[ryana]

They were nice enough to provide some numbers, so I tried to figure out what's going on with Borderlands.

First thing, they say that a move from $10.74 to $15.00/hr will cost them $28,000 (from +$3k to -$25k), which implies they're paying over 6,000 hours worth of hourly labor.

Another option to make up that $28k would be to increase sales by 20%, which means their current annual gross margin is somewhere around $150k.

"[R]ent, payroll, and credit card processing represent 68% of all [their] expenses" and since they're basically breakeven let's say that merchandise costs are 30% with 2% miscellaneous costs (utility bills, etc).

So their gross margin is probably something around 65% as CC fees should never be more than 5% and merch is around 30%.

With $150k of gross margin at 65%, it looks like this store, employing 3 FTEs worth of part-time labor, is grossing about $225,000 per year.

If the average book in that store costs $15 (they say they're limited on what they can charge based on the sticker price, so this may even be low) they're staffing 3 people in the store at all times, all year round, to sell 42 books per day.

I think I found why you're having to pay yourselves out of the cafe money, sirs.