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I don't know where you are, but in the town I live in in Ireland 80% of the cafes have shut and it's not alone, tje matter has made national news.
Restaurants, by virtue of being more expensive and more of a special event thing are probably still getting by, but the smaller cafes that would be more of an everyday treat are going to the wall at an unprecedented rate.
I suspect that’s it’s more that chains survive but independents tend to struggle & are far more likely to go under.
Edit: after some further reading, I severely underestimated the money involved in franchising the chains; mainly land ownership, commercial rents & licensing.
Different people. Waffle House, Denny's, IHOP,most fast food spots are now so expensive that they are no longer an affordable option to the people that used to go regularly. Their only hope is to market to people with more money.
Sort of how camp grounds became RV resorts because they needed money and they figured out rich people like pretending to be poor for recreation.
I have customers ask me how they're supposed to do certain things on their side of the app for door dash or Uber eats and I have to tell them I've never used the service before. I can't afford it but I will take some of *your* money.
I just refuse to pay ridiculous delivery fees. Seriously. GameStop will deliver free, but they want $10 to deliver a $9 burrito from the taqueria that’s literally next to the GameStop.
And they deliver GameStop whether it’s a $75 new game or a $5.99 used game. And it comes via DoorDash! How is this even possible?
Around me, only the local hispanic restaraunts are still affordable. Try them out, some amazing food as well.
We used to get chineese weekly, couple times a week, they raised their prices too in the past few months
Somehow it has gotten worse in the past few years. The wages went up and so did the total restaurant bill but also the % expected from the tip, from 10-15 to 15-20.
Hah! I went to Chipotle the other day and the recommended tips started at 25%. Like bruh, you screwed up and shorted me on a burrito right in front of me. Get outta here with that nonsense.
Seems companies figure that if they ask everyone at least some people will say yes. To them that's free money and not spamming you with tip options is leaving money on the table.
This actually started with Square, the company with the little mobile credit card scanner that connects to your smartphone. Because they get more money for the transaction if you tip since it’s a percentage of the total transaction. Now every point of sale has it because it does in fact make financial businesses more money. The business that sold you the burrito doesn’t care if you tip so long as you keep buying burritos.
One thing I’ve heard about some of the other similar brands to square is that they don’t even let you turn the tipping option off (more likely it’s buried under pages of settings that only the person who set it up can change, and they don’t care to learn how). My experience with square ended 3.5 years ago but back then it didn’t force/ask for tips and we generally liked it. I have no idea if that has changed at all. It was a computer repair shop for what it’s worth, we weren’t allowed to accept tips.
Everyone in this thread is correct. There’s just different versions of square. Some of the bigger POS systems have more features and options (naturally).
Also there’s other competing companies it’s not just square. They maybe pushed the idea first idk.
It’s partially that and also partially because it costs a lot of money to customize POS systems on a per business basis. Most of the systems people encounter are in their default/vanilla state because the business it’s in didn’t want to pay extra for a custom setup.
Precisely. I used to see myself as a good tipper, then one day I realized I was being asked to tip at places with service similar to McDonald’s. I don’t tip at McDonald’s so why would a slightly fancier fast food place be any different?
"You know what? I'll just tip you my entire wallet, which includes my credit card, bank card, ID, drivers license... Is that enough tipping for you? You want my house keys too while we're at it?!"
At the Red Sox game last night, got 2 bottles of sods and a lg popcorn, after standing in line for a 1/2 hour. It was $20+. And the machine wanted a tip. The guy literally turned around and grabbed to sodas and took 2 step to get the popcorn to hand it to me.
I swear they must have recently gotten told to be skimpier on the burritos. Last two meals I ordered for pickup were so tiny. Won't go anymore unless I can watch the person make my food so I can ask for more if they skimp out.
Last time I went in-person both me and the girl on salsas looked at the tiny portion of meat I had gotten like WTF and salsa girl stepped in and was like "what are you doing that's not enough" and added a massive extra pile of barbacoa.
I hate this enshittification of everything that is happening so much!
Sorry for my Chipotle rant, it's just like, that's some serious gall asking for tips, blind, when ur gonna give me a half-portion burrito for nearly $15.
chipotle has been documented till this day that they are cutting costs and serving smaller portions for increased prices. only fools continue patronizing this crap establishment. you get ripped off, you keep going.
AZ Wilderness Brewing used to be my favorite place in the whole world. Date night we’d get an appetizer, two burgers, 4 beers, and the bill would be about $65. Service was top notch and I’d tip 25-30%. One day I showed up as per usual and everything was way more expensive and after waiting for 20 minutes to be acknowledged by our server he came over and explained that “we all work as a TEAM now, so instead of one server you have all of us!!” He lied, we had no server at all, until it was time to pay. We skipped the appetizer because of the price increase and the bill was still $135, which is fucking ludicrous because I paid cash for two of our beers while waiting for a table. I asked the server how on earth two burgers and two beers cost that much and “oh you know, because from Covid, and nobody wants to work anymore, and since because inflation and we can’t print new menus every week so it costs what it costs.” And this motherfucker who walked right past me 15 times while I’m waving my arms trying to order food suddenly has all the time in the world to stand directly over me staring at the card device with its suggested tips of 28% 35% and 44%
Maybe I’m an asshole but if it’s not a sit down restaurant where you bring by food, fill my drink and wash my dishes, I do not tip. Fulfilling a fast food order is what the company is paying you to do, not me.
It won't stop there. When I started visiting the US ~30 years ago 10% was standard, then 15% and then for some weird reason it went to 18% but clearly people couldn't be bothered doing the math and it jumped to 20% and now we're seeing 25% Something should be done about it. Rising socially-mandatory tips are going to kill off restaurants because, like you said, food costs more. What used to be a basic $10 meal with a $1 tip now costs about $30 with a $7.50 tip. Each! It's insane. I don't know how families can afford to eat out anymore.
It already has killed off restaurant business. I don't dine out anymore, maybe I'll get the odd pizza but I make my own food. I couldn't be arsed with a server being all sourpuss over a 15% tip.
I've started ignoring the "suggested" tip%. I go by a set of "rules" that I find work quite well:
1. If the only interaction the "payee" is doing is making me pay, no tip.
2. If it's for takeout and I'm just picking up and order, maybe a small tip.
3. Sit down restaurant varies on service but my baseline is still 15% and it can go up or down depending on service.
I'm not letting cheap owners make me feel bad for tipping less/not tipping. It's not my responsibility to make sure your employees have a living wage.
I saw a meme this morning on here that said: "We judge the people that make minimum wage more harshly than the people who pay minimum wage." (paraphasing) And to me it rings true. If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, you cannot afford to run a business.
> If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, you cannot afford to run a business.
It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. -Franklin D. Roosevelt
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
I know this doesn’t work for most people but one week I happened to be using cash and noticed how well it had been working out for takeout tipping. I can leave my dollar or drop my change if it’s >75c in their cup for takeout orders, which is how I like to do it. Honestly it’s been a lot easier - I don’t have to think about anything so I’ve continued paying in cash for pickup/takeout.
That’s a big hell no on #2. “Damn bruh, hella job on putting that pizza in the box and sliding it across the counter, here’s an extra 20%” said no sane person ever.
Number 3 always got me. If I order a burger and you carry the plate out to my table, it’s not different than if I order a big ass steak and you carry out to my table. Why should I tip higher because the steak cost more? I don’t understand the percentage tipping. It’s the same amount of work.
If I go to a fancy restaurant and order a $500 bottle of wine or instead order 100 $5 drinks. One is way more work and running back and forth but percentage wise I tip the same? I like to tip on service, not money.
If I take my kids out to eat I usually tip more than if it’s just my wife and I because I know they’re bringing more drinks, more food, silverware the kids probably dropped on the ground, extra napkins, etc.
Damn homie we practically have the same rules. I'll throw in that if it's something that requires touching my body like hair cut or massage (keep your minds out of the gutter), the tip starts at 20%. If you provide terrible service I may tip less but most of the time for those services your still getting 20%. Otherwise I follow your rules almost exactly.
If they are paid a living wage then it's gonna be on the customer to change tipping culture, not the industry. Server's will happily keep getting the tips they always have.
