Heartache: Worker Managed Restaurant Unexpectedly Fails

[BH]

Then they arguably did work. The alternative for most wasn't western/first world status but pre-industrial feudal poverty (and probably slave status under Nazi occupation by the 1950s). They lifted millions of dispossessed peasants out of abject poverty and educated them. Even when the Soviet Union fell apart, attempts to go capitalist begat gangster cronyism in which the average Russian was no better off or even worse off.

Explains why the West Germans built that bug wall to stop all of their citizens from defecting to the East.

Yes, but in honesty we had a great deal of people here in the US get up and leave for the Soviet Union back in the 30's. The problem is you have society and individuals within that society. You may have one person whom the system is better than alternative systems and then you may have an individual who will be worse off in that same system.

I really do not have much sympathy for East Germans who tried to cross the wall. An East German border guard explained that often the case they were people who were given high skilled training at a vocational school, a university, or a medical school in East Germany and those people signed a contract that in return for being given that education they would work in the East and make it a better country. When they get their diploma or degree they try to renege on the contract and flee to the West to get a job they could make even more money with. Of course the west didn't care about the contract being signed-it wanted to hurt the east any way it could.

That was wrong. Those people signed a contract and they should have honored it. No one would accept any excuse from me if I signed a loan from a bank here and then once I got the money ran off to South America and did not pay back what I agree to.

I am not saying be Marxist or anything but I think that in that particular case the East was right to keep such people leaving.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Then they arguably did work. The alternative for most wasn't western/first world status but pre-industrial feudal poverty (and probably slave status under Nazi occupation by the 1950s). They lifted millions of dispossessed peasants out of abject poverty and educated them. Even when the Soviet Union fell apart, attempts to go capitalist begat gangster cronyism in which the average Russian was no better off or even worse off.

Explains why the West Germans built that bug wall to stop all of their citizens from defecting to the East.

C'mon, I did say "for most". East Germany obviously wasn't an agrarian backwater in 1945 when it was basically given to Stalin to avoid a stand-off with the allies.

It explains why the US spent the rest of the century stopping third world countries trying to bootstrap themselves into the second world like the soviets did.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Restaurants are hard to do and fail a lot. Obviously, these people didn't do a good job at running their establishment, and paid the price.

 

[fast]

Since we're throwing in reasons for failure, can I throw in one too?

Clearly, teamwork was involved, and like many things where there's a trace of teamwork, failure of some sort looms nearby. What they needed were people (like Trump supporters) that value the ability of people to stand on their own two feet that know how to get things done, make it happen, and produce results. Only once all players are of such like mind can a true team shine above all else. See, a team (a true team--not just some run of the mill BS crap liberals refer to as teams) is stronger than even its weakest link when every member will stand tall in spite of the shortcomings of others. When you have your shit together, you will turn any situation into a success and do so despite the crap you work along side of worrying more about crap ass things like fairness and playing tit for tat. When you merely THINK you are apart of a team yet don't feel you can alone succeed, then your lack of winning attitude pretty much guarantees you're never gonna be a genuine team player with a clear understanding of how Trump will make America great again. And so, they failed, as could be expected.

 

[Juma]

Since we're throwing in reasons for failure, can I throw in one too?

Clearly, teamwork was involved, and like many things where there's a trace of teamwork, failure of some sort looms nearby. What they needed were people (like Trump supporters) that value the ability of people to stand on their own two feet that know how to get things done, make it happen, and produce results. Only once all players are of such like mind can a true team shine above all else. See, a team (a true team--not just some run of the mill BS crap liberals refer to as teams) is stronger than even its weakest link when every member will stand tall in spite of the shortcomings of others. When you have your shit together, you will turn any situation into a success and do so despite the crap you work along side of worrying more about crap ass things like fairness and playing tit for tat. When you merely THINK you are apart of a team yet don't feel you can alone succeed, then your lack of winning attitude pretty much guarantees you're never gonna be a genuine team player with a clear understanding of how Trump will make America great again. And so, they failed, as could be expected.

Trump? Trump supporters? WTF?

 

[Bomb#20]

Then they arguably did work. The alternative for most wasn't western/first world status but pre-industrial feudal poverty...

On what grounds do you claim that was the alternative? Are you proposing that the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Capitalism is terrible, because the workers are robbed of their production. It is absolutely wrong to put profit before people. If only the workers wrestled control away from the capitalist, everything will work out to theory.

A “Marxist” “collectivist” “worker-run” restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, closed its doors this week after customers complained that they could no longer tolerate the bizarre hours, high prices and long lines.

Damn. Why didn't this work out?

It didn't fail because of Marxism. One of London Soho's best Indian restaurants is run by a Marxist collective, and has since the 70'ies. I think this a kind of thing that restaurant owners keep quiet about.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Google Reviews:
4.3 / 5.0

Facebook:
4.6 / 5.0

Yelp:
4.1 / 5.0

From the article:

The owner, for his part, is admitting his mistake.

I thought this was worker-owned?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Google Reviews:
4.3 / 5.0

Facebook:
4.6 / 5.0

Yelp:
4.1 / 5.0

From the article:

The owner, for his part, is admitting his mistake.

I thought this was worker-owned?

