Posted on 08/25/2015 5:54:35 PM PDT by Theoria
Restaurant owners, customers and staff have long railed against the tyranny of tipping, but like a love affair gone bad, it has proved difficult to quit.
Now, prompted by a spurt of new minimum wage proposals in major cities, an expanding number of restaurateurs are experimenting with no-tipping policies as a way to manage rising labor costs.
Here in Seattle, where the first stage of a $15-an-hour minimum wage law took effect in April, Ivar’s seafood restaurants switched to an all-inclusive menu. By raising prices 21 percent and ending tipping, Bob C. Donegan, the president and co-owner, calculated he could increase everyone’s wages.
“We saw there was a fundamental inequity in our restaurants where the people who worked in the kitchen were paid about half as much as the people who worked with customers in front of the house,” Mr. Donegan said.
Nearby, the Walrus and the Carpenter instituted a compulsory 20 percent service charge. At Manos Nouveau and Sous Beurre, both in San Francisco, the menu prices include tips and taxes. Dirt Candy, an upscale eatery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, tacks on a 20 percent administrative fee.
Amanda Cohen, the owner of Dirt Candy, said she had fielded a flood of phone calls from other restaurants asking how her no-tipping policy was working.
“I think that restaurants will have to do this,” said Ms. Cohen, who pays servers at Dirt Candy $25 an hour, well above the $7.50 for tipped workers that will go into effect in New York at the end of the year.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If you’re going to “fine dining” I assume you’re spending a lot and want to be waited on hand and foot. If I’m going to Red Lobster or Olive Garden, I don’t need that kind of service.
Yes, it might be a hard job, but it’s not an artistic or creative task. It’s something a robot could be programmed to do and would be better at it. That’s not the kind of thing I believe deserves a tip. It’s like tipping your mailman for delivering the mail on time or your checkout girl for getting the items quickly through checkout. Some do it quicker than others, but that’s part of the job description. I think the structure of giving them a direct salary without the tip option makes more sense.
We pay starting servers $2.50/hr. Min for the state is $2.12. Our polished top servers get paid $5.00/hr. They take home around $65-85/hr with tips. Some will make $300-$400 per night on busiest days, so they’re not complaining.
If a restaurant can make a 10% profit margin, it’s doing way better that average. That’s why this new wage issue poses such a major need for reassessment of operational approach. If this new min-wage for servers takes hold, the losers in the long run will be both customers and employees. Not surprising for implementation of “progressive” ideas.
They won’t make as much and therefore will look elsewhere for jobs that are less demanding. And as restaurant costs will go up, so will pricing. Prepare for European restaurant pricing. You won’t be pleased. And you will enjoy eating out far less frequently, unless you’re a 1%...;-)
It is certainly not a job I am capable of doing.
Muti-tasking four or five tables each with four or five customers-I would be gone within the hour.
When the service and food is good, we don’t hesitate to leave a 20% tip. I am sure the wait staff at many fine restaurants will be taking a large pay cut with loss of tips.
Yeah, you’re right-on in your assessment. I sometimes take a table or two when we’re short staffed, and it just makes me realize how good our top servers are. It is not an easy job!
That's Panera Bread.
All restaurants will be called Panera, instead of Taco Bell (demolition man) :>)
Panera uses the paging coasters. So does Mickey D (the Southern fish eatery).
People in WA State can’t figure out squat. I am surprised that they have not changed the name of their state to someone less offensive for WA State.
Jack in the Box in San Diego has a touch screen with credit card swipe for ordering. You do the ordering/paying and get a small paper receipt to pickup your order from the kitchen. In time, there will be a fully automated robotic kitchen with limited human interaction to clean and stock the robots.
The full service lunchroom at my office in San Diego was transformed into a self-service with debit card swipe. Security cameras monitor to catch cheaters. A "rover" restocks the refrigerators and shelves every other day.
You’ve never worked as a server, have you? They aren’t just standing around chatting while waiting for your food when they go into the kitchen. It can be challenging and not everyone has the organizational skills or temperament to do it. You have to really enjoy working to make people happy.
In fact, everyone in a restaurant busts their tail on busy nights-from the cooks down to the dishwasher.
The servers share their tips with other staff as well-you work as a team and a cash reward for a job well done is a great incentive.
I really don't have any problem with paying people more, but I hate that its mandated by a govt that doesn't have to do the paying...
there is skill in being a server.....you have to keep your dishes straight, be courteous even with the middle aged bald men who think they’re Casanovas and be charitable even to the most whiny and demanding people.
I’m tired of the whole tipping culture here in this country. Everybody has their hand out for everything. Travel overseas and most likely,”The price is the price”.
I think a lot of people who work for tips end up with the government estimating them for tax purposes; a friend who worked in a hair salon over a dozen years ago said they were starting to implement the practice back then.
I’m surprised at the places where I see tip jars now; I go to Dunkin Donuts probably twice a year (when I have to buy them for meetings at work), and didn’t expect to see a tip jar there. Also, a deli I frequented years ago (in the before-time economy) now has a tip jar as well - for making a sandwich?
Less and less people can even afford the places where people work for tips (restaurants, bars, etc.); in my area (northern NJ, where the Greater Depression hasn’t even hit rock bottom yet), many of these businesses are in dire financial straits. There aren’t enough 1%ers or childless yuppies to keep them open, and the “replacement Americans” (foreigners) are too frugal/sensible to waste their money there.
I’m greatly surprised that Mother Government hasn’t gone after the honey pot of under-reported, ‘tips’ before now!
I mean, it’s a RARE day when She leaves money that COULD be confiscated from, ‘We The People,’ on the table!
*SPIT*
(I got no dog in this hunt; I’m, ‘Management’ so I’m abused in other VERY SPECIAL ways, LOL!)
AEI used a bad dataset to attack Seattle’s min. wage increase and that’s a big setback to our side. The reality is that these policies marginalize people in ways that you don’t instantly see and are diffuse. It takes good thinking to avoid these dumb policies, but good thinking has always been scarce.
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