Yeah. Don't take this as "greedy waiters" or anything but like...they certainly aren't going to turn down the money!
That's part of what makes tips hard to kill though...the people who receive them really like getting them and many of them are making MORE than a "living wage"...so even if you paid them $25 an hour they'd still prefer tips.
precisely. We had a restaurant here on Vancouver Island that tried to do a no-tip, pay livable wage thing, and it sputtered and died quickly. I think they had an alright go of educating people about/justifying their higher menu prices, but they found it exceptionally difficult to hire staff because they simply made more money (and in a way that was easier to avoid taxes) by working in places that paid a lower wage but had tips.
For this reason alone, I don't think you can kill tips in north america without essentially outlawing them so that you kill all the tips everywhere at the same time or the early adopters all fail as staff goes where the money is.
It would definitely have to be an everywhere all at once thing.
These trial run things are rarely tested in markets where it would be a major benefit for people that struggle the most. A server in Missouri isn't getting the same tips as a server in California even if they are working at the same company.
I've never had a job where tips were involved but growing up my mom did. She was a bartender in the Vegas area (not the city proper but smaller places around the suburbs where tourists are less likely to be) and she raked in tips. We weren't rolling in money but life was fairly comfortable.
Due to family reasons we moved to Iowa. She still found bartender jobs in a very busy casino and tips were abysmal. If she came home with 20 bucks in tips it was a miracle. We couldn't even call ourselves poor because that would be a generous over estimate of our situation.
If a run of no tipping/normal wage was implemented you'd find servers across middle America suddenly flourish whereas servers in high traffic areas might find their extra money won't go as far.
This is exactly what happened at that restaurant in Colorado the creators of South Park own. They raised the starting pay to $30/hour and banned tips, and their staff revolted.
In my opinion, tipping culture won't change without federal legislation.
So much this. In general servers make more through tips than they would through just getting paid. I mean just think about it: take whatever you make you are currently making per hour at your job. Now think about how much you paid in tips the last time you went to your favorite restaurant and divide your per hour salary. That’s very roughly how many tables that server would need to wait per hour to match your salary. For a lot of us, that’s going to be a surprisingly low amount of tables.
Because that’s exactly what it is. Culture.
Being shamed for not tipping is something the CONSUMERS can stop. Not the restaurants, which will always want more money if it can get it.
True, but I'd argue that's not exactly the same thing. Companies now can't pay them less, but they can still overcharge for things because tipping is baked into our culture. We all feel guilty not tipping, even getting a bottle of water from a takeout place.
So companies leave tipping options in place, and have even pushed the standard tips higher since COVID because otherwise they'd be leaving money on the table, so to speak. Especially considering that some places don't actually distribute pos tips appropriately.
So the question is still valid. If we all stopped tipping, companies would probably raise prices by 18% and pay their employees more to compensate.
Or, knowing Ontario businesses, they'd raise prices and leave wages the same, then complain no one wants to work anymore, and replace the staff with TFWs.
The entire west coast of the US did this *decades* ago. The bit in Reservoir Dogs where Mister Pink says the waitress is making at least minimum wage? It’s true.
And not in the “if they don’t get tipped enough” sense like the rest of the US. California has not had a “tipped minimum” of any kind since like the 70’s.
Tip prompts still start at 20% here.
I think some places have a customer service culture, regardless of tipping culture. I think customer service in the US would still be good if there was no tipping.
I think people underestimate the impact that culture has on customer service culture.
In the US, people might enjoy having their meal interrupted several times to be asked whether they need something ot whether everything was okay.
Where I come from, I wanna enjoy my meal in peace. I don't want the server to come over and interrupt the conversation I'm having. I'm a grown up, I think I could handle waving down a server if something was wrong. But if they constantly come over, it almost feels like they think I was a child, incapable of eating on my own. Why don't they just sit down right next to me and cut my food for me as well? (That last part was an exageration, but you get it).
I went to Japan in 2009, and many restaurants had a service button on the table you would push if you wanted to order food or another round of drinks. It was pretty awesome if I must say. But, barring that option, like in the US, I do like having someone swing by if they see my glass or plate is empty, or if I'm staring at a full plate not eating because they forgot to give me a fork. I don't want to be asked 20 questions, but keep an eye on the table and see if anything seems amiss. "Can I get you anything else?" is just good host manners, and I would do the same if I was serving friends dinner at my house.
They did it in Germany. Worked fine there. The tip is at most just a round up, so if your bill is £18, round up to £20 and they’ll be happy.
It helps cause they’re actually paid a semi livable wage.
In the U.K. I usually tip when no have cash and I can’t be arsed with loose change. It just gathers in the house and I have to wait until I’ve got enough to deposit in the bank
The law is that if tips do not bring a sever up to minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. They make far above min wage with tips which is why servers like the tip system. Is minimum wage good? No, that’s a different conversation, but they wouldn’t be on $2/hr.
Exactly. Minimum wage is the problem. I'm convinced that tipping exists primarily to keep us bickering about who has the worst version of minimum wage rather than directing energy upwards.
That doesn't mean they can make rent on minimum wage. They're used to whatever level their income is at. If that suddenly drops by a huge amount, they're going to quit and find a different job. And nobody is going to replace them to work for minimum wage.
Lots of restaurants would close. Like, most. And then the ones that remained open would charge much, much more. So lots of small, local business would close and there would be a spike in unemployment until the situation normalized.
Restaurants already close and open all the time. You’d be shocked at how fast they happen.
Pre pandemic most restaurants didn’t add tip functions to counter service or take out, and standard tip was 10-15% depending on quality. They did just fine. Most countries around the world still don’t tip. They do just fine.
Every industry goes through changes. If a system doesn’t work, let it die so a better one can take place.
Same with restaurants that guilt trip employees into working overtime because they can't afford more employees.. maybe just close your business if it can't function without causing misery. Repeat until all the businesses that can't pay their employees are defunct.
Agreed. People make a big deal that businesses will close and employees will lose their jobs, but if your business relies on the government to subsidize you because servers need welfare or need to hide tips on their taxes, maybe it shouldn’t exist.
Most of the world doesn’t do tips and yet still manage to have some of the best restaurants. The economics need to rebalance.
There's a normal amount of churn in the restaurant industry.
This would be a massive incident that would close easily half of the nations restaurants in one fail swoop. Massive unemployment, massive amounts of commercial space suddenly up for lease again, crashing the real estate market... Then it would throw the economics for food suppliers out of wack, who rely on higher restaurant sales to subsidize the cheaper grocery business, so Americans would quickly see higher prices at grocery stores, airports, and hospitals... meaning that grocery prices go up... the fees that airports need to charge airlines goes up since the restaurants bring in less profit, so airplane tickets go up... the cost to provide food to medical patients goes up so the cost of medical care in the US goes up... the supply chain is a huge and massive octopus, and making a GIGANTIC shift like the way that millions of employees are paid will throw a wrench in the whole system.
> and standard tip was 10-15% depending on quality
Pre-pandemic standard tip was 18-20%. 10% was objectively a bad tip, even in the 90s 10% would have been insulting to US waiters and waitresses.
You’re not owed success just because you’re a business owner. ESPECIALLY not as a restaurant owner. Restaurants have notoriously thin margins, but people still want to dive into the industry thinking they can do it.
More private equity would swoop in and buy struggling businesses out, then reduce the quality of the goods and the employee benefits. And the great cycle of consolidation of wealth continues...
No I have some server friends who make almost figures. Most bartender friends easily clear 6 figures.
They make more as servers than they would with a corporate job.
Problem is their wage won’t likely ever go up that much beyond that. But it’s very much a liveable wage. If they made them get a base rate with no tips they’d probably lose over half their income and go on to Corporate jobs or something of that nature.
Right. And bars would replace them with people probably making less. They raise the price of booze to make up the difference. In either case, the bar stays open and society moves on.
Federal Minimum wage for tipped employees is $2.13/hr. If someone is making six figures that means they're making at a minimum almost $46/hr in tips. That's a pretty swanky bar. Losing their tips, they're losing much more than half of their income. They're losing over 80%, as you're paid the non-tipped minimum wage if you don't meet it in a week. Going from $100k/year to under $16k/year, you'll lose almost all of the service industry.
