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>- If the business grows and starts needing management skills beyond what a cook or a waiter would have, you will have trouble hiring a qualified manager for same wages you pay to waiters

Waiters generally make more than managers in restaurants in the United States at least.

>If you need a loan to expand, lender is likely to want some control over how a restaurant is run rather than leaving it up to workers

Co-ops get loans all the time. You just need a governance structure of some sort and collateral for a loan.

Not every employee at a coop has to make the same wage.

Mondragon, the largest worker cooperative in the world, hires top level people with the skills to manage the company. Those people, instead of reporting to public shareholders, report to the worker/owners who decide the company direction.