Friend’s daughter is a server at Cafe Boulud on Palm Beach. She can make $500/night on a good night in the season.
I’ve seen it from the golf perspective where clubs went to a no-tipping policy (with much higher hourly wages) in order to not have members one-upping each other. What results is overall good service in most cases, but gone is the exceptional service.
It also creates clock milkers. In the day, you hustled, made your tips, cleaned the place up, and got the hell out of there. Now everyone is on island time, which I don’t consider a good result.
No, not a good result, but a predictable one. Oh, as far as a private club goes? Very different dynamic from a restaurant.