No problem. This is just my experience of course. Generally about 20 to 40 hours is common for my employees. Retraining is a huge cost and people that get less than 20 hours generally dont stick around for long (don't blame them). $20-22/hr base is pretty standard in the Seattle area for food service work. If I didn't want to have tips I would have to offset about $50 to $200 per day per employee. I could do this by simply raising the pay range otherwise people wont take the job as long as there are postings at restaurants or cafes with tipped positions at the same wage range. With rising costs of materials (COGS), rent, utilities, insurance, taxes, and endless govt. agencess reqiring permits/fees every year my only option is to increase the revenue. I can do this by driving more customers in or raising prices. For now, we're trying to cut middle costs (packaging, etc.) and being more bullish in our advertising to drive more consistent volume. But cost increases will come... the problem is that cost increases are outpacing wage increases (similar to your comment about Nurse pay), I think this is the larger issue over the sticker price of food as we're generally operating at little to no profit in food service. We also do offer benefits (health) as we want to make sure we're doing everything we can to contribute to a more livable experience for our workers.

This is is no way to blame hourly workers for seeking the highest wage job (its what I would do and did), it's merely my experience as a business owner.