Just trying to track where all the money between producer and consumer tends to leak towards. My point was a bit, that low profit does not mean that there are no unnecessary expenses. Are business owners usually not managers? Also often profit is used to invest in the company itself so it not really lost imo.
Generally, a low profit margin amongst the entire industry indicates that business operations are going about as efficiently as possible given current technology and knowledge.
Grocery stores have long had ~2% or even less profit margins. The people working at Costco, Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, Target, Aldi, Lidl, Tesco, Amazon, etc. are pretty good at what they do, and those managers are not known for getting lavish pay. After all, how could they, since their competition would steal their customers in their extremely price sensitive business.
Manager bonuses, business travel expenses and taxes are part of those expenses.