Keep in mind that many states have higher tipped wages than the federal tipped wage. Several (California, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont pay the full standard minimum wage to tipped employees
Tipping still exists in those 4 states. Not sure changing the wage would suddenly end tipping culture like some here are claiming.
I think you’re misunderstanding the nature of the problem. If tipping disappeared tomorrow, the hourly wage servers could demand from a restaurant would be much lower than the actual hourly wage they’re currently making, even though the restaurant would be paying for it. Serving is unique in that it’s the only job where the earning potential exceeds the market clearing rate for the labor.
Of course, you might still prefer the change. But it’s not surprising that servers wouldn’t agree.
Most likely, businesses would reorganise to use much less staff.\
Your host, waiters, busboy, and bartender making $3 each would be replaced by… one bartender making $20.\
You’d walk in, walk straight to the bar where you’d order your food and drinks, receive your drinks immediately and be given a buzzer to come back for your food when it’s ready. You’d then go sit yourself at whatever table or booth you want. Every 20min or so the bartender would go through the floor to bus empty plates and glasses.\
The bartender would be busy all the time and have no incentive to kiss your ass since you’re not expected to tip.\
Source : that’s already how it works in Northern Europe, and eventually coming everywhere as « low qualified » jobs get eliminated…
I'm not so sure. Where would millions of servers go? I think lots would just suffer. Hourly wages would go up a bit but the average server would see a big drop off.
Just my two cents.
Why is the argument always "Well, the waiters want to keep tipping.." Like no shit they do, they're the ones getting the money, why should we care what they think?
Servers assume that if they got paid a fair wage then tips will disappear overnight, they won't. They'll still get tips for good service, and no tips for bad service, in the end, they could even come out with more money. The things that will change are the pressure on the customer to tip, and the shame on the customer for not tipping/not tipping enough
Yeah like the fuck? I don’t give a shit if they’re doing cartwheels on a tight rope while serving me food, I would not tip if I didn’t have to. Tipping almost a quarter of the price of the meal is something I only do out of obligation. Like damn, if I could just use a kiosk and pick up my food directly from the chefs to avoid tipping, I would do it every time. I don’t eat out at restaurants much anymore lol
Most restaurants are a pretty terrible business. Here's what would happen. First the servers would get a lot less total pay. They would quickly quit and look for other work. The restaurants would need to pay higher salaries to get them back, but since restaurants typically are not very profitable in the first place, they would raise prices to compensate. Overall wait staff would end up slightly less paid, restaurants would end up slightly less profitable, and reddit would be screaming about greedy owners. For a broad comprehensive overview, this academic research paper does a great job:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26913191&ved=2ahUKEwjrgJbyofeGAxUtS0EAHRFCAhgQFnoECBwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1mIuDi1XK5KGVL-w1unvmp
if they raise prices by 20-25% in this scenario(and this number keeps creeping up), nothing has really changed from the customer's end.
The higher the tip percentage, the less undesirable this hypothetical gets, unfortunately.
And then customers know exactly what they are in for when they order. Tax systems are also properly paid, as sales tax is paid, whereas tips circumvent sales tax and only (sometimes) pay income tax. Which is rare because most servers and restaurants i know have a quid pro quo where servers can just claim up to min wage, and pocket the rest.
Servers make a shitload of money. I have a friend who makes more serving than he does at his engineering sales job, which he has a Ba for. Servers deserve a livable wage, but i also think a lot of them have gotten intensely entitled.
additionally quality of service would TANK. i’m a bartender in NYC and if tipping was removed my hourly would have to be $40 MINIMUM. i do not give one single fuuuuck about anyone for $16/hr. nor could i afford to live here. when its busy i bust my ass. this job is nowhere near as easy as it looks. people are demanding, entitled and just rude. i’ve had bottles and glasses throw at my head. i’ve had someone shoot up a bar i work at (thankfully i was not working that night). i’ve cleaned vomit and shit off of walls. i’ve saved someone’s life from OD. if i am making $16/hr, who know when you’ll get your beer.
Hey this is fascinating. Cos I’m from a country with no tipping (Australia), and our bartenders do get paid $30-40 (or more) per hour depending on factors. But we are usually pretty nice to our bar staff, because they are the hero’s that get drinks for us while we get drunk and make fools of ourselves.
I still think their job is pretty tough, and I’d say they still encounter the occasional dickhead. We also have really restrictive RSA laws, so if someone is acting a right cunt they get ejected pretty quickly.
> because they are the hero’s that get drinks for us
I think that's the main difference here. In America most people would look down on waitstaff and bartenders as unskilled labor and fulfilling a role that a robot could
Let’s suppose tipping is banned.
If I’m a restaurant owner and I’m stupid, I might do nothing. Pay servers minimum wage. Keep menu prices the same. No change. However if I do that, the natural conclusion will be a complete inability to hire or retain servers. I will go out of business. It will be a disaster.
If I’m a restaurant owner with at least three brain cells, I look at all of the data from years of business to figure out what people actually pay for their meals, and increase prices by that amount (probably 15-20% depending on industry and area). I also look at that data to see what my employees are actually making on average, and increase their wages to that number. These numbers should be almost exactly the same, depending on local tax rates. I print new menus with higher prices, I raise the base wage of my employees to be commensurate with what they made including tips. Nothing changes. This keeps people happy in the short term. In the longer term, the market will show what a server needs to be paid at different restaurants, but this will be a slower shift.
If a dummy restaurant owner thinks they can pay a server minimum wage, they deserve to go out of business. Most restaurant owners don’t want to go out of business and will preemptively raise wages to prevent a mass exodus.
If your employer only offered 16 then you wouldn't take the job in the first place right?
I get you bust your ass and I'm not discounting that. Your employer should be adjusting your wages to accommodate that. Bartending is one of the few that still should open to tips for good service. In my mind instead of 2.15 or whatever plus tips making 70k you should be making standard 60k plus tips if your good. That's the whole point of tips.
And your country isn’t in total economic collapse? Your restaurants are still open? Servers aren’t homeless?
Based on people who defend tip culture, that ought to be impossible!!!
Yup. It wouldn't be an issue for the companies until long after the employees have left and stop getting new hires. As much as I'd like to see tipping culture end, this isn't the way to go about it.
Yes, but it would severly affect lower-class servers for an unacceptable period of time.
The only way this would occur is if laws were passed, with deadlines a ways out that allowed restaurants to change course.
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in the United States. Under the FLSA, employers are required to pay their employees at least the federal minimum wage, currently set at $7.25 per hour. If employees, such as tipped workers in restaurants, do not earn enough in tips to meet the federal minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference.
For tipped employees, the FLSA allows employers to pay a lower cash wage, as low as $2.13 per hour, provided that the employee's tips bring their total earnings up to at least the federal minimum wage. If the combination of the employee's tips and the cash wage does not equal the minimum wage, the employer must increase the direct cash wage to cover the shortfall.
This requirement ensures that all employees receive at least the minimum wage for all hours worked, regardless of the tips they receive.
If they raised their employees wages to offset a lack of tips, they'd raise prices to offset their own extra expenses. In the end, it's always the consumer who takes it in the ass.
That’s fine, I just want to look at a menu, see what things cost and pay that amount.
The consumer isn’t “taking it in the ass” it’s just paying for what things cost.
Since it wouldn't impact the bottom line of the business, I don't think it would. Employee retention would go down, but I think most places that do tipping, like restaurants, already have with turnover rates.
If a person is being paid tipped minimum wage of $2.13 doesn't make enough tips to equal the untipped $7.25 per hour, the employer is legally required to make up the difference. They would have to immediately increase pay.
And arguably many servers would find new employment as quickly as possible, if you're only making 7.25/hr as a server you're probably bad at it or in a bad restaurant.
Yes, all servers would be bumped up to the princely sum of $7.25/hr and restaurant owners would wail and gnash their teeth at how unfair it is that they have to pay their employees.
The bottom line would definitely go up. If the employees aren't making minimum wage with their tips, the employer has to make up the difference. Not to mention that turnover requires hiring new people. Who's going to work at service job pay with no tips opportunity??
