We can run the experiment a million times, and liberals will still refuse to accept that economic laws are every bit as real as the law of gravity until they’re personally mugged by reality … and even that’s no guarantee they’ll wake up.
The Boston Globe reports that Dudley Dough, a pizzeria in Roxbury, Massachusetts, will be closing its doors at the end of the year, not too long after its launch in 2015.
It seems that no matter how warm and fuzzy the parlor’s stated mission as a “fair wage” business made the socially-conscious lefties in the community feel, it was no substitute for the simple fact that an “economic justice” business plan isn’t enough to break even.
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“I don’t think anyone is looking at it as a failure,” said Luther Pinckney, a team leader at Dudley Dough, which is in the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building. “It’s an experiment, and some very good things came out of that, such as skill-building for staff and being in this building at this time of gentrification and change in this community.”
Pitched as “pizza with purpose,” the restaurant offered above-average pay as well as culinary and leadership training […]
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The challenge for Dudley Dough was to support itself, Broderick said. An offshoot of the Haley House, a Boston organization that provides food and housing to low-income residents, the pizza shop attempted to put a social enterprise model into action.
But after an analysis of the business’s operations and trends, the board determined that Haley House could not continue to subsidize the pizza shop without putting in peril its own efforts. Three other restaurants opened in the area around the same time as Dudley Dough and are still operating.
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Last year, Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, donated $100,000 to Haley House, specifically for Dudley Dough. Despite the board’s decision, Broderick said, a “significant effort” is being made to support the staff at the shop as they transition to new jobs.
Apparently the “good things” to come out of this experiment (which somehow isn’t a failure despite failing to, y’know, keep existing) don’t include learning any lessons about supply and demand, or taking away any ramifications for their broader policy prescriptions.
At Hot Air, Jazz Shaw explains what this should have taught them:
Labor costs are a major driver in the business model of any such operation. Once you’ve accounted for the standard expenses of kitchen equipment, ingredients, utilities and the cost of your site (which are fairly standardized), labor costs may turn out to be the margin of error which makes or breaks you in terms of profitability and controlling your prices. Everyone in the neighborhood may love your social justice oriented, woke attitude, but if your pizza costs three bucks a slice when everyone else is selling them for two, you’re not going to last long.
While there’s an undeniable amount of schadenfreude to be had whenever liberals’ delusions blow up in their faces, there’s nothing amusing about the fact that most of Dudley Dough’s personnel and customers will go on to force these very same job-killing practices on other workers and businesses without the slightest regard for how mandating higher wages in the short term means zero wages in the long term.
