La Boca Loca makes Wellington better by paying living wage

A cou­ple of months ago, we went along to a din­ner put on by the Sus­tain­able Busi­ness Net­work, which was a very inter­est­ing night but I found myself unable to write about it with­out seething with rage remem­ber­ing the man I’d been seat­ed next to. He owns a fran­chise chain, believes that the only rea­son there are hun­gry kids in New Zealand is because their par­ents choose to buy booze, and he does­n’t believe that sex­u­al assault and domes­tic fig­ures are accu­rate (they’re over-report­ed appar­ent­ly- “well what is sex­u­al assault any­way? Is it when a woman just says no?”). He also said that we can’t pay peo­ple more, because then all the jobs would go to Aus­tralia. I can’t imag­ine dri­ving to Aus­tralia to pick up a burg­er, so that was a bit of a curi­ous thing to say. How­ev­er, what made me very very hap­py was that Mar­i­anne and Lucas from our beloved Mex­i­can restau­rant La Boca Loca were there, and made a pas­sion­ate argu­ment for pay­ing a liv­ing wage. They’re not just talk­ing the talk how­ev­er — La Boca Loca has been cer­ti­fied as a liv­ing wage employ­er since July. And guess what? They’re still here.  So I thought it would be good to have a chat with them about what they’re doing.

 1. So, first and fore­most — what is a liv­ing wage?

A liv­ing wage is a wage high enough for a work­er to meed their needs, enjoy their life and par­tic­i­pate in soci­ety. At the moment, research indi­cates that $18.80 an hour is the lev­el need­ed for a liv­ing wage in New Zealand.

2. Why has La Boca Loca decid­ed to pay a liv­ing wage, and when did you imple­ment it?

We learned about the Liv­ing Wage ear­li­er this year and start­ed look­ing into what it was, and why it was set at that lev­el. It seemed pret­ty clear to us that if we were to live up to our own stan­dards as an eth­i­cal busi­ness we need­ed to adopt a liv­ing wage. Pay­ing our team enough to live on is core to what eth­i­cal, sus­tain­able and suc­cess­ful busi­ness means to us.

We start­ed mov­ing to a Liv­ing Wage soon after, and were cer­ti­fied as a Liv­ing Wage employ­er in July this year.

3. So it’s been (a cou­ple of months?) now — how’s it going?

It’s going great. Our staff are hap­py, our cus­tomers are hap­py, we know we are doing the right thing and the cost of our wage bill has­n’t gone up as much as we had pre­dict­ed. There’s an entire school of eco­nom­ic the­o­ry that could explain why that’s the case… the effi­cien­cy wage the­o­ry (which I’ll talk a bit more about in just a minute because I have a feel­ing you are about to ask me about the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of this approach).

4. Assume that I actu­al­ly don’t care about peo­ple — what are the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of oper­at­ing this way?

The Liv­ing Wage is good for busi­ness. First­ly, great peo­ple make great restau­rants, so by pay­ing the Liv­ing Wage we are tak­ing bet­ter care of our most impor­tant asset. The bet­ter care we take of our staff, the bet­ter care they can take of our cus­tomers — and of their own fam­i­lies. Sec­ond­ly, our cus­tomers like know­ing that the peo­ple work­ing hard to serve their meal are being paid enough to live on. Third­ly, the signs are that our costs won’t go up much — our staff are work­ing smarter to help make this move a suc­cess — this is relat­ed to the idea of the ‘effi­cien­cy wage’. Fourth­ly, it’s good for small busi­ness­es like us if more peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty have a lit­tle bit more mon­ey in their pock­et — in oth­er words, we want our staff to be able to afford to eat at our restau­rant. And we’d like a lot of oth­er peo­ple to be able to as well.

5. If the oth­er love­ly busi­ness own­ers who read the Welling­ton­ista were think­ing about mov­ing to a liv­ing wage, do you have any advice for how they can start?

It’s pret­ty much impos­si­ble to say what is right for oth­er busi­ness­es. We decid­ed this was right for our busi­ness. We would encour­age oth­er busi­ness­es to give it seri­ous thought, to look past the rhetoric of the right that assumes that any­thing good for work­ers is bad for busi­ness — which is patent­ly untrue. Do your own research, and decide what’s right for you, your team and your busi­ness. And if you do decide this is the right thing to do, just do it. Don’t spend too long wor­ry­ing about it or slow­ly phas­ing into it. As Lucas likes to say — just rip off the plas­ter and get on with mak­ing it work.

6. Are you going to tell us how to make your spicy mar­gar­i­tas?

We are indeed. Very soon. In fact, lat­er this week we’ll start tak­ing pre-orders for our forth­com­ing cook­book which will include the recipe for the spicy mar­gari­ta, thanks in part to the fact that Welling­ton­ista ral­lied so many votes for it in our cook­book com­pe­ti­tion!

Hur­ray for good peo­ple doing good things! This should be all the encour­age­ment you need to spend more time (and mon­ey) on their deli­cious food.