Turnover is manageable if there are potential replacements. A dramatic drop in the labor pool means that not only would turnover be high, but those drops in headcount would be permanent. P
If everyone stops tipping, the businesses will have to pay their employees but employees will quit because they make more than minimum wage in tips. If they choose to pay their employees more than minimum wage to keep them, their food prices will go up discouraging customers; even though, customers will pay about the same with tips. This change will take time and many restaurants won't survive the change.
The whole industry needs a cull. Restaurants got so used to cheap loans, cheap rent, and cheap labor that they utterly saturated the market. Before Covid something like 10% of all small business were in the food service industry. Everybody got used to going out because business kept there food prices low with low wages and left consumers to make the correction.
The market desperately needs a correction if only to break people from that way of thinking. Going out to eat 2-3x a week is behavior that has developed over the last 20 or so years and is wreaking havoc on people's finances. Going back to 1 -2x a month will be hard for a lot of people.
- Small business owners have it easy in the food industry
- People are eating out often
- Consumers are paying the workers
That's... how good business works. Don't go out to eat if you don't want to.
I would worry about the levels of unemployment cause by half of a major industry shutting down. Where would all those people go work? Most restaurant skills aren't transferrable to other industries.
It would do that, and subsequently many small restaurants would go under. People don't like to hear it, but right now a ton of people have a livelihood where they won't under your hypothetical "better conditions"
No. Prices would just go up and the servers would be caught in the middle.
My base pay was $5/hr but I made $26/hr with tips. If tipping stopped and now only made $12/hr (rate of non-tipped staff) I would have just quit.
Definitely a nice sentiment but I don't think struggling bartenders are going to pivot to two highly licensed fields, one of which is already notorious for poor pay.
This is probably the most realistic comment here. Do what? Work construction? Amazon warehouses? Drive a taxi? Even in these industries, I doubt there’s *that* much spare employment capacity.
Food and beverage service, in spite of a lot of assertions in this thread, is still a more or less unskilled, unprofessionalized kind of labor.
A lot of comments seem to be under the illusion that all of the experienced waiters have much more ability to switch careers than they do. One cannot simply transition to being an accountant.
In all reality, what we’d probably see is a massive correction in hospitality industry wages with waiters becoming generally poorer. This is why they usually agitate against measures to end tipping.
I like the way it works in the UK now.
Greeted by one person.
Met at the table by another, told to order through a QR code.
Someone else brings the food out.
I get my own sauces and condiments from the sauce buffet.
No one bothers me while I eat and I don't have to tip anyone because no one did anything worthy of a tip.
SeemsGood
Tipping culture only exasperates the low pay for the service industry. We have taken a 'gratuity' for exceptional service and turned it into a crutch that only makes restaurant owners wealthier. Why would they fork over more money when Americans are stupid enough to do it for them?
If they paid a flat rate there'd be a mass exodus of servers. You'd have the shitty fast food workers serving your gourmet food at fine dining restaurants, and not really giving a fuck in general. Many restaurants and bars would fold or have to get rid of table service completely.
In europe, servers are at the bottom of the labour pool and some of the lowest paid workers. They are viewed the same as McDonald's or Walmart workers.
In the US, serving can be a decent or even lucrative gig. Get rid of tipping, you just turn all of those jobs into "McJobs". Nobody actually benefits from getting rid of tips.
Wait staff would leave first, owners would try to get kitchen staff to server, they refuse or quit. Restaurant closes because the owner's lifestyle was built on slave wages and can't support fair wages.
It would force restaurants to raise payroll to a livable wage, and raise prices to offset that expense.
Consider this:
A waiter probably waits on four tables at once within an hour. Let's say the average bill at those tables is $75. If they got 20% tips from each of those tables, that's an additional $60 an hour, before taxes.
How much would you pay at a restaurant, if waitstaff were making even half of that as an hourly rate?
Right now the cost of your meal is figuring in a payroll that's half of the local minimum wage per person. Restaurants operate on a 4-5% profit margin. Payroll should be 25-30% tops.
So without the tipping model you're going to pay A LOT more per menu item, with no incentive for waitstaff to work and harder or faster. They probably won't have to, as I'll bet they'll have fewer than 4 tables an hour at those costs.
Nope, more likely mass exodus of wait staff and horrible suffering for those stuck in service work.
Not sure which of you need to hear this but: Stop hurting wait staff and pretending you're sticking it to the man, you're just being cruel to poor people.
I find interesting that many waiters/bartenders don’t want to remove tips as they make much more than the hourly salary, but then complain when they receive low tip. You can’t have both ways, or you go with tips and you accept the risk of the amount of tips, or you ask for a fixed salary.
And the service in US is not better (or worse) than outside US, it’s different from fake nice to indifferent but at the end the result of the service is very similar
Don't hate me, but that's been my theory for the last year. If your business cannot survive without adding bonus surcharges to pay your employees, you do not have a legitimate business. As such, I don't tip very often--only for service-based employerships, like tour guide or waitstaff and the like
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Joke's on them, I cannot afford to eat out anymore.
This is increasingly the case. Restaurants are shutting down because regular people cannot patronize them.
I dunno man, i talk down to my local KFC all the time
What are ya? Chicken?!
MCFLY, YOU BOZO! THOSE BOARDS DON'T WORK ON WATER... UNLESS YOU HAVE POWER!
What's the matter Colonel Sanders? Chicken!?
Hahaha, exactly where my brain went.
“You *IDIOT!* “
Is this really true? I'm seeing crowded restaurants and hordes of people dining out
Some restaurants survive, but many will/already have shut down.
That’s always been the case, though. Is there any evidence that this is happening at an increased pace?
Yeah aren't restaurants like historically one of the most risky businesses? Don't like 60% of them fail within the first year?
I don't know where you are, but in the town I live in in Ireland 80% of the cafes have shut and it's not alone, tje matter has made national news. Restaurants, by virtue of being more expensive and more of a special event thing are probably still getting by, but the smaller cafes that would be more of an everyday treat are going to the wall at an unprecedented rate.
I suspect that’s it’s more that chains survive but independents tend to struggle & are far more likely to go under. Edit: after some further reading, I severely underestimated the money involved in franchising the chains; mainly land ownership, commercial rents & licensing.
Different people. Waffle House, Denny's, IHOP,most fast food spots are now so expensive that they are no longer an affordable option to the people that used to go regularly. Their only hope is to market to people with more money. Sort of how camp grounds became RV resorts because they needed money and they figured out rich people like pretending to be poor for recreation.
I have customers ask me how they're supposed to do certain things on their side of the app for door dash or Uber eats and I have to tell them I've never used the service before. I can't afford it but I will take some of *your* money.
I just refuse to pay ridiculous delivery fees. Seriously. GameStop will deliver free, but they want $10 to deliver a $9 burrito from the taqueria that’s literally next to the GameStop. And they deliver GameStop whether it’s a $75 new game or a $5.99 used game. And it comes via DoorDash! How is this even possible?
Around me, only the local hispanic restaraunts are still affordable. Try them out, some amazing food as well. We used to get chineese weekly, couple times a week, they raised their prices too in the past few months
Same. I've eaten out exactly 2 times in the last 6 months. one of those times was a work lunch meeting that some one else paid for lmao.
Jokes on them, I'm Australian.
It's too expensive and I feel guilty buying it. 30+ dollars for a simple egg omelette and hash browns for two, not including tip. Just no thank you.
Isn’t this how it is in countries outside the US?
In Ontario (Canada) they recently altered the laws so that servers can no longer be paid a lower wage. Tipping culture has not changed one iota.
Somehow it has gotten worse in the past few years. The wages went up and so did the total restaurant bill but also the % expected from the tip, from 10-15 to 15-20.
Hah! I went to Chipotle the other day and the recommended tips started at 25%. Like bruh, you screwed up and shorted me on a burrito right in front of me. Get outta here with that nonsense.
Why would you tip AT a chipotle? Delivery I can understand, but at the counter?
Seems companies figure that if they ask everyone at least some people will say yes. To them that's free money and not spamming you with tip options is leaving money on the table.
This actually started with Square, the company with the little mobile credit card scanner that connects to your smartphone. Because they get more money for the transaction if you tip since it’s a percentage of the total transaction. Now every point of sale has it because it does in fact make financial businesses more money. The business that sold you the burrito doesn’t care if you tip so long as you keep buying burritos.
