
Save Forbidden Planet NYC - samizdis
https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/24/slicey-boi/#union-square
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dangus
The whole “donate to local business” trend is perplexing to me.

I know some folks who are collecting donations for local bars in the area. It
sounds noble right?

But then think of the reverse of this situation. Let’s say times are good for
the bar and I lose my job, as a loyal regular at my favorite bar. Will they
pour me drinks and serve me food for free until I get back on my feet?

Nope! They sure won’t. Maybe I’ll get _one_ on the house? But that’s about it.

Ultimately, it’s not our responsibility as customers, and it’s not even
remotely practical, to make sure everyone surrounding us has planned for
fiscal emergencies. Nobody’s donating to my savings account to support my
three to six month emergency that every financial expert recommends. Why is
this different for small businesses?

Why can’t these businesses hang on for a few months when they’ve now got zero
payroll and likely have a lot of leeway with their landlords and mortgage
lenders? (I’m not saying it’s easy)

A small business without that basic emergency fund is going to inevitably go
out of business, isn’t it? COVID-19 just accelerated the process.

And much as I don’t like the big chain stores taking over the cool hip trendy
local weirdness, I also think there’s a very clear demand for that sort of
thing. The corporate scapegoats outlined in the article weren’t really
responsible for any of this, they’re just sort of thrown in as an emotional
appeal.

And the whole idea of “these stores used to be everywhere, now they’re a dying
breed” emotional appeal should apply equally to Sears and Macy’s right? Should
I donate to them as well?

~~~
ykdxq2ke47ebuqi
Are you willing to pay 2-3x for your drinks at the local bar? If not, there's
your reason why they don't have 2-3 months’s cash stockpiled.

I own minority shares of several restaurants. I have zero management control,
roughly 1% equity in each restaurant. But I get full insight into their books,
revenues, costs. All three are profitable, each returned my capital investment
in under two years, each pays me roughly 20% return every year on my
investment.

Each has (well, had) about 6 weeks' cash on hand at the start of the shutdown
here in mid–March. Each had a line of credit good for roughly another month
(in theory). But in practice the LOC is used to balance out month–to–month
expenses and revenues. Some months the liquor has increased 5% over last month
for no apparent reason and no, you don't have much leeway to renegotiate as
there's only two distributors in the area. So the LOC has already been tapped,
not necessarily maxed out.

Oh, and funny thing, banks have been trimming LOC limits to whatever you've
drawn already. If you had a $15000 LOC limit in February which you'd drawn
$5000 on for expenses, your bank trimmed the limit to $5000 in March.

Each restaurant in a typical month breaks even the third week of the month and
is profitable the last week of the month. In reality they lose money for a
couple of months of the year but that's balanced by higher profits other
months of the year.

In normal business times it all balances out.

Right now isn't normal. Employees are demanding to continue getting paid,
vendors demand to get paid, the landlord wants his damn rent, and all of the
cities which are demanding that you pay your employees and not lay anyone off?
Yeah, they're demanding that you pay your various taxes.

And there's no revenue. None. You try take out and lose money every night
because not enough people are buying alcohol (which is where you get your
profit on an average night). You don't want to go down the Grubhub/Seamless
route because of the vig they demand.

So you close your doors "temporarily".

There's no "unemployment insurance" for businesses. There's business
interruption insurance, but, surprise, insurance companies are slow walking
responding to and validating claims (and AFAICT they've rejected all claims
for these restaurants and anecdotally none of the other small businesses I
know have been able to get any insurance payments).

So…everyone's demanding money, no one's paying. You can either try these
gofundmes, or close.

In my case all of the restaurants are planning to fire employees, sell off
inventory, and close. They ran numbers about recapitalizing but since there's
no clarity on when restaurants can return to normal (and I mean truly normal,
not 50% seating reduction, because that doesn't work unless you can increase
prices by 50% or more) — without clarity on how long this continues, it's more
pragmatic to conserve cash, close the business, and reopen if/when normalcy
returns.

