Earlier this month, there were a couple of posts in this thread about a restauranteur in NYC who was eliminating tipping in his restaurants. I decided to do a little research and see how that was going.
First, here's the
original article, in October 2015. Here's an excerpt:
By increasing prices and ending tips, Mr. Meyer said he hoped to be able to raise pay for junior dining room managers and for cooks, dishwashers and other kitchen workers. Compensation would remain roughly the same for servers, who currently get most of their income from tips. Under federal labor laws, pooled tips can be distributed only to customer service workers who typically receive gratuities, and cannot be shared with the kitchen staff or managers.
“The gap between what the kitchen and dining room workers make has grown by leaps and bounds,” Mr. Meyer said. During his 30 years in the business, he said, “kitchen income has gone up no more than 25 percent. Meanwhile, dining room pay has gone up 200 percent.”
The wage gap is one of several issues cited by restaurateurs who have deleted the tip line from checks. Some believe it is unfair for servers’ pay to be affected by their race and age, their customer’s moods, the weather and other factors that have nothing to do with performance.
. . . .
Many customers remain deeply attached to the right to reward attentive service, or to withhold that reward. And servers often say that the bonanzas they take home after busy nights far outweigh the risk of getting nothing once in a while.
Here's a
NY Times editorial from a couple of days later, generally favoring the new practice.
Here's an
interview with Danny Meyer, the restauranteur, in February of this year. An excerpt:
Do you think there is an industry that could be improved by switching to a tipping model? No. I don’t know too many tipped professions where, as a parent, I would say, ‘‘I really want my child to go into that profession.’’ It just feels unprofessional. It’s sad. It’s not that I want my kids to be doctors and lawyers — we don’t have any in our family — but would you tip your doctor? Would you tip your lawyer? Would you tip your architect? Would you tip the airline pilot? Implicit in the very custom of tipping is that the person on the receiving end would not have otherwise done as well for you, had you not tipped. It’s just . . . it’s icky.
That's the last thing I've seen on Danny Meyer's no tipping policy, so I assume it's still going. On the other hand, Joe's Crab Shack, a casual seafood chain, tried a no tipping experiment but reverted to the old, tipping system six months later. An excerpt:
Company research had found that 60 percent of the restaurants’ customers disliked the change in tipping, Mr. Merritt [CEO] said. They wanted to inspire good service with their tips and they didn’t trust management to pass on the money to its employees, he said. “The system has to change at some point, but our customers and staff spoke very loudly,” Mr. Merritt said. “And a lot of them voted with their feet.”
So, it may be that a no-tipping model is more feasible at higher end restaurants.
A couple of observations:
(1) It seems like one of the attractions of tipping for customers is the feeling/perception that they are rewarding or inspiring good service with their tips. I don't understand this perspective, especially since so many commenters above have said something to the effect that they will tip 15 or 20 percent regardless of the quality of service. As I mentioned in a previous post, the only time I feel like I am rewarding or encouraging good service is when I am a regular repeat customer and I'm dealing with the same person(s) all the time, and they know me. That's a very small proportion of my tipping encounters. At a restaurant that I go to semi-frequently, it's very unlikely that the server and I will know each other from my previous meals there, so the
only reason I tip in that situation is to help make sure the server is being paid adequately. I would give them the same tip if their service was poor. But it shouldn't be my responsibility to pay the restaurant's employees; that's the owner/manager's responsibility. I don't want to deal with two transactions, two service providers every time I go to a restaurant or other tipping-expected business.
(2) As some of the articles posted above mention, the low-wage supplemented by tipping model is historically rooted in the prevalence of women and minorities in those types of jobs, and the willingness of society to pay them poorly. Surely we are well past the point where that attitude is acceptable as a basis for compensation decisions.
(3) Danny Meyer made a comment in that interview that I find interesting: "Implicit in the very custom of tipping is that the person on the receiving end would not have otherwise done as well for you, had you not tipped." That may be the perception of many customers, who apparently enjoy being able to reward or punish the person receiving the tip. Maybe they feel that the tip gives them leverage with the restaurant or whatever. I don't understand that perspective, and it seems like an abuse of the tipping custom. If I have a problem with a restaurant server or other tipped employee, I will talk to the manager, owner or other responsible person. But I also wonder whether tipped employees see a connection between level of service provided and tips received. If they tailor their performance to the expected tip amount, they simply aren't doing their jobs. It's unprofessional, as Danny Meyer said.