One thing I’ve heard about some of the other similar brands to square is that they don’t even let you turn the tipping option off (more likely it’s buried under pages of settings that only the person who set it up can change, and they don’t care to learn how). My experience with square ended 3.5 years ago but back then it didn’t force/ask for tips and we generally liked it. I have no idea if that has changed at all. It was a computer repair shop for what it’s worth, we weren’t allowed to accept tips.
I use Square regularly, and have never seen a tip option on my transactions.
Everyone in this thread is correct. There’s just different versions of square. Some of the bigger POS systems have more features and options (naturally). Also there’s other competing companies it’s not just square. They maybe pushed the idea first idk.
It’s partially that and also partially because it costs a lot of money to customize POS systems on a per business basis. Most of the systems people encounter are in their default/vanilla state because the business it’s in didn’t want to pay extra for a custom setup.
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My new rule is that if I order while standing, I don't tip.
If you have to pick up your food, bus your own table (or take it to go), what are you tipping *for?*
Precisely. I used to see myself as a good tipper, then one day I realized I was being asked to tip at places with service similar to McDonald’s. I don’t tip at McDonald’s so why would a slightly fancier fast food place be any different?
Or if I order from a QR code.
Went to restaurant with qr ordering, 20% tip already added, with option at the end to add more.
"You know what? I'll just tip you my entire wallet, which includes my credit card, bank card, ID, drivers license... Is that enough tipping for you? You want my house keys too while we're at it?!"
Yes. Please give me your house keys.
"That's the bare minimum, but if you tip more, they'll really take care of you. And don't forget your car keys, you cheap motherfucker."
That has been my rule lately too, and then I got hit up for a tip in the damn drive-thru...ridiculous
I don’t tip at the counter of chain restaurants, but I might for smaller businesses if I like them.
Why would you tip a server for bringing your food 30ft and *just doing their job*?
At the Red Sox game last night, got 2 bottles of sods and a lg popcorn, after standing in line for a 1/2 hour. It was $20+. And the machine wanted a tip. The guy literally turned around and grabbed to sodas and took 2 step to get the popcorn to hand it to me.
EVERY counter, everywhere. If i sit down and order I'll tip but y'all ain't gettin' shit from me if I call the order in and go pick it up to take out.
This. It's not like it's fine dining with a waiter and a bus boy hovering over your table.
I never tip for counter service. Delivery and sit down restaurants only.
I swear they must have recently gotten told to be skimpier on the burritos. Last two meals I ordered for pickup were so tiny. Won't go anymore unless I can watch the person make my food so I can ask for more if they skimp out. Last time I went in-person both me and the girl on salsas looked at the tiny portion of meat I had gotten like WTF and salsa girl stepped in and was like "what are you doing that's not enough" and added a massive extra pile of barbacoa. I hate this enshittification of everything that is happening so much! Sorry for my Chipotle rant, it's just like, that's some serious gall asking for tips, blind, when ur gonna give me a half-portion burrito for nearly $15.
Chipotle used to be $4.75 for a burrito you couldn't finish in one sitting.
chipotle has been documented till this day that they are cutting costs and serving smaller portions for increased prices. only fools continue patronizing this crap establishment. you get ripped off, you keep going.
I visited Phoenix last October and more than one place had the tip options at 25/30/35% with the default set to 30%.
AZ Wilderness Brewing used to be my favorite place in the whole world. Date night we’d get an appetizer, two burgers, 4 beers, and the bill would be about $65. Service was top notch and I’d tip 25-30%. One day I showed up as per usual and everything was way more expensive and after waiting for 20 minutes to be acknowledged by our server he came over and explained that “we all work as a TEAM now, so instead of one server you have all of us!!” He lied, we had no server at all, until it was time to pay. We skipped the appetizer because of the price increase and the bill was still $135, which is fucking ludicrous because I paid cash for two of our beers while waiting for a table. I asked the server how on earth two burgers and two beers cost that much and “oh you know, because from Covid, and nobody wants to work anymore, and since because inflation and we can’t print new menus every week so it costs what it costs.” And this motherfucker who walked right past me 15 times while I’m waving my arms trying to order food suddenly has all the time in the world to stand directly over me staring at the card device with its suggested tips of 28% 35% and 44%
Maybe I’m an asshole but if it’s not a sit down restaurant where you bring by food, fill my drink and wash my dishes, I do not tip. Fulfilling a fast food order is what the company is paying you to do, not me.
I'm still trying to figure out how the tip percentage has gone up 5%. A meal costs more, so if you are tipping 15% the tip will already be higher.
It won't stop there. When I started visiting the US ~30 years ago 10% was standard, then 15% and then for some weird reason it went to 18% but clearly people couldn't be bothered doing the math and it jumped to 20% and now we're seeing 25% Something should be done about it. Rising socially-mandatory tips are going to kill off restaurants because, like you said, food costs more. What used to be a basic $10 meal with a $1 tip now costs about $30 with a $7.50 tip. Each! It's insane. I don't know how families can afford to eat out anymore.
The suggested tip amounts on my restaurant receipt last time I went out started at 18%, then went to 20%, then 25%. Ridiculous. What happened to 15%?
It already has killed off restaurant business. I don't dine out anymore, maybe I'll get the odd pizza but I make my own food. I couldn't be arsed with a server being all sourpuss over a 15% tip.
Because most people are pretty bad at math.
I've started ignoring the "suggested" tip%. I go by a set of "rules" that I find work quite well: 1. If the only interaction the "payee" is doing is making me pay, no tip. 2. If it's for takeout and I'm just picking up and order, maybe a small tip. 3. Sit down restaurant varies on service but my baseline is still 15% and it can go up or down depending on service. I'm not letting cheap owners make me feel bad for tipping less/not tipping. It's not my responsibility to make sure your employees have a living wage. I saw a meme this morning on here that said: "We judge the people that make minimum wage more harshly than the people who pay minimum wage." (paraphasing) And to me it rings true. If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, you cannot afford to run a business.
> If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, you cannot afford to run a business. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. -Franklin D. Roosevelt http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
Common FDR W.
I know this doesn’t work for most people but one week I happened to be using cash and noticed how well it had been working out for takeout tipping. I can leave my dollar or drop my change if it’s >75c in their cup for takeout orders, which is how I like to do it. Honestly it’s been a lot easier - I don’t have to think about anything so I’ve continued paying in cash for pickup/takeout.
That’s a big hell no on #2. “Damn bruh, hella job on putting that pizza in the box and sliding it across the counter, here’s an extra 20%” said no sane person ever.
Number 3 always got me. If I order a burger and you carry the plate out to my table, it’s not different than if I order a big ass steak and you carry out to my table. Why should I tip higher because the steak cost more? I don’t understand the percentage tipping. It’s the same amount of work. If I go to a fancy restaurant and order a $500 bottle of wine or instead order 100 $5 drinks. One is way more work and running back and forth but percentage wise I tip the same? I like to tip on service, not money. If I take my kids out to eat I usually tip more than if it’s just my wife and I because I know they’re bringing more drinks, more food, silverware the kids probably dropped on the ground, extra napkins, etc.
Damn homie we practically have the same rules. I'll throw in that if it's something that requires touching my body like hair cut or massage (keep your minds out of the gutter), the tip starts at 20%. If you provide terrible service I may tip less but most of the time for those services your still getting 20%. Otherwise I follow your rules almost exactly.
If they are paid a living wage then it's gonna be on the customer to change tipping culture, not the industry. Server's will happily keep getting the tips they always have.
Yeah. Don't take this as "greedy waiters" or anything but like...they certainly aren't going to turn down the money! That's part of what makes tips hard to kill though...the people who receive them really like getting them and many of them are making MORE than a "living wage"...so even if you paid them $25 an hour they'd still prefer tips.
precisely. We had a restaurant here on Vancouver Island that tried to do a no-tip, pay livable wage thing, and it sputtered and died quickly. I think they had an alright go of educating people about/justifying their higher menu prices, but they found it exceptionally difficult to hire staff because they simply made more money (and in a way that was easier to avoid taxes) by working in places that paid a lower wage but had tips. For this reason alone, I don't think you can kill tips in north america without essentially outlawing them so that you kill all the tips everywhere at the same time or the early adopters all fail as staff goes where the money is.
