Suppliers, landlords, their own inability to live “within their means” as they expect from all others

They're capitalists (spit), but they're small capitalists, so they're at the mercy of larger capitalists with more power. I wouldn't be surprised if commercial landlords are squeezing them for most of their profits.

On the other hand, working at the restaurant would save them a whole employee's wages and they basically never do that, so it can't be that tight.

I think some survivorship bias factors in. From what I hear, restaurants are enormously expensive to get off the ground and have a very high early failure rate as businesses but once they have survived for 3 or so years, management gets much easier and profit margins are able to grow.

Consequently, in my experience, successful restaurants are indeed run by local rich kulak assholes with McMansions and luxury cars who fuck off around the world for weeks at a time when they aren’t back at the store berating their workers.

Honestly I’m thinking about it and I think I am just channeling what I’ve heard from the restaurant tyrants I’ve met in regards to margins, but yea, they always seem to be able to mostly 1. Not work at all. 2. Take vacations. 3. Blow money on shit

Pizza is a lot different from the rest of the restaurant business. At the place I work, a 16 inch pepperoni pizza costs about $2.10 in ingredients to make. We sell it by the slice for $5, 7 slices on each pizza. The pizzeria is in an area of town with extraordinarily high rents, but still.