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Seattle ZPizza closing due to minimum wage increase?

It is correct that the general public does not understand economics and do not understand business. People do not understand that the business owner must pay rent, utilities, insurance, debt service on equipment/fixtures, labor, repairs, spoilage and taxes and those costs must be included in the price of every item the business is selling. The general public does not really give a hoot about the profitability of a business. They only care about what it costs for the item and can they afford to pay the price being charged or do they go somewhere else to buy it or just do without it. If a business is not making a profit they will go out of business when they run out of money and the owner is deep in debit. Since the customer/general public does not care about the profitability of a business the business owner better have a grasp on the business. I think I would rather go broke sitting at home in my easy chair than work 100 hours a week earning $1.50 per hour, dealing with employees, landlords, suppliers, health departments, government agencies, banks and everyone else that would drive a sober person to the bottle.

I deal with business owners daily in my current business and when we talk about the economy and how they are doing with their business I am amazed of the number that say that they stay in business because their employees or family members depend on them for their livelihood. It is rare that I get a response like, I have a passion for this or I love what I am doing or I am making a killing. Never heard a business owner tell me that they love the sleepless nights worrying about how they will meet next weeks payroll or how much they enjoy working long hours and have not been on a vacation for 10 years. Never heard one say that they were so excited that they had to take out a 2nd mortgage to be able to keep their failing business afloat so that they could support their employees and their family members.

My wife and I own and operate a consulting business and do not have any employees. We make a nice living and are successful in what we do. I have been doing this for over 40 years and I am tired of it. I want a new challenge but I also want to be successful in it. If I cannot make a living wage, which is a heck of a lot over the minimum wage and turn a profit on my investment then I will not open a new business. My passion is making sausage and smoking meats. I want to use my smoked meats on pizza and to sell my smoked meats as stand alone products. I think I can be successful at it but I am still doing a lot of DD before I jump into it. If I have to work 100+ hours at $1.50 per hour to keep a shop open then I would see no reason to even open a shop and risk my investment. I would be better off going to work for a pizza shop or flipping burgers as an employee working for minimum wage and not have any headaches. Heck I could work at 3 pizza shops and put in 90 hours and make at least $6.00 an hour over the $1.50 an hour that I would be paying myself.

I think a business owner has earned the right to complain about the high cost of labor and the cost of doing business. A business owner has earned the right to complain about the long hours that they work and for the low wages that they pay themselves. They have earned the right to right to complain about how they are supporting all of the employees and family members that work in the business. I guess what I don’t understand is why do it if the owner is not making a decent wage and profit on investment? Perhaps I am getting to old and set in my ways to work for free when I could be fishing.
 
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this is refreshing to see so many like minded people when it comes to the hatred of the liberal agenda, and them not have any foresight as to what these policies will cause.

You want to see what 50 years of solid democratic leadership creates? It is NOT a utopian society, it is Detroit! That is their crown jewel of liberal policies!
I do not want the rest of this once great nation to be one huge stinking Detroit!
 
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I was reading about the UK and the problems they have- from an immigration standpoint- and somebody said “That’s what 40 years of unregulated immigration policy gets you”
Same here- from an immigration standpoint (though I don’t want to open that #10 can!) but more… regarding the above post… what we now have is the result of 50 years of "don’t work, don’t worry… just be happy and let the government (which is code for those of us that DO worry, DO work and AREN’T always happy) take care of you.
Saw a great sticker on a truck yesterday “Your FAIR SHARE is not in MY WALLET”
I would have mentioned that to my 25-35 year old employees but they are all on vacation- I’m 50 and this will be an 85 hour week. Next week, they’ll all be “beat” from their vacation and will need to “take it easy” Comical.
 
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Applebees has you paying at the table now as well. Pretty soon, they will do away with servers and just have drink and food runners.

People see others in business and assume they are making the big bucks. Here in Oregon, they want to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for everyone. Think of the impact that would have across the whole state not just in a large city like Seattle. Then, when other states do it, I think it would hurt our whole country and drive more businesses out of business.

I would like to open a food cart somewhere, but I will do my best to make it only a family business because I would not be able to afford to hire anyone.
 