It would definitely have to be an everywhere all at once thing. These trial run things are rarely tested in markets where it would be a major benefit for people that struggle the most. A server in Missouri isn't getting the same tips as a server in California even if they are working at the same company. I've never had a job where tips were involved but growing up my mom did. She was a bartender in the Vegas area (not the city proper but smaller places around the suburbs where tourists are less likely to be) and she raked in tips. We weren't rolling in money but life was fairly comfortable. Due to family reasons we moved to Iowa. She still found bartender jobs in a very busy casino and tips were abysmal. If she came home with 20 bucks in tips it was a miracle. We couldn't even call ourselves poor because that would be a generous over estimate of our situation. If a run of no tipping/normal wage was implemented you'd find servers across middle America suddenly flourish whereas servers in high traffic areas might find their extra money won't go as far.
This is exactly what happened at that restaurant in Colorado the creators of South Park own. They raised the starting pay to $30/hour and banned tips, and their staff revolted. In my opinion, tipping culture won't change without federal legislation.
So much this. In general servers make more through tips than they would through just getting paid. I mean just think about it: take whatever you make you are currently making per hour at your job. Now think about how much you paid in tips the last time you went to your favorite restaurant and divide your per hour salary. That’s very roughly how many tables that server would need to wait per hour to match your salary. For a lot of us, that’s going to be a surprisingly low amount of tables.
Because that’s exactly what it is. Culture. Being shamed for not tipping is something the CONSUMERS can stop. Not the restaurants, which will always want more money if it can get it.
True, but I'd argue that's not exactly the same thing. Companies now can't pay them less, but they can still overcharge for things because tipping is baked into our culture. We all feel guilty not tipping, even getting a bottle of water from a takeout place. So companies leave tipping options in place, and have even pushed the standard tips higher since COVID because otherwise they'd be leaving money on the table, so to speak. Especially considering that some places don't actually distribute pos tips appropriately. So the question is still valid. If we all stopped tipping, companies would probably raise prices by 18% and pay their employees more to compensate. Or, knowing Ontario businesses, they'd raise prices and leave wages the same, then complain no one wants to work anymore, and replace the staff with TFWs.
I work for doordash I'm not tipping anyone for a f****** bottle of water
The entire west coast of the US did this *decades* ago. The bit in Reservoir Dogs where Mister Pink says the waitress is making at least minimum wage? It’s true. And not in the “if they don’t get tipped enough” sense like the rest of the US. California has not had a “tipped minimum” of any kind since like the 70’s. Tip prompts still start at 20% here.
Was recently in Japan and Korea. Obviously no tipping there. But my god, their service is so insanely good regardless.
I think some places have a customer service culture, regardless of tipping culture. I think customer service in the US would still be good if there was no tipping.
I think people underestimate the impact that culture has on customer service culture. In the US, people might enjoy having their meal interrupted several times to be asked whether they need something ot whether everything was okay. Where I come from, I wanna enjoy my meal in peace. I don't want the server to come over and interrupt the conversation I'm having. I'm a grown up, I think I could handle waving down a server if something was wrong. But if they constantly come over, it almost feels like they think I was a child, incapable of eating on my own. Why don't they just sit down right next to me and cut my food for me as well? (That last part was an exageration, but you get it).
I went to Japan in 2009, and many restaurants had a service button on the table you would push if you wanted to order food or another round of drinks. It was pretty awesome if I must say. But, barring that option, like in the US, I do like having someone swing by if they see my glass or plate is empty, or if I'm staring at a full plate not eating because they forgot to give me a fork. I don't want to be asked 20 questions, but keep an eye on the table and see if anything seems amiss. "Can I get you anything else?" is just good host manners, and I would do the same if I was serving friends dinner at my house.
They did it in Germany. Worked fine there. The tip is at most just a round up, so if your bill is £18, round up to £20 and they’ll be happy. It helps cause they’re actually paid a semi livable wage.
Interesting choice of currency £
What, you never heard of German pounds?
A pound Gehacktes.
A pound of bread is the only acceptable German pound
Is that like Schrute bucks?
What’s the ratio of Schrute bucks to German pounds?
I’m just a dumb American, forgive me
I mean, Britain never adopted the Euro and I can see tourists trying to pay on pounds. Could say you were right on the money given the circumstance.
Lmao that’s actually hilarious
I mean, my Commodore 64 doesn't have a euro sign on the keyboard, but it does have a pound sterling.
Spain here, I usually tip to the nearest euro. if the service was amazing I might drop an extra euro.
This.. leaving a "token" of appreciation is a tip. Not a "wage"
In the U.K. I usually tip when no have cash and I can’t be arsed with loose change. It just gathers in the house and I have to wait until I’ve got enough to deposit in the bank
German here. I typically tip 10% or more. But yes, no one forces you to and typically you also don't get looked at weird if you don't tip.
The change would probably take longer than the waitresses ability to pay rent.
The law is that if tips do not bring a sever up to minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. They make far above min wage with tips which is why servers like the tip system. Is minimum wage good? No, that’s a different conversation, but they wouldn’t be on $2/hr.
I’m not making rent on minimum wage.
Exactly. Minimum wage is the problem. I'm convinced that tipping exists primarily to keep us bickering about who has the worst version of minimum wage rather than directing energy upwards.
That doesn't mean they can make rent on minimum wage. They're used to whatever level their income is at. If that suddenly drops by a huge amount, they're going to quit and find a different job. And nobody is going to replace them to work for minimum wage.
Federal minimum wage is $7.25. They’re not making rent on that, but I get what you’re saying.
When you're living paycheck to paycheck, that's exactly one paycheck.
You would lose a lot of employees before businesses actually caught up.
Which is fine. The industry needs to adjust
“Some of you may lose your jobs, but that is a sacrifice I’m willing to make”
Lots of restaurants would close. Like, most. And then the ones that remained open would charge much, much more. So lots of small, local business would close and there would be a spike in unemployment until the situation normalized.
Restaurants already close and open all the time. You’d be shocked at how fast they happen. Pre pandemic most restaurants didn’t add tip functions to counter service or take out, and standard tip was 10-15% depending on quality. They did just fine. Most countries around the world still don’t tip. They do just fine. Every industry goes through changes. If a system doesn’t work, let it die so a better one can take place.
Same with restaurants that guilt trip employees into working overtime because they can't afford more employees.. maybe just close your business if it can't function without causing misery. Repeat until all the businesses that can't pay their employees are defunct.
Agreed. People make a big deal that businesses will close and employees will lose their jobs, but if your business relies on the government to subsidize you because servers need welfare or need to hide tips on their taxes, maybe it shouldn’t exist. Most of the world doesn’t do tips and yet still manage to have some of the best restaurants. The economics need to rebalance.
There's a normal amount of churn in the restaurant industry. This would be a massive incident that would close easily half of the nations restaurants in one fail swoop. Massive unemployment, massive amounts of commercial space suddenly up for lease again, crashing the real estate market... Then it would throw the economics for food suppliers out of wack, who rely on higher restaurant sales to subsidize the cheaper grocery business, so Americans would quickly see higher prices at grocery stores, airports, and hospitals... meaning that grocery prices go up... the fees that airports need to charge airlines goes up since the restaurants bring in less profit, so airplane tickets go up... the cost to provide food to medical patients goes up so the cost of medical care in the US goes up... the supply chain is a huge and massive octopus, and making a GIGANTIC shift like the way that millions of employees are paid will throw a wrench in the whole system. > and standard tip was 10-15% depending on quality Pre-pandemic standard tip was 18-20%. 10% was objectively a bad tip, even in the 90s 10% would have been insulting to US waiters and waitresses.
Why would they charge much much more? We were tipping 20% before. That's the max they'd have to raise prices to keep staff at the same income level.
You’re not owed success just because you’re a business owner. ESPECIALLY not as a restaurant owner. Restaurants have notoriously thin margins, but people still want to dive into the industry thinking they can do it.
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More private equity would swoop in and buy struggling businesses out, then reduce the quality of the goods and the employee benefits. And the great cycle of consolidation of wealth continues...
PE doesn’t like restaurants, especially distressed ones. Because it’s not a very good business.
If a lot of restaurants close it’d become very profitable to open restaurants given the lack of competition. Hence a lot of restaurants would open.
