RADIOJanuary 09, 2024

How a $15 minimum wage led to a $16 BLT

Is $16 a ridiculous price to pay for a BLT sandwich? In today's crazy market, maybe not. Entrepreneur Brian Will believes it all traces back to the $15 minimum wage craze. Progressives promised that the increase would help people afford the basics of life. But in reality, it has just driven up prices, especially for small businesses. Brian Will joins Glenn to explain how this, plus the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other economic issues have driven up the price of everything from rent to insurance. Now, he tells Glenn that his restaurants have to sell 93,000 sandwiches just to break even and he reveals the shockingly small profit that the restaurants make on every $16 BLT.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You've gone into restaurants lately, and you've been shocked at the price of anything. Soups, sandwiches. To steak. Anything.

You can fall into, what's going on, this is a scam!

How can a BLT be 16 bucks?

We wanted to get Brian Will on. He's a serial entrepreneur, two-time Wall Street Journal best-selling author.

Leading consultant in business and sales management. He's founded seven different companies across four distinct industries. He is currently the head of a chain of restaurants.

And they are the Derby Sports Bar. Cantina Loca. The Tavern House in Central City Tavern. You might have one in your town.

He's also in his spare time a member of the city council in the town of Alpharetta, Georgia.

Hope we have time to talk about that a little bit.

But he was just on talking about the price of a BLT on Barney & Company.

And everyone on my staff, Brian, found that fascinating, on how you broke that down. How are you doing, Brian?

BRIAN: I'm good, Glenn. Thanks for having me. This is awesome.

GLENN: So can you break this down, why should we look at the price of $16 for a BLT, and say, okay. I understand it, it's reasonable.

BRIAN: Yeah. This whole conversation, Glenn, started with a friend of mine. Who sent me this text, when he was sitting with my restaurant saying, hey, Brian, I'm sitting here eating your BLT at $16. You know it's only bacon, lettuce, tomato, and bread.

And I said, you know, Dan, let me break this down for you. I want to give you some perspective.

That sandwich might cost $16, but we've got $20,000 of rent in that building.

We've got $6,000 in utility. We have $60,000 of payroll. And then we have our general office expenses, that all have to get paid for out of the gross profit margin in that sandwich.

And so we actually did a breakdown for that, if you would like to hear this little breakdown.

GLENN: I do. I do.

BRIAN: That $16 sandwich has about $5 of actual food costs. Which leaves about $11 of gross profit.

But out of that 11, two dollars of that, goes towards rent and utilities. $2.50 goes towards what we call our fixed operational expenses like the TVs and the music and the mats and the towels and all that stuff.

Labor can make that sandwich, $4.50.

Which only leaves me a profit of $2.

So a 16 dollar sandwich, I have $2 of actual net profit that I get to keep, unless or until something breaks or something goes wrong. That's my gross potential net profit.

GLENN: So how many BLTs do you have to sell to be able to keep your doors open?

BRIAN: Yeah, so I was laughing about that. If you take our $86,000 a month in general expenses, figure in a 30 percent food cost, we have to sell 93,000 sandwiches a year to get to zero.

Every restaurant has a break even point, the break even point in that restaurant is about 1.5 million a year. So if I do 1,499,000 in revenue, I lose a thousand bucks.

Everything above 1.5, we can make a profit margin on. But if you never get to the 1.5, you're just spinning your wheels.

GLENN: So what has changed?

I mean, it's not just the price of food, is it?

BRIAN: No. Food has gone up.

But our biggest increase in expenses has been labor.

If you remember, obviously, when COVID hit. Everybody is getting all these extended unemployment benefits.

When we came out of COVID. And tried to bring people back. They didn't want to go back to work.

So we went to a $15 minimum, and that's for kids coming out of high school. And this was three years ago. That's now jumped up to about 16.50. So I have people, with zero experience, 18 years old. Come to work for me, and we start them out at $33,000.

But for now, 60,000 -- our managers are now 70 to 80,000.

So if you look at my restaurant, three years ago. We were paying 500,000 for labor.

On 2.9 million of revenue. Today, we pay 650,000 for labor.

On 2.5 million of revenue. My revenue is down 350. My labor is up 150.

And that's why we have to keep driving the price of these things up.

Everyone wants to get paid. They want a big salary. They want a living wage. But all that does is drive everything up. At some point, we still have to make a profit.

GLENN: Right. This is what happened in Seattle, except they did it by choice.

When Seattle raised the minimum wage. I don't remember what it was. I think it was 15 or $16 an hour.

All the restaurants said, we can't afford this.

And a lot of them left, closed shop, and left Seattle.

Some of them stayed. And some of them just went out of business because of it.

