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South Boston restaurant owner tries to keep workers afloat through GoFundMe, T-shirt sales

WBZ talks to Mike Shaw, owner of Loco Taqueria.

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Does he expect to sell at a greater than 100% markup?

He could have just given his employees the cash instead of paying to have shirts printed...but that wouldn't appear to support his preferred agenda of seeking attention.

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Cash is a weird concept when you're trying to expand your restaurant empire while simultaneously making a lot of noise about your employees suffering the effects of the epidemic, all the while you're still open for business and pushing for easing on restrictions.

From a business perspective it doesn't make any sense to keep at-will employees afloat when you're banking on opening yet another bar. A public relations campaign where you appear as the benevolent organizer of selling your merch and gift cards as a way to support your $5.55/hr staff is a much better approach. After all, you're going to be remembered at the selfless bar owner fighting the man while absolutely nobody is going to remember the staff.

And that makes perfect business sense, because what we're talking about here when we discuss the various actions of local bar and restaurant owners. It's not about employee retention during the worst downturn since Prohibition, it's about them fighting to protect their businesses for the future, not some social experiment where everyone else supports their business model. Because that would be socialism.

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He's probably not spending anything on shirts. If you go to the base URL for the shirt site, it looks like one of those services that prints up shirts on demand and then gives you a cut of the sales (it's the same way I sell Universal Hub stuff, only hopefully he's bringing in more income).

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While you were eating microwave lasagna on your couch alone, his restaurant(through "seeking attention") has raised $150k+ to support his staff. The t shirts are not the major source of revenue for the fund.

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I was responsibly saving my money for when I might need it later in life.

He's not doing me a favor by selling me lasagna, I'm doing him a favor by buying it from him.

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“The fund has raised more than $150,000 in just four days“

To keep some restaurant owner and his business afloat!

Too bad that amount of money couldn’t be raised in 4 days to support food banks, shelters, etc.

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I wonder if this dope is still donating money to the politicians that have caused him to lose his business.

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I do pity him. Sorry to see that he learned the hard way that government is not his friend.

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But don’t feel bad for him. The 3 restaurants on or near West Broadway have long been overcrowded pre and during the pandemic. When the city was foolish enough to allow him to take space on the streets and sidewalk he was doing a booming business. All the establishments are bars disguised as restaurants. They always sold more drinks than food.

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