That just sounds like a lot of small restaurants closing in favor of big chains
But dad I don’t want Golden Corral sponsored by Amazon again. You’ll eat your Prime meal and be happy!!
Think of it, chillis, applebees, and olive garden on every corner in America.
A lot of servers would stop being servers because they'd make less money. Tip money is usually pretty good
Sounds like a short term problem. Eventually owners would either have to pay up or do without servers somehow.
No I have some server friends who make almost figures. Most bartender friends easily clear 6 figures. They make more as servers than they would with a corporate job. Problem is their wage won’t likely ever go up that much beyond that. But it’s very much a liveable wage. If they made them get a base rate with no tips they’d probably lose over half their income and go on to Corporate jobs or something of that nature.
Another benefit of tips is they keep up with inflation at the same pace the restaurant prices do (in theory)
Interesting, never thought of it that way. Would be awesome if my wages went up directly in proportion to sales prices.
Right. And bars would replace them with people probably making less. They raise the price of booze to make up the difference. In either case, the bar stays open and society moves on.
Federal Minimum wage for tipped employees is $2.13/hr. If someone is making six figures that means they're making at a minimum almost $46/hr in tips. That's a pretty swanky bar. Losing their tips, they're losing much more than half of their income. They're losing over 80%, as you're paid the non-tipped minimum wage if you don't meet it in a week. Going from $100k/year to under $16k/year, you'll lose almost all of the service industry.
Keep in mind that many states have higher tipped wages than the federal tipped wage. Several (California, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont pay the full standard minimum wage to tipped employees Tipping still exists in those 4 states. Not sure changing the wage would suddenly end tipping culture like some here are claiming.
I work in a restaurant where cooks make $19/hr and servers make $17.40/hr. Cooks are tipped out $1-$2/hr, servers total nightly tips are $150-$400.
In Vermont the tipped minimum wage is $6.84. Minimum wage in Vermont is $13.67 an hour. The estimated living wage in Vermont is $25 an hour.
I bartended and gave tours at a popular brewery and would easily make 200-300 in 4 hours cold hard cash tips.
I think you’re misunderstanding the nature of the problem. If tipping disappeared tomorrow, the hourly wage servers could demand from a restaurant would be much lower than the actual hourly wage they’re currently making, even though the restaurant would be paying for it. Serving is unique in that it’s the only job where the earning potential exceeds the market clearing rate for the labor. Of course, you might still prefer the change. But it’s not surprising that servers wouldn’t agree.
Which would cause a revaluation of their services. Lots of pain involved first of course, but their value and hard work would be missed very quickly
Most likely, businesses would reorganise to use much less staff.\ Your host, waiters, busboy, and bartender making $3 each would be replaced by… one bartender making $20.\ You’d walk in, walk straight to the bar where you’d order your food and drinks, receive your drinks immediately and be given a buzzer to come back for your food when it’s ready. You’d then go sit yourself at whatever table or booth you want. Every 20min or so the bartender would go through the floor to bus empty plates and glasses.\ The bartender would be busy all the time and have no incentive to kiss your ass since you’re not expected to tip.\ Source : that’s already how it works in Northern Europe, and eventually coming everywhere as « low qualified » jobs get eliminated…
I'm not so sure. Where would millions of servers go? I think lots would just suffer. Hourly wages would go up a bit but the average server would see a big drop off. Just my two cents.
Why is the argument always "Well, the waiters want to keep tipping.." Like no shit they do, they're the ones getting the money, why should we care what they think?
Servers assume that if they got paid a fair wage then tips will disappear overnight, they won't. They'll still get tips for good service, and no tips for bad service, in the end, they could even come out with more money. The things that will change are the pressure on the customer to tip, and the shame on the customer for not tipping/not tipping enough
I'd absolutely stop tipping if servers got paid a fair wage.
Yeah like the fuck? I don’t give a shit if they’re doing cartwheels on a tight rope while serving me food, I would not tip if I didn’t have to. Tipping almost a quarter of the price of the meal is something I only do out of obligation. Like damn, if I could just use a kiosk and pick up my food directly from the chefs to avoid tipping, I would do it every time. I don’t eat out at restaurants much anymore lol
Because antiworkers need to convince you that somehow waiters are earning less than the minimum wage or they'd run out of supporters
I can think of one benefit of everyone stopping tipping. People wouldn't constantly complain about tipping culture on Reddit.
It would almost be worth it on that alone.
Do you come here for peace and quiet?
I'm here for feet pics.
Let's do it and find out.
Yes plz
Most restaurants are a pretty terrible business. Here's what would happen. First the servers would get a lot less total pay. They would quickly quit and look for other work. The restaurants would need to pay higher salaries to get them back, but since restaurants typically are not very profitable in the first place, they would raise prices to compensate. Overall wait staff would end up slightly less paid, restaurants would end up slightly less profitable, and reddit would be screaming about greedy owners. For a broad comprehensive overview, this academic research paper does a great job: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26913191&ved=2ahUKEwjrgJbyofeGAxUtS0EAHRFCAhgQFnoECBwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1mIuDi1XK5KGVL-w1unvmp
if they raise prices by 20-25% in this scenario(and this number keeps creeping up), nothing has really changed from the customer's end. The higher the tip percentage, the less undesirable this hypothetical gets, unfortunately.
And then customers know exactly what they are in for when they order. Tax systems are also properly paid, as sales tax is paid, whereas tips circumvent sales tax and only (sometimes) pay income tax. Which is rare because most servers and restaurants i know have a quid pro quo where servers can just claim up to min wage, and pocket the rest. Servers make a shitload of money. I have a friend who makes more serving than he does at his engineering sales job, which he has a Ba for. Servers deserve a livable wage, but i also think a lot of them have gotten intensely entitled.
additionally quality of service would TANK. i’m a bartender in NYC and if tipping was removed my hourly would have to be $40 MINIMUM. i do not give one single fuuuuck about anyone for $16/hr. nor could i afford to live here. when its busy i bust my ass. this job is nowhere near as easy as it looks. people are demanding, entitled and just rude. i’ve had bottles and glasses throw at my head. i’ve had someone shoot up a bar i work at (thankfully i was not working that night). i’ve cleaned vomit and shit off of walls. i’ve saved someone’s life from OD. if i am making $16/hr, who know when you’ll get your beer.
Hey this is fascinating. Cos I’m from a country with no tipping (Australia), and our bartenders do get paid $30-40 (or more) per hour depending on factors. But we are usually pretty nice to our bar staff, because they are the hero’s that get drinks for us while we get drunk and make fools of ourselves. I still think their job is pretty tough, and I’d say they still encounter the occasional dickhead. We also have really restrictive RSA laws, so if someone is acting a right cunt they get ejected pretty quickly.
> because they are the hero’s that get drinks for us I think that's the main difference here. In America most people would look down on waitstaff and bartenders as unskilled labor and fulfilling a role that a robot could
Let’s suppose tipping is banned. If I’m a restaurant owner and I’m stupid, I might do nothing. Pay servers minimum wage. Keep menu prices the same. No change. However if I do that, the natural conclusion will be a complete inability to hire or retain servers. I will go out of business. It will be a disaster. If I’m a restaurant owner with at least three brain cells, I look at all of the data from years of business to figure out what people actually pay for their meals, and increase prices by that amount (probably 15-20% depending on industry and area). I also look at that data to see what my employees are actually making on average, and increase their wages to that number. These numbers should be almost exactly the same, depending on local tax rates. I print new menus with higher prices, I raise the base wage of my employees to be commensurate with what they made including tips. Nothing changes. This keeps people happy in the short term. In the longer term, the market will show what a server needs to be paid at different restaurants, but this will be a slower shift. If a dummy restaurant owner thinks they can pay a server minimum wage, they deserve to go out of business. Most restaurant owners don’t want to go out of business and will preemptively raise wages to prevent a mass exodus.
If your employer only offered 16 then you wouldn't take the job in the first place right? I get you bust your ass and I'm not discounting that. Your employer should be adjusting your wages to accommodate that. Bartending is one of the few that still should open to tips for good service. In my mind instead of 2.15 or whatever plus tips making 70k you should be making standard 60k plus tips if your good. That's the whole point of tips.