But that's not the only cost.

You have food going up. You have labor going up. You have rent --

BRIAN: Utilities went up 40 percent.
Just our gas and electric. Right? Our insurance went up 40 percent. Everything is -- I mean, the whole supply chain from us down, everybody's cost goes up in that compound.

GLENN: Wait. Why did insurance go up 40 percent?

BRIAN: Because they can. I mean, I don't -- is that a question?

Because you have no choice, but to buy it. Because if you don't buy it, you can't stay in business.

So it goes up, you know. It's crazy how much costs have gone up.

GLENN: So how do you see us weathering this?

BRIAN: You know, business is interesting. I have a picture in my office of a guy on a tight rope. And he's got that big long bar, right? That goes on both sides.

I always say, we have to balance. Business owners are on this tightrope. You have to balance what you can charge on one end. With what the consumers are willing to pay on the other. So long as you can keep that balance. You can stay on the tightrope and stay in business.

But if you charge too much, they stop coming. You fall off.

If you don't charge enough, you get more business at a loss. You go out of business.

So there's always a balance. And in our case, we made sure we put our locations in, in what we call high traffic areas.

So we're getting organic traffic running around our restaurants. Which helps us drastically. But you look at these small operators, that are out there fighting all these costs. That don't have that organic type of traffic.

And that's why they're going under.

GLENN: I mean, you're a serial entrepreneur.

What do you hear from entrepreneurs, that are just beginning today? I mean, it's -- it's a completely different world. Can you make it?

BRIAN: It is. It's a different world in a lot of ways. And I actually do a lot of sales and management training.

And one of the other things we know. In today's environment. Is there's so much information online. That people can research almost anything before they ever walk in your door.

And they already know what your competition is charging.

They already know what they should be paying. And, so again, you're back to this balance of you either need to create something extremely unique, that will drive people in, and make them want to buy from you, or your chances of success are diminished greatly.

So I call COVID the great washout, Glenn.

All the weak operators in Houston, to be able to make it, because we were in a booming economy.

When COVID hit, it just washed out all those weak operators, and only left the ones that are strong.

Now, you've got people coming in behind us, and trying to come in and undercut. But all they will do is lose all their money, and go out of business, and hurt the rest of us.

It's an interesting time to be in business.

GLENN: But if you were a true entrepreneur, it washed out of a lot of people who were just -- you know, my dad used to have his own bakery. That is hard keeping that afloat.

You know, a one little, one-man shop in whatever you're doing.

And food is the worst at that. It wiped out a lot of people who were just working for themselves.

BRIAN: Yeah. Yeah. Just working for themselves, and only making enough money to live on. And most people got washed out, didn't have any financial security behind them, savings.

You know, they just weren't able to weather that bump, which is one of the things I teach entrepreneurs today.

Is you better have enough security behind you, that if the next COVID comes along or something weird happens, you won't get wiped out, at the drop of a hat.

We make up 150 people a day, in March of 2020. It was -- it was a horrible day.

GLENN: Wow. Your thoughts of what's coming in 2024? Any insight in --

BRIAN: Yeah. I've had this question a good bit. And I have friends in the MNA field. And I see everybody waiting to see what will happen with this election. We just don't know what will happen.

I think if Biden gets elected again. He doesn't have to worry about getting reelected.

So who knows what will happen, you know, with the people pulling the strings up there in Washington, and what they're going to do.

So I think we're at a tenuous time right now, particularly in small business. So we need to be very careful.

And we need to be keeping some powder dry, to keep us safe, just in case something else pops up.

GLENN: If Donald Trump were to be elected, he doesn't go to jail.

And the left doesn't set the country on fire. Better or worse for business?

BRIAN: If he can start taking some of these regulations away. If he can start making it easier for us to get those interest rates back down.

I mean, the other issue we have, and I love this topic. I did a video on it the other day about inflation.

Inflation will affect us forever. Right?

We had a 5 percent. We had an 8 percent.

Even if it's 3 percent, that doesn't mean prices are going down.

That just means they compound.

They're never going back down.

Maybe they won't go up as much, but they're not going back down.

People are very confused on how that works.

But if we can get the economy booming again, where people aren't afraid to spend their money. And they aren't hoarding it, trying to wait to see what will happen. Then people will go out. Have fun. And spend more money. And I think we will be okay. It just takes a little time.

GLENN: Yeah. Brian, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

BRIAN: Glenn, I thank you for having me.

GLENN: Brian Will.

Shocking train video: Passengers wait while woman bleeds out

Surveillance footage of the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte, NC, reveals that the other passengers on the train took a long time to help her. Glenn, Stu, and Jason debate whether they were right or wrong to do so.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm -- I'm torn on how I feel about the people on the train.