~~~
dangus
Like I said, it’s all been exposed as the house of cards that it is. Your
enlightening information on the way the restaurant industry works doesn’t
really make that mode of operation sound very good.

And like you said, your investment as an owner has returned 20% every year.
Where does that go? Those kinds of returns are unheard of if I were to stick
that money in an index fund.

So, business owners want to have their cake and eat it too - they want the
reward (20% return on investment yearly) without the risk. The business
closing is the risk.

Which goes back to my original point, which you didn’t address: why does any
of this situation make it in the customer’s interest to spend their own cash
on protecting someone else’s for-profit business? Will the customer get a
slice of that 20% yearly return on investment?

Literally donating to your boss is now being seen as a noble pursuit.

As a household it’d be completely insane to operate on a six week runway -
though I realize that potentially _most_ Americans do. Still, those Americans
have unemployment insurance and they have the ability to take up other jobs.

Maybe some more restaurant owners will figure out that basing profit solely on
alcohol and running on lines of credit was a bad idea in the first place.
Maybe restaurant prices will go up. Maybe restaurant prices are set too low in
the first place - because more restaurants exist than need to. Most people are
better off cooking food and making their own drinks - to answer your question
on whether I’d pay two or theee times more for my drinks at the bar: I was
pretty sure that’s what I was already doing when I went to the bar.

~~~
ykdxq2ke47ebuqi
It's all economics. Restaurants only exist because there's a market for them.
The customer gets the product they pay for. If the market goes away (as it
has), the businesses will go away. If people are willing to pay more, then
some sort of business will return to fulfill that market.

And…this is capitalism. You seem to think capitalism should be something
different. At its base, capitalism is I provide a product or service that you
want, and it's cheaper (from your perspective) to buy it from me than build it
/ raise it/ create it / whatever yourself. We've been conned into believing
capitalism is entirely something else, it's stocks and bonds, and going public
and creating third order derivatives to shift risk onto some unsuspecting
entity seeking higher returns.

20% return sounds awesome, right? It's about $1000 a year. The entire
capitalization of a given restaurant (of the size/style I invest in) is about
US$350,000. That's enough to rent, build out, and equip the space, pay for all
the various fees, hire the initial crew and initial marketing. If they're
successful they start paying back the investment in about a year. IF they're
not successful 1) I lose the money (that's the risk) and 2) they typically
fail fast, within 60-90 days of opening.

I had one restaurant that opened to great fanfare mid–2012. In October it was
flooded due to hurricane Sandy. It never reopened. Another six months it would
have been on better footing, but that first year you're upside down in debt
and the insurance companies know that if they drag their feet long enough the
business will be forced into bankruptcy by creditors who will settle for a
meager distribution from insurance.

I mostly know about restaurants and software companies and…while software
companies have more flexibility right now, I don't know of any small company
that just hoards a ton of cash as a routine business practice. Your investors
will demand that it get distributed as part of regular dividends or a special
dividend. If you're public a “shareholder activist" will buy the minimum
amount of shares necessary to make a shareholder action to divest the cash or
replace management.

The entirety of small business in the US is you raise some money some how, you
open the business, you pay off your debts and investors, and enjoy the profits
(if any) or you close. If you (again, as a small business, and not someone
with access to capital markets) were to bank 60-90-120 days of operating cash
and your creditors or investors learned that, you'll be turfed out of your
company, or lose access to credit and investment, or a combination of both.

And to your point: you're right, the customers could (and likely will) let the
businesses fail. And then they'll blog and whine about how "My City has
Changed!" and why are all restaurants now variations on Taco Bell.

Honestly, I don't see any of the restaurants I'm invested in reopening. I'll
be out roughly US$50k. About 180 employees will be out of jobs. And it's not
because no one donated to their gofundmes, I just don't think it's a viable
business in a Covid-19 world.

I think there will be some sort of restaurant experience post Covid, but it'll
be split between low end fast food take out/delivery and high end ($100/pp or
more plus drinks). Barring widespread testing and/or a vaccine, the local
diner, restaurant, hipster mayonnaise fetish joint, is dead.