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I had an employee a few years back that thought that every dollar that went in the register was “My” personal profit, He was in his young 20’s, and did not understand how business works.
He was developing an attitude problem over jealousy because of it.
I was unable to let him go due to no replacements readily available, so I sat him down with a pile of invoices, mortgage payments, insurance, licensing, and gross payroll payments.
It showed him how life really works as a business owner and temporarily cured his attitude problem plus he understood why I got so upset about waste through orders being done wrong.
He truly had no idea.
Heres a video for you, I am amazed at how many of the “Entitlement Generation” think like this.


This goober made the news in my state a few years back. He thought the restaurant owner should share profits equally with his staff. Even though they had made no sacrifices, they had not risked everything to get the business started,
 
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GotRocks said:
I had an employee a few years back that thought that every dollar that went in the register was “My” personal profit, He was in his young 20’s, and did not understand how business works.
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  1. We had a long term shift manager who occasionally received the food orders, counted and signed for them as well as had a good understanding of our labor costs. In one conversation he said he didn’t understand why we couldn’t do significant raises to all of the employees because by his calculations we were profiting 900K per year out of our store.
I was shocked at how clueless someone who had spent years in our business could be.
 
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paul7979 said:
  1. We had a long term shift manager who occasionally received the food orders, counted and signed for them as well as had a good understanding of our labor costs. In one conversation he said he didn’t understand why we couldn’t do significant raises to all of the employees because by his calculations we were profiting 900K per year out of our store.
I was shocked at how clueless someone who had spent years in our business could be.
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Wait - you mean you aren’t profiting $900,000/yr/store? 😉
 
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Wait - you mean you aren’t profiting $900,000/yr/store? 😉
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Not yet but after the email last night offering to buy 180 pizzas at full price, I’m on my way. I just need to figure out how to get these orders regularly. If I can them regularly enough, I think I will even be able to get a discount on sending their courier the prepaid fee via Western Union.
 
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Customers will often come in and say “Man, I see your cars all over the place” “Man, you must be raking it in” and so on.
I always reply: “Have you EVER… EVER… come in here and I’m not here?”
They always reply “Well, uh… no, now that you mention it”
Yeah… well, when I am “raking it in” you’ll know it because I won’t be here 85 hours/week.
 
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I went to Chili’s and saw that gizmo at the table- just awful.
But, I’m 50- in another few years there will be a generation of people who could not imagine a real server.
I have drivers who can’t make a delivery w/o programming it into their phone; too stupid to find their way home, I’m sure.
 
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Customers will often come in and say “Man, I see your cars all over the place” “Man, you must be raking it in” and so on.
I always reply: “Have you EVER… EVER… come in here and I’m not here?”
They always reply “Well, uh… no, now that you mention it”
Yeah… well, when I am “raking it in” you’ll know it because I won’t be here 85 hours/week.
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Yup, Don’t you just love that.
 
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the issue is behind that $6 increase is the state disability and employment taxes also increase, so you will see more than a $6 increase in costs beyond just what is viewed as a ‘small change’ when my husband explained how much it COSTS us to have even a part time employee, it makes our bottom line daily Retail Sales goals increase dramatically. three of us working as owners of the company, I wish we could just work 40 hrs a week like an employee does but ours is ‘sweat equity’ and tax benefits that can’t be measured in wages. We simply cannot afford even a part-time person year round!

Mind you we operate in a very rural town (the ONLY real pizza place in the entire county) and when tourism is gone, there are too many restaurants for all the locals to support thus lowering our monthly income quite signficantly. We have more restaurants per capita here in this rural place than in the next town an hour west of us with a similar population and the town an hour east with a population of 10,000 if we applied the same ratio would have over 150 restaurant, it has maybe about 24 eateries.

Our community is bracing for another major impact in economics with a major employer planning on cutting out of here in about 9 months…
 
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I still get people saying , “your out delivering?”

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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Assuming that the rules for tipped employees stayed the same, I would not need to raise my driver wages because they make over $15 with tips as it is. A bump to a minimum of $15 for cooks would mean $3 to $5 wage increases for them. Another question for me would be what do I need to pay my assistant managers and GM? They are already at or above those wages. If I have to give everyone a $4 per hour bump that would mean I need to raise prices about 25% to keep my % costs in line with where they currently are. I can’t see that working out well. Especially as our customers from out of town might not be seeing that at home and would have serious sticker shock.
 
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