Because my first instinct is, they did nothing! They did nothing! Then my -- well, sit down and, you know -- you know, you're going to be judged. So be careful on judging others.

What would I have done? What would I want my wife to do in that situation?

STU: Yeah. Are those two different questions, by the way.

GLENN: Yeah, they are.

STU: I think they go far apart from each other. What would I want myself to do. I mean, it's tough to put yourself in a situation. It's very easy to watch a video on the internet and talk about your heroism. Everybody can do that very easily on Twitter. And everybody is.

You know, when you're in a vehicle that doesn't have an exit with a guy who just murdered somebody in front of you, and has a dripping blood off of a knife that's standing 10 feet away from you, 15 feet away from you.

There's probably a different standard there, that we should all kind of consider. And maybe give a little grace to what I saw at least was a woman, sitting across the -- the -- the aisle.

I think there is a difference there. But when you talk about that question. Those two questions are definitive.

You know, I know what I would want myself to do. I would hope I would act in a way that didn't completely embarrass myself afterward.

But I also think, when I'm thinking of my wife. My advice to my wife would not be to jump into the middle of that situation at all costs. She might do that anyway. She actually is a heck of a lot stronger than I am.

But she might do it anyway.

GLENN: How pathetic, but how true.

STU: Yes. But that would not be my advice to her.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

STU: Now, maybe once the guy has certainly -- is out of the area. And you don't think the moment you step into that situation. He will turn around and kill you too. Then, of course, obviously. Anything you can do to step in.

Not that there was much anyone on the train could do.

I mean, I don't think there was an outcome change, no matter what anyone on that train did.

Unfortunately.

But would I want her to step in?

Of course. If she felt she was safe, yes.

Think about, you said, your wife. Think about your daughter. Your daughter is on that train, just watching someone else getting murdered like that. Would you advise your daughter to jump into a situation like that?

That girl sitting across the aisle was somebody's daughter. I don't know, man.

JASON: I would. You know, as a dad, would I advise.

Hmm. No.

As a human being, would I hope that my daughter or my wife or that I would get up and at least comfort that woman while she's dying on the floor of a train?

Yeah.

I would hope that my daughter, my son, that I would -- and, you know, I have more confidence in my son or daughter or my wife doing something courageous more than I would.

But, you know, I think I have a more realistic picture of myself than anybody else.

And I'm not sure that -- I'm not sure what I would do in that situation. I know what I would hope I would do. But I also know what I fear I would do. But I would have hoped that I would have gotten up and at least tried to help her. You know, help her up off the floor. At least be there with her, as she's seeing her life, you know, spill out in under a minute.

And that's it other thing we have to keep in mind. This all happened so rapidly.

A minute is -- will seem like a very long period of time in that situation. But it's a very short period of time in real life.

STU: Yeah. You watch the video, Glenn. You know, I don't need the video to -- to change my -- my position on this.

But at his seem like there was a -- someone who did get there, eventually, to help, right? I saw someone seemingly trying to put pressure on her neck.

GLENN: Yeah. And tried to give her CPR.

STU: You know, no hope at that point. How long of a time period would you say that was?

Do you know off the top of your head?

GLENN: I don't know. I don't know. I know that we watched the video that I saw. I haven't seen past 30 seconds after she --

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: -- is down. And, you know, for 30 seconds nothing is happening. You know, that is -- that is not a very long period of time.

STU: Right.

GLENN: In reality.

STU: And especially, I saw the pace he was walking. He certainly can't be -- you know, he may have left the actual train car by 30 seconds to a minute. But he wasn't that far away. Like he was still in visual.

He could still turn around and look and see what's going on at that point. So certainly still a threat is my point. He has not, like, left the area. This is not that type of situation.

You know, I -- look, as you point out, I think if I could be super duper sexist for a moment here, sort of my dividing line might just be men and women.

You know, I don't know if it's that a -- you're not supposed to say that, I suppose these days. But, like, there is a difference there. If I'm a man, you know, I would be -- I would want my son to jump in on that, I suppose. I don't know if he could do anything about it. But you would expect at least a grown man to be able to go in there and do something about it. A woman, you know, I don't know.

Maybe I'm -- I hope --

GLENN: Here's the thing I -- here's the thing that I -- that causes me to say, no. You should have jumped in.

And that is, you know, you've already killed one person on the train. So you've proven that you're a killer. And anybody who would have screamed and got up and was with her, she's dying. She's dying. Get him. Get him.

