Shabbos partnerships - 2

Question

By "very very flexible conditions" I was, I guess inappropriately expressing my own personal opinion about three businesses that I knew of, I am sorry. I did not mean to imply that I was judging the practice in general, but rather that I have seen in some particular situations "very very flexible conditions" which I have heard other Rabbis find questionable. I do not know if the situations I was referring to are an appropriate application of this halacha or not, and I guess in the past I have listened to what I was told without actually asking a qualified Rav if such a situation was permissible or not. I am grateful to be corrected, and thank you very much for taking the time to educate me and hopefully everyone else who "tunes in". The first was a jewelry retailer. The Jewish owner lived within walking distance of the business and went in on Shabbat to supervise the Gentile "partner" (this "partner" only owned the business on Shabbat and had no prior experience or background in the jewelry business and did not invested any of his own money) in the business operations. The owner of the business (the Jewish partner) would go into the store on Shabbos in order to personally supervise the operations (ie sales of fine jewelry). The Gentile records the sales and transacts cash and credit cards, all of the sales were not posted until Monday.The Gentile, according to the owner was taking notes of the sales of his own accord, for his own benefit in order to protect his job and earn his money. The sales were actually transacted on Monday as the charges and deposits were not posted on Saturday. Therefore, the sales for Shabbat are all posted when the gentile now longer has an ownership stake in the business. The second "partnership" (a flower shop), set up in a nearby neighborhood, was also a "partnership" between a Jew and an employee who was hourly all week, but the "owner" on Shabbat. In this case the Jewish owner also lived walking distance to the shop and went in on Shabbos to "supervise" the operations of the store for part of the day. Again, credit card and wire sales are posted on Monday, the Gentile was merely "taking notes" for the Jewish partner (in order to avoid significant loss by not being open for business on Shabbos to receive the FTD wires which would actually be sales for the next day or later). In short, because of how the banks post the sales, the only technical profits from Shabbat were for cash transactions, which are very few. The third partnership is a caterer, and the arrangement was set up by a different Rabbi than the first two. The Gentile partner owns the business only on Shabbos. In this case as well, the Jewish partner is occasionally on site on Shabbos to supervise and direct the operations of the business which include cooking and prep work for Motzai Shabbos events. Naturally, a kosher caterer would never get paid on Shabbos or even complete a delivery of foods so that a receipt would signed for. The Rabbi who set this up, permits the partnership in this case despite the fact that there are actually no revenues on Shabbat for the non Jewish partner to reap. Of the above three situations that I personally knew of, the first two, after many years of doing business under a "Gentile partnership contract" did close their businesses on Shabbos. Both retail businesses were within Jewish neighbourhoods and there was general community pressure to close on Shabbos. As far as I know the caterer is still operating as "Gentile" owned on Shabbos in order that Gentile employees can be brought in to cook and prepare food for Saturday night and Sunday affairs. There is also at least one Rabbi in the area who is telling his congregants not to use the caterer as the food is "Bishul Goy" since it is not possible for a Jew to have participated in each batch since the actually cooking happens on Shabbat. Actually, I would like to make a simcha in the hall where this caterer is the house caterer. The worst thing would be to pay money to make a party that no one is comfortable eating at. In this case it would be a Sunday affair, so most likely the food would be cooked on Shabbos under the arrangement that I have described above. Nearly everyone we intend to invite would hold by your psak......so...... Would this be an affair that you would be comfortable eating at if you knew the food was prepared on Shabbat under the above circumstances? Now that I have given more complete information on the first two applications, please let me know if they are correct applications of the Halacha. Please forgive me if it sounds like I have been prejudging the situation. I sincerely wish to learn what is actually correct and what is not correct when it comes to this issue so that I can retrain my behavior accordingly. For my entire life I have been listening to Rabbis battle those within our community who kept their retail businesses open on Shabbat, even though the owners of these stores always felt they would fail in their businesses if they didn't. Now, if I am understanding these things correctly, truly ALL of the financial sacrifices made by the last two generations in order to keep Shabbat may have indeed been overobservance that could have been mitigated by "partnering" with a gentile in a particular way.