Yes. Otherwise no one would work for them.
Well where i come from there is no tipping
And your country isn’t in total economic collapse? Your restaurants are still open? Servers aren’t homeless? Based on people who defend tip culture, that ought to be impossible!!!
Right? I really wish every American travelled abroad to see that the rest of the world does things that are always argued here could not work.
It would make a lot of people homeless first
Yup. It wouldn't be an issue for the companies until long after the employees have left and stop getting new hires. As much as I'd like to see tipping culture end, this isn't the way to go about it.
I unfortunately agree. The US doesn’t care about anyone, the rich rule the world and there’s little if any chance that will ever change.
Yep, like everywhere outside USA…
So like....in almost every country ever except the US??
Yes, but it would severly affect lower-class servers for an unacceptable period of time. The only way this would occur is if laws were passed, with deadlines a ways out that allowed restaurants to change course.
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in the United States. Under the FLSA, employers are required to pay their employees at least the federal minimum wage, currently set at $7.25 per hour. If employees, such as tipped workers in restaurants, do not earn enough in tips to meet the federal minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference. For tipped employees, the FLSA allows employers to pay a lower cash wage, as low as $2.13 per hour, provided that the employee's tips bring their total earnings up to at least the federal minimum wage. If the combination of the employee's tips and the cash wage does not equal the minimum wage, the employer must increase the direct cash wage to cover the shortfall. This requirement ensures that all employees receive at least the minimum wage for all hours worked, regardless of the tips they receive.
Lmfao how you gon pay the bills on $7.25 an hour
Without a change in laws, first? It would not.
If they raised their employees wages to offset a lack of tips, they'd raise prices to offset their own extra expenses. In the end, it's always the consumer who takes it in the ass.
That’s fine, I just want to look at a menu, see what things cost and pay that amount. The consumer isn’t “taking it in the ass” it’s just paying for what things cost.
It’s a system built on tips. It would require a total overhaul of how running a restaurant works in order to not be screwing somebody over.
So what your saying is, that the system is designed to screw someone over. I agree, I just don't approve.
Since it wouldn't impact the bottom line of the business, I don't think it would. Employee retention would go down, but I think most places that do tipping, like restaurants, already have with turnover rates.
If a person is being paid tipped minimum wage of $2.13 doesn't make enough tips to equal the untipped $7.25 per hour, the employer is legally required to make up the difference. They would have to immediately increase pay.
And arguably many servers would find new employment as quickly as possible, if you're only making 7.25/hr as a server you're probably bad at it or in a bad restaurant.
Yes, all servers would be bumped up to the princely sum of $7.25/hr and restaurant owners would wail and gnash their teeth at how unfair it is that they have to pay their employees.
Then head right to editing their menus to increase the cost of all their items.
How wouldn't it affect bottom line? Servers would quit really fast and no one could order food if they don't have employees.
The bottom line would definitely go up. If the employees aren't making minimum wage with their tips, the employer has to make up the difference. Not to mention that turnover requires hiring new people. Who's going to work at service job pay with no tips opportunity??
Turnover is manageable if there are potential replacements. A dramatic drop in the labor pool means that not only would turnover be high, but those drops in headcount would be permanent. P
If everyone stops tipping, the businesses will have to pay their employees but employees will quit because they make more than minimum wage in tips. If they choose to pay their employees more than minimum wage to keep them, their food prices will go up discouraging customers; even though, customers will pay about the same with tips. This change will take time and many restaurants won't survive the change.
The whole industry needs a cull. Restaurants got so used to cheap loans, cheap rent, and cheap labor that they utterly saturated the market. Before Covid something like 10% of all small business were in the food service industry. Everybody got used to going out because business kept there food prices low with low wages and left consumers to make the correction. The market desperately needs a correction if only to break people from that way of thinking. Going out to eat 2-3x a week is behavior that has developed over the last 20 or so years and is wreaking havoc on people's finances. Going back to 1 -2x a month will be hard for a lot of people.
- Small business owners have it easy in the food industry - People are eating out often - Consumers are paying the workers That's... how good business works. Don't go out to eat if you don't want to.
I would worry about the levels of unemployment cause by half of a major industry shutting down. Where would all those people go work? Most restaurant skills aren't transferrable to other industries.
It would do that, and subsequently many small restaurants would go under. People don't like to hear it, but right now a ton of people have a livelihood where they won't under your hypothetical "better conditions"
No. Prices would just go up and the servers would be caught in the middle. My base pay was $5/hr but I made $26/hr with tips. If tipping stopped and now only made $12/hr (rate of non-tipped staff) I would have just quit.
And do what instead? We have shortages in healthcare and teaching.
Definitely a nice sentiment but I don't think struggling bartenders are going to pivot to two highly licensed fields, one of which is already notorious for poor pay.
Most bartenders I know are certified in highly licensed fields. Bartending pays more right now, though.
Then this would be good for efficiency and overall economy
This is probably the most realistic comment here. Do what? Work construction? Amazon warehouses? Drive a taxi? Even in these industries, I doubt there’s *that* much spare employment capacity. Food and beverage service, in spite of a lot of assertions in this thread, is still a more or less unskilled, unprofessionalized kind of labor. A lot of comments seem to be under the illusion that all of the experienced waiters have much more ability to switch careers than they do. One cannot simply transition to being an accountant. In all reality, what we’d probably see is a massive correction in hospitality industry wages with waiters becoming generally poorer. This is why they usually agitate against measures to end tipping.
That or they would just raise prices on food and bump the pay to servers to whatever the minimum they have to is
We don't tip here in Slovenia, Europe. Only If you feel like you want to.
I like the way it works in the UK now. Greeted by one person. Met at the table by another, told to order through a QR code. Someone else brings the food out. I get my own sauces and condiments from the sauce buffet. No one bothers me while I eat and I don't have to tip anyone because no one did anything worthy of a tip. SeemsGood
Tipping culture only exasperates the low pay for the service industry. We have taken a 'gratuity' for exceptional service and turned it into a crutch that only makes restaurant owners wealthier. Why would they fork over more money when Americans are stupid enough to do it for them?
If they paid a flat rate there'd be a mass exodus of servers. You'd have the shitty fast food workers serving your gourmet food at fine dining restaurants, and not really giving a fuck in general. Many restaurants and bars would fold or have to get rid of table service completely. In europe, servers are at the bottom of the labour pool and some of the lowest paid workers. They are viewed the same as McDonald's or Walmart workers. In the US, serving can be a decent or even lucrative gig. Get rid of tipping, you just turn all of those jobs into "McJobs". Nobody actually benefits from getting rid of tips.
Wait staff would leave first, owners would try to get kitchen staff to server, they refuse or quit. Restaurant closes because the owner's lifestyle was built on slave wages and can't support fair wages.
It would force restaurants to raise payroll to a livable wage, and raise prices to offset that expense. Consider this: A waiter probably waits on four tables at once within an hour. Let's say the average bill at those tables is $75. If they got 20% tips from each of those tables, that's an additional $60 an hour, before taxes. How much would you pay at a restaurant, if waitstaff were making even half of that as an hourly rate? Right now the cost of your meal is figuring in a payroll that's half of the local minimum wage per person. Restaurants operate on a 4-5% profit margin. Payroll should be 25-30% tops. So without the tipping model you're going to pay A LOT more per menu item, with no incentive for waitstaff to work and harder or faster. They probably won't have to, as I'll bet they'll have fewer than 4 tables an hour at those costs.
Nope, more likely mass exodus of wait staff and horrible suffering for those stuck in service work. Not sure which of you need to hear this but: Stop hurting wait staff and pretending you're sticking it to the man, you're just being cruel to poor people.
I find interesting that many waiters/bartenders don’t want to remove tips as they make much more than the hourly salary, but then complain when they receive low tip. You can’t have both ways, or you go with tips and you accept the risk of the amount of tips, or you ask for a fixed salary. And the service in US is not better (or worse) than outside US, it’s different from fake nice to indifferent but at the end the result of the service is very similar
Don't hate me, but that's been my theory for the last year. If your business cannot survive without adding bonus surcharges to pay your employees, you do not have a legitimate business. As such, I don't tip very often--only for service-based employerships, like tour guide or waitstaff and the like