The Purpose of Business?

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I have to ask, as I keep encountering people who seem to think that the whole point is to provide jobs and benefits for other people, rather than turning a profit.

I work for a place that pays poorly, pays next to no rent, uses outdated equipment unsuited to commercial use, and keeps the crew as minimal as possible, and still loses money every year due to food and labor costs and people being unwilling to pay what we actually should be charging, it's enough to make me question the value of owning a business.

I want to open my own shop some day because I have ideas for food that I think people would enjoy and ideas for how to sell it that I think people would respond to, but I seriously wonder if the risk is worth it. In the restaurant business, you're considered to be doing great if you take home $.10 out of every $1 in sales, and many do significantly worse, so best case, in order to make $2000/month I have to do at least $20,000 a month in business, or at least $1000/day as I plan to close Mon-Tue for my own sanity. Compared to my current deal, where I work 40 hours a week and take home around $2000/month with my tips and don't have to put my own money up for no guarantee or work 80+ hours a week like many owner/operators or deal with staffing and payroll and all the other not so fun aspects of running a shop, ownership doesn't look so good.

I'm in an unfortunate position because my profession is historically underpaid and people are not used to what they should be paying for my services, and so the public is also prone to sticker shock when the actual cost of my labor is factored into the menu price of the foods they like to eat. Cooking professionally combines the physicality of a warehouse job with the knowledge requirements of a white collar field and the practiced hands of a skilled tradesman, yet the compensation is less than an entry level sales job, or even the service workers in the same restaurant (I made more delivering pizza than I do running a kitchen). Why this is is complicated, going back to the classical apprentice system, the staging system still used at fine restaurants, the unpleasant work environment and high pressure driving off people who could demand more, etc, but the end result is that prepared food has been under-priced for years, and restaurants don't have many options for fitting in higher salaries.

As a long time restaurant worker, I'm frustrated that I work so hard for so little money, but as a realist and aspiring restaurant owner, I recognize that my situation is not due to greedy owners, but rather to market forces beyond any of our control. What I do know is that forcing restaurants, or other small businesses, to simply pay more in the form of higher minimum wages, is simply not going to work, and is going to have some unfortunate unforeseen (but not unforeseeable) consequences. A good example is already happening at my shop, where the wage for my skilled cooks has essentially been frozen because we have to pay our unskilled dishwashers and counter workers so much, and we're forced to drive those people that much harder trying to get our money's worth, which is enjoyable for no one. Another effect is that we're forced to be much more selective about who we hire, as we're paying too much to take a chance on a high school kid with a good attitude but no experience, we need a 40 year old immigrant who's been washing dishes for 20 years and has a family to feed, since we know he's going to show up every day and work his ass off for the money. Same thing with our counter help, we seek out retired chefs looking for a little extra money and something to do, because we can't take a chance on an inexperienced person, and we can't give enough hours for someone who needs to support themselves (our chef is salaried and fills in the extra hours, usually more than 40). This also closes off the traditional route to learning to cook professionally, working your way up from dish-washing, and forces more and more places to demand cooking school degrees and/or years of experience when hiring cooks, again, for a job that often pays minimum wage or just above.

This is where I get to the meat of the question in the title, as I want to open a business in order to support myself, make more than I currently do, and have the control that I've always wanted, but I'm fettered by people who think that the purpose of my business should be to provide for others. Why can't I offer low wages and a profit share instead of having to pay labor costs greater than the value generated by said labor? Why is it the responsibility of a business to pay what amounts to a tax on low skill labor to subsidize people that the state could take care of? Why should I take all that risk to make even less money and work even harder than I do now? It's particularly frustrating when the same people pushing the laws that make small business so hard are also complaining about disappearing small businesses, without even realizing the contradiction.

Small business numbers are growing after a dip from 2008-11, although as always there is high turnover. However, they are employing fewer staff and are less important to the economy. Source: http://www.bls.gov/bdm/entrepreneurship ... urship.htm

Setting the minimum or "living" wage too high will result in inflation that effectively wipes out any benefit.

Business firms provide goods and services to their customers in order to earn revenue and produce a profit.
The purpose of a business is to produce income for its owners. The means by which this is done is by providing goods and/or services to the customers or clients. Businesses do NOT exist for the purpose of providing jobs. Businesses employ people -in order- to produce the goods and services the businesses sell. Employing people is NOT and end. It is a means to an end.

Is it really to do with the fact that they get a "living wage" or more that the industry you work in is low paid anyway?

Not just that, but it makes it very difficult for younger workers to get their foot in the door, and puts tremendous pressure on everyone else to do more work with less people.