Customers will pay for all the costs though, in order for the business to stay profitable. The “and then some” you’re referring to is the profit margin, which b

Customers will pay for all the costs though, in order for the business to stay profitable. The “and then some” you’re referring to is the profit margin, which businesses can reduce, but if revenue (money paid by customers) goes below costs, then the business is now losing money. > Say the $3 company can't actually retain any workers because their pay is so bad. They will not be serving any $3 coffees, so it's not a threat to the $10 coffees. The $3/coffee company will likely still find workers who are willing to work for what the company is willing to pay. Thus there is a market-established price for the labor and the floor is a legislatively-established price-control called the minimum wage. It’s not high skill work and you can train someone in a day to operate a drip brewer and an espresso machine. > Also, your example prices sure are, uh, interesting and hard not to read in to. There’s nothing much to read into there. I rounded up the $3 option to be generous to the opposition and overstated with the $10 option as a point of comparison that you cannot simply arbitrarily charge more without additional value-add and expect to retain your customers. Seniors on fixed incomes will complain all day about coffee costing even $2, or a single cappuccino going from $2.25 to $3.5 over the course of a few years.