When I explain surplus value to people, I use the example of a Starbucks. You’re working for $15/hr, selling hundreds of $5 drinks per hour, the surplus value covers the other costs like rent and supplies, but, as most investor-facing documents will lay out, that $15/hr/person is the largest expsense. So, fudging numbers here, you sell 50 drinks at $5 each, that’s $250-15-15 for labor and other costs, so $220/hr getting taken from the workers and sent to the owners.

So, even if a) I’m wildly off with the numbers, which makes perfect sense because I made them up and b) startup capital is hard to come by if you aren’t already rich, the existence of profit from seemingly simple businesses like a standalone coffee shop should be something workers can organize and replicate without much involvement from capital. So, why don’t we? Is it that we all have been propagandaized to want the surplus value for ourselves?

  • @freagle@lemmygrad.ml
    11•2 years ago

    Singular coffee shops are incredibly difficult to run profitably. You need economies of scale to make it work. Starbucks buys coffee way cheaper than a small co-op could, same with cups and every other consumable.

    Then you’ve got startup capital which is way higher for a new co-op than to open just one more Starbucks because the machines are bought at scale, the IT is centralized, and a bunch of other shared services are leveraged across the corporation.

    Finally, sales volume will be way lower for a co-op coffee shop than for Starbucks because a) marketing and b) variety. It takes a lot of investment to have all of the ingredients and equipment you would need to make the same number of drinks that Starbucks makes. Without that variety, you get many fewer customers and therefore many fewer sales.

    I’ve looked at the finances of a local independent coffee shop before. It’s not pretty. They struggle hard unless there’s some other factor involved like they own the building they operate in or they operate in a historic district where Starbucks is not allowed to operate or whatever.