It's stupid for more than one person to front it. That just means more than one takes the fall if it goes bad. Capitalist companies are either a corporation or fronted by one man. But even a corporation has a chairman. I don't know how they organised the ownership, but the system we have makes it idiotic to have more than one representative. That doesn't mean he didn't just represent what the cooperative agreed on.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Google Reviews:
4.3 / 5.0

Facebook:
4.6 / 5.0

Yelp:
4.1 / 5.0

From the article:


I thought this was worker-owned?

It's stupid for more than one person to front it. That just means more than one takes the fall if it goes bad. Capitalist companies are either a corporation or fronted by one man. But even a corporation has a chairman. I don't know how they organised the ownership, but the system we have makes it idiotic to have more than one representative. That doesn't mean he didn't just represent what the cooperative agreed on.

He made the business model himself and he was the owner. He also has two other businesses he is dumping and wants to spend time with the fam.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Explains why the West Germans built that bug wall to stop all of their citizens from defecting to the East.

Yes, but in honesty we had a great deal of people here in the US get up and leave for the Soviet Union back in the 30's. The problem is you have society and individuals within that society. You may have one person whom the system is better than alternative systems and then you may have an individual who will be worse off in that same system.

I really do not have much sympathy for East Germans who tried to cross the wall. An East German border guard explained that often the case they were people who were given high skilled training at a vocational school, a university, or a medical school in East Germany and those people signed a contract that in return for being given that education they would work in the East and make it a better country. When they get their diploma or degree they try to renege on the contract and flee to the West to get a job they could make even more money with. Of course the west didn't care about the contract being signed-it wanted to hurt the east any way it could.

That was wrong. Those people signed a contract and they should have honored it. No one would accept any excuse from me if I signed a loan from a bank here and then once I got the money ran off to South America and did not pay back what I agree to.

I am not saying be Marxist or anything but I think that in that particular case the East was right to keep such people leaving.

I disagree with that. If you want to keep talented people in your country, you give them incentives to stay. You don't imprison or murder them if they try to leave. Even untalented people had it worse in East Germany than the West - that's why there were no bread lines in West Germany and the poor had access to social services because the West and East Germans were constantly smuggling basic foodstuffs in from the West and the East was behind in life expectancy and pretty much every other demographic category than the West.

Communism doesn't work for the rich and intelligent and it doesn't work for the poor and stupid. It's a failed ideology on every level.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It's stupid for more than one person to front it. That just means more than one takes the fall if it goes bad. Capitalist companies are either a corporation or fronted by one man. But even a corporation has a chairman. I don't know how they organised the ownership, but the system we have makes it idiotic to have more than one representative. That doesn't mean he didn't just represent what the cooperative agreed on.

He made the business model himself and he was the owner. He also has two other businesses he is dumping and wants to spend time with the fam.

Still doesn't mean decisions weren't taken collectively. But having studied how Swedish socialist collective companies are run the socialist collective usually elect a leader, who in turn make undemocratic decisions. It seems to be the way to do it. Sweden has a whole bunch of very successful socialist collective companies who have been going strong for over a century.

 

[Trausti]

He made the business model himself and he was the owner. He also has two other businesses he is dumping and wants to spend time with the fam.

Still doesn't mean decisions weren't taken collectively. But having studied how Swedish socialist collective companies are run the socialist collective usually elect a leader, who in turn make undemocratic decisions. It seems to be the way to do it. Sweden has a whole bunch of very successful socialist collective companies who have been going strong for over a century.

That's the take, I think. In the US, we have ostensibly collective corporate forms: Limited Liability Companies, Partnerships, etc. But even with these entities, there is usually a managing member of the LLC or managing partner. I guess I give kudos to the folks in the article for attempting to put their political beliefs into practice; but as my favorite demotivator says:

 

[Jarhyn]

Still doesn't mean decisions weren't taken collectively. But having studied how Swedish socialist collective companies are run the socialist collective usually elect a leader, who in turn make undemocratic decisions. It seems to be the way to do it. Sweden has a whole bunch of very successful socialist collective companies who have been going strong for over a century.

That's the take, I think. In the US, we have ostensibly collective corporate forms: Limited Liability Companies, Partnerships, etc. But even with these entities, there is usually a managing member of the LLC or managing partner. I guess I give kudos to the folks in the article for attempting to put their political beliefs into practice; but as my favorite demotivator says:

I'm just going to point out for a second time that the entire argument being made here is a non-starter. It is plainly and simply suffering from Selection Bias.

In my city alone I know of two almost identically structured restaurants that are doing just fine, which have been around for years, and which show no signs of going anywhere. In fact, they have succeeded more rigorously than many other places in the area.

The failure of the restaurant in the OP was likely not driven by their business model and is more likely than not driven, instead, by their location and/or menu choices. The fact is, people willing to spend money on having others cook, clean, and provision for them generally want to eat meat (a menu option available at Seward Cafe), or want to drink booze (also an option at Seward cafe) or at least not have to walk very far from their campus, because they are hipsters who are into (and haven't yet grown out of) the whole vegan/vegetarian thing.

I don't know what the problem in the OP location was. Perhaps it was their hours (I'll even take your word that their hours were 'bizarre'), or perhaps they weren't close enough to a college, or perhaps it was their menu. I doubt it was their financial model.