TL;DR: > Ask her former boss, who owned The Coffee Shop diner in Union Square where AOC used to work. Late last year, The Coffee Shop closed its doors after 28 years, sidelining 150 employees. How successful was the place, where diners often came to celebrate special occasions? About the Coffee Shop, Forbes wrote last year: > "For nearly 30 years, serving those many occasions has added up to enormous success. According to Restaurant Business magazine's 2017 ranking of the 100 highest-grossing independent restaurants in the U.S., Coffee Shop served 314,000 meals and pulled in an estimated $14.3 million in sales, good enough to land in the 79th spot on the list. Coffee Shop stands out as one of few non-steakhouses (there are 24, mostly in New York and Las Vegas) or bottle-service meccas (the Tao Group has five on the list) to crack the top 100, and to do so consistently for nearly two decades." > But co-owner Charles Milite citied higher rent and the increased minimum wage as the reasons for the closure. New York's minimum wage law would have added $46,000 a month to his labor costs in 2019. Milite said: "I know it doesn't sound like much -- $2 an hour. But when you multiply it by 40 hours, by 130 people, it becomes a big number. It was going to increase our monthly payroll $46,000."