Target has pointed out in the past that its biggest single line item expense (other than inventory)isn't wages, isn't benefits, but is credit card fees.

ButterflyEffect and I had drinks at a bar in Seattle last year that had a sign on the wall that said something like "prices include a 15% surcharge to provide our servers a $15/hour living wage." It made the math pretty simple: tip nominally as your server is no longer living off tips.

I'd be curious as to cgod's thoughts. He's in a retail reality that I happily will never inhabit. I did an episode of Bar Rescue where Tapper was saying things like

"You've got two thousand dollars a month in rent." (check!)

"You're a quarter million dollars in debt." (likely to be check!)

"You've got 30,000 cars a day in front of this business." (We've got closer to 50k)

"Isn't that suffocating?"

That's when I realized these poor sonsobitches needed to make their nut one order of buffalo wings at a time... rather than needing to make two four-thousand-dollar sales a month. I said some likely dumb shit about coffee back before cgod opened a shop; I'm curious how dumb my shit actually was.