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One thing I think about is that you would think since US restaurant owners essentially don’t pay their workers, the food would be cheaper, but generally speaking I don’t think there’s much of a difference. I know the restaurant industry has tight margins for owners (I don’t care), but I assume that all US business owners are very bad at what they do and extremely greedy, with restaurant owners being basically the perfect storm for bad at what they do and extremely greedy.
The difference is likely pocketed by their suppliers then
Suppliers, landlords, their own inability to live “within their means” as they expect from all others
The most expensive part of leaving the US is the flight out. There are few places in the world I've seen where food is more expensive even before tip. Also, that shit is either straight of the conveyor belt full of high fructose corn syrup or it's made to be some kind of art project.
The price of everything is a scam
does it actually? Seriously asking my perception of it from across the pond is you own a local pizzeria and enslave somewhere between 10 - 20 people and you get to go on 3 week euro vacations
They're capitalists (spit), but they're small capitalists, so they're at the mercy of larger capitalists with more power. I wouldn't be surprised if commercial landlords are squeezing them for most of their profits.
On the other hand, working at the restaurant would save them a whole employee's wages and they basically never do that, so it can't be that tight.
The only business owners I've ever truly respected came into the shop 6 days a week until they died, gave out free food to people in need all the time, and even paid A TON of my medical bills from a freak accident at work. I know that last one seems like the bare minimum, but I was smoking weed in an illegal state at the time and both the owners knew it, they could have told me to try Worker's Comp and get fucked
They owned the pizza shop I worked at during COVID, and as a zoomer, working at that place was the first time I saw a true third spot. I literally helped someone propose with a heart made of toppings on a pizza once, this place meant so much to the people who frequented it. Part of my job during the pandemic was telling people that their friends from the restaurant died due to COVID. It was hard, but it was worth it to be at a place that meant so much to its patrons
I think some survivorship bias factors in. From what I hear, restaurants are enormously expensive to get off the ground and have a very high early failure rate as businesses but once they have survived for 3 or so years, management gets much easier and profit margins are able to grow.
Consequently, in my experience, successful restaurants are indeed run by local rich kulak assholes with McMansions and luxury cars who fuck off around the world for weeks at a time when they aren’t back at the store berating their workers.
Honestly I’m thinking about it and I think I am just channeling what I’ve heard from the restaurant tyrants I’ve met in regards to margins, but yea, they always seem to be able to mostly 1. Not work at all. 2. Take vacations. 3. Blow money on shit
Pizza is a lot different from the rest of the restaurant business. At the place I work, a 16 inch pepperoni pizza costs about $2.10 in ingredients to make. We sell it by the slice for $5, 7 slices on each pizza. The pizzeria is in an area of town with extraordinarily high rents, but still.
Wait, seven slices?! How does that work?
Well it's cut eight ways, but one of the slices is for the chef.
okay well that is a technique I am familiar with
yeah I don't know how you get seven slices otherwise
So, clearly, the chef gets their cut of every pizza!
At a restaurant, these folks are the who get paid:
There are multiple layers of this all down the supply chain. The owners and commercial landlords take directly from the business and from all its suppliers. Residential landlords, health insurance/costs, and large individual debts are paid by the workers, raising the cost of labor reproduction, appearing as labor costs.