Then the whole train is responsible for stopping that guy. You know. And if you don't stop him, after he's killed one person, if you're not all as members of that train, if you're not stopping him, you know, the person at the side of that girl would be the least likely to be killed. It would be the ones that are standing you up and trying to stop him from getting back to your daughter or your wife or you.

JASON: There was a -- speaking of men and women and their roles in this. There was a video circling social media yesterday. In Sweden. There was a group of officials up on a stage. And one of the main. I think it was health official woman collapses on stage. Completely passes out.

All the men kind of look away. Or I don't know if they're looking away. Or pretending that they didn't know what was going on. There was another woman standing directly behind the woman passed out.

Immediately springs into action. Jumps on top. Grabs her pant leg. Grabs her shoulder. Spins her over and starts providing care.

What did she have that the other guys did not? Or women?

She was a sheepdog. There is a -- this is my issue. And I completely agree with Stu. I completely agree with you. There's some people that do not respond this way. My issue is the proportion of sheepdogs versus people that don't really know how to act. That is diminishing in western society. And American society.

We see it all the time in these critical actions. I mean, circumstances.

There are men and women, and it's actually a meme. That fantasize about hoards of people coming to attack their home and family. And they sit there and say, I've got it. You guys go. I'm staying behind, while I smoke my cigarette and wait for the hoards to come, because I will sacrifice myself. There are men and women that fantasize of block my highway. Go ahead. Block my highway. I'm going to do something about it. They fantasize about someone holding up -- not a liquor store. A convenience store or something. Because they will step in and do something. My issue now is that proportion of sheepdogs in society is disappearing. Just on statistical fact, there should be one within that train car, and there were none.

STU: Yeah. I mean --

JASON: They did not respond.

STU: We see what happens when they do, with Daniel Penny. Our society tries to vilify them and crush their existence. Now, there weren't that many people on that train. Right?

At least on that car. At least it's limited. I only saw three or four people there, there may have been more. I agree with you, though. Like, you see what happens when we actually do have a really recent example of someone doing exactly what Jason wants and what I would want a guy to do. Especially a marine to step up and stop this from happening. And the man was dragged by our legal system to a position where he nearly had to spend the rest of his life in prison.

I mean, I -- it's insanity. Thankfully, they came to their senses on that one.

GLENN: Well, the difference between that one and this one though is that the guy was threatening. This one, he killed somebody.

STU: Yeah. Right. Well, but -- I think -- but it's the opposite way. The debate with Penny, was should he have recognize that had this person might have just been crazy and not done anything?

Maybe. He hadn't actually acted yet. He was just saying things.

GLENN: Yeah. Well --

STU: He didn't wind up stabbing someone. This is a situation where these people have already seen what this man will do to you, even when you don't do anything to try to stop him. So if this woman, who is, again, looks to be an average American woman.

Across the aisle. Steps in and tries to do something. This guy could easily turn around and just make another pile of dead bodies next to the one that already exists.

And, you know, whether that is an optimal solution for our society, I don't know that that's helpful.

In that situation.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

Max Lucado on Overcoming Grief in Dark Times | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 266

Disclaimer: This episode was filmed prior to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But Glenn believes Max's message is needed now more than ever.
The political world is divided, constantly at war with itself. In many ways, our own lives are not much different. Why do we constantly focus on the negative? Why are we in pain? Where is God amid our anxiety and fear? Why can’t we ever seem to change? Pastor Max Lucado has found the solution: Stop thinking like that! It may seem easier said than done, but Max joins Glenn Beck to unpack the three tools he describes in his new book, “Tame Your Thoughts,” that make it easy for us to reset the way we think back to God’s factory settings. In this much-needed conversation, Max and Glenn tackle everything from feeling doubt as a parent to facing unfair hardships to ... UFOs?! Plus, Max shares what he recently got tattooed on his arm.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

Are Demonic Forces to Blame for Charlie Kirk, Minnesota & Charlotte Killings?

This week has seen some of the most heinous actions in recent memory. Glenn has been discussing the growth of evil in our society, and with the assassination of civil rights leader Charlie Kirk, the recent transgender shooter who took the lives of two children at a Catholic school, and the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, how can we make sense of all this evil? On today's Friday Exclusive, Glenn speaks with BlazeTV host of "Strange Encounters" Rick Burgess to discuss the demon-possessed transgender shooter and the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk. Rick breaks down the reality of demon possession and how individuals wind up possessed. Rick and Glenn also discuss the dangers of the grotesque things we see online and in movies, TV shows, and video games on a daily basis. Rick warns that when we allow our minds to be altered by substances like drugs or alcohol, it opens a door for the enemy to take control. A supernatural war is waging in our society, and it’s a Christian’s job to fight this war. Glenn and Rick remind Christians of what their first citizenship is.