripled. By this point the lunch crowds were all gone. The dining room was maybe a quarter filled during the middle of the lunch rush. All the cute girls started getting smart and left because: no customers, no tips, so they started hiring girls that needed plus sized orange shorts and XXL tank tops or were tatted up. Then they started nickle-and-diming by charging extra for for every little thing. Finally, they dropped all lunch pricing. You now pay dinner prices all day. That's when we left for the last time. We couldn't justify paying $25 at lunch for a plate of wings served by a poor girl way too big to be squeezed in a Hooters outfit.
Hooters has closed all but the last two stores in my state. I expect the one I used to go will be gone before Christmas. I haven't been since March. It was our weekly destination for years.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:35PM (1 child)
What region are you living in, out of curiosity? In my area, you can get good service at most $20/plate restaurants, and many $10/plate restaurants are at least OK on the service side.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday July 08 2018, @12:28AM
I should qualify my comment. Yes, there are plenty of $20/plate restaurants where you can get decent service. There are also $20/plate restaurants where I have had very inconsistent service. (Chain steak houses that seem to employ lots of young waiters are a primary example.)
This, what I more accurately meant to say was -- if I don't know the service level ahead of time and am trying a new restaurant, I don't feel like I'm pretty much guaranteed excellent service until I'm paying around $50/plate. And pretty much all restaurants in that category offer good service. ~$20/plate also includes Outback Steakhouse or something. I've had pretty awful service at lots of places like that. I've even had pretty awful service at restaurants that charge $50+/plate in the evenings for dinner when I've eaten there for other meals which cost less (lunch, brunch, afternoon tea, etc.).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:35PM (1 child)
I hope restaurants everywhere take it up the ass!
Amazon Prime Whole Foods on every block!
Bezos! Bezos! Bezos!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:13AM
Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @10:13AM
Wow, that's an expensive hooker ... and you have to buy her a drink after? Your local customs may be contributing to your cost of living.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @10:54PM
The article doesn't make it clear, but maybe having waitresses puts them over the max 20 staff that they are then required in California to buy health insurance for everyone and they don't want to do that..
Just saying..
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday July 07 2018, @11:06PM (4 children)
So, with rent being so high that workers are fleeing the city even with an increase in minimum wage, you blame the minimum wage and not the impossibly high rent? Even though at a lower minimum wage, potential employees would flee even faster?
It seems like the rent is the fundamental problem. The minimum wage hike is just the first step in a series of economic responses.
Sounds to me like someone in the owner class has a huge sense of entitlement. Nobody is owed labor at less than the cost of living.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @11:22PM
Your hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt is dead and so are his hippy ideals about a minimum living wage. Die in the gutter where you belong.
(Score: 1) by Captival on Sunday July 08 2018, @12:35AM
Their problem is not too many workers. They have no desire to attract more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:26AM (1 child)
It will make the issues worse.
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/ [steshaw.org]
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap17p1.html [steshaw.org]
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap18p1.html [steshaw.org]
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap19p1.html [steshaw.org]
(Score: 4, Touché) by sjames on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:06AM
Does something in there tell you how to keep a restaurant running if the waiters are homeless, riddled with communicable diseases, and so haven't had a shower in a month?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:55AM (2 children)
There are Japanese restaurants called 'conveyor belt sushi'. They have a slow moving conveyor belt, which moves dishes past all of the tables. Eliminating the need for most waiters. I've wondered why such restaurants are rare in the USA.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shortscreen on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:35AM (1 child)
In the US there'd probably be little kids riding around on the conveyor belt, followed by lawsuits (why we can't have nice things)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:06AM
And that dirty fat pig with a cold who insists on sitting near where the belt comes out and keeps sneezing on the food.