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Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

A co-worker of mine visited French Polynesia a few years ago. He mentioned most of the restaurants simply close up shop when they feel they’ve made enough money for the day. Not great for someone looking to get dinner, but I’m sure it makes life much better and less stressful for the owner and employees. They know to get by they need to make $X/day. If they hit it by 1pm, cool, half day.

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This behavior was also observed in New York Cab drivers in the paper LABOR SUPPLY OF NEW YORK CITY CABDRIVERS: ONE DAY AT A TIME

https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/loewenstein/NYCCabdriv...

> ... Our interpretation of these ndings is that cabdrivers (at least inexperi- enced ones): (i) make labor supply decisions “one day at a time” instead of inter- temporally substituting labor and leisure across multiple days, and (ii) set a loose daily income target and quit working once they reach that target

They could maximize their earnings by working more on more profitable days and working less on the less profitable ones. However, many people overvalue stability and are scared of variable income.

Wonder if they also run out of ingredients? Seems like a nice way to simplify operations if you don’t ever end up with waste.

Yes, most probably this. The grocery list is retro planned from the wages of the employees. So when they served the last dish, they earned their salary, they split the money and close the restaurant

That helps the community too as every restaurant has a better chance to hit their own goal. Obviously this only works in a place with a population who all know each other.

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