Hey, so you know how classists are always arguing that the demands of Strike For 15 are unreasonable because any restaurant that paid its employees a living wage would surely go out of business? Yeah, turns out — shockingly — that’s complete bullshit.
Via NPR, Detroit’s Moo Cluck Moo pays its employees a fair wage and always has; back when they opened their first location in 2012, they paid $12/hour, and that’s gone up since then to the $15 mark. Its burgers are also $6 and use actual quality beef rather than possum kidneys or whatever the fuck is in a McDouble, so we’re also talking about a quality product for not that much money (for reference, a Big Mac is $4.80). Let’s also note that this restaurant is in Detroit and not San Francisco or New York — if this can work in Detroit, it can work in any city in the country.
While the company isn’t making multinational profits, it’s still profitable enough that co-founder Brian Parker reports that he has further expansion plans. We could talk a lot more about why fast food companies have more difficulty with this than places like Moo Cluck Moo (in large part, this is due to franchising being a massive scam that benefits only the parent company), but next time someone tells you $15/hour wages for food service employees couldn’t possibly work, feel free to remind them that there are already restaurants proving them wrong.
December 12, 2014 5:57 AM