~~~
ykdxq2ke47ebuqi
I mean, you seem to be taking the position that all should have prepared for
the extremely unlikely scenario that the entire economy of a region would shut
down for weeks if not months at a time, and if businesses failed to prepare
for that then they deserve to close. And that's fine and all, but that's 100%
contrary to the standard way small businesses in the US have operated. Any
business hoarding cash for such an unlikely scenario would be relieved of that
hoard of cash through one absolutely legal method or another, it's the
American way.

|reply tagged to my own post by mistake.

~~~
dangus
No, I’m not taking the position that any business deserves to close due to an
extreme scenario. My position is that it’s absolutely normal for the business
owner to shoulder that risk - 1/5 of small businesses fail in the first five
years, right? So the whole idea of donating money to save a business is a
illogical when they are expected to fail.

I’m very simply taking the position that donating to for-profit businesses is
almost never a noble cause, even if it is a “mom and pop,” and that I’m
confused why people are doing this when they should be more worried about
their own finances, worried about their own job security, etc. With all
respect to you, I think your responses are just taking us down a lot of
tangents to my original point (I’ve admittedly followed you down that rabbit
hole). I can’t find in your responses where you directly address why someone
should donate to a for-profit business, especially when these donation funds
are often managed by the owner.

The root question is this: why should an individual donate to any particular
small business at this time? How would donations have any chance of rescuing a
business compared to a fully operational business? Why would anyone donate to
the business ownership class over something like a local food bank or even
just directly giving money to their unemployed friends and family?

And despite your explanations of how the restaurant industry works, I still
don’t think the story adds up. I don’t think the city is knocking down doors
for tax money. Businesses don’t pay taxes on losses. I don’t think commercial
landlords expect to get paid right now and I don’t think they’re evicting just
yet when there’s no business to replace the evicted. They have incentive to
negotiate. I don’t think restaurants have to pay suppliers for supplies they
aren’t getting. And they certainly don’t have any obligation to pay their 100%
hourly tip-supported staff.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
False dichotomy: you can do both of course.

And in my state, a food producing state, the food banks sell off their excess
inventory to anybody willing to pay dime on the dollar (Scout events,
festivals etc) because cash is more useful to them.

Never mind noble; it can be selfish to wish a favorite restaurant stays in
business. Discretionary income is exactly that, to be spent at your own
discretion.

We could all quit restaurants entirely and spend every waking moment
collecting and donating to food banks etc. But we don't. It's not essentially
different from the previous comment (false dichotomy) to say that. And of
course we don't do either one.

~~~
dangus
The food bank thing is just an example. It’s an example of something worth
donating to: a non-profit charity organization that can redirect funds to help
people in some way.

So yes, you can do both things. You can donate to whatever you want.

My whole argument here is that donating to a for-profit business is never
noble and never logical. If you give money to a for-profit entity you should
either receive a product, service, or ownership stake in return.

Again, my whole argument is that this crisis has made many people in an act of
group-think start considering donating to _for profit_ entities, especially
ones that frequently churn in the first place, to be a desirable action. It’s
not, full stop. Nobody should do it.

Another example: my gym has an option to continue paying dues to support their
“employee relief fund.” But the owners of the gym administer this fund. How do
I know it won’t be used for profit? It’s not a 503(c) organization. The owners
could just keep 90% of it and give 10% to the employees and that would be
perfectly legal.

So it’s the same thing with all of these hastily-arranged informal
restaurant/bar donation funds. There’s no oversight, there’s often not even an
official organization that’s behind them.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I patronize three small mon-and-pop restaurants. I'm supporting my neighbors.
Where does that fit in this utilitarian view?

~~~
dangus
It completely fits in.

You wouldn't patronize your mom-and-pop restaurants if they burned your food
or charged $30 for a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. You also say the word
"patronize" which means you receive a service or good in return for your
payment.

