Last Updated on March 1, 2022
With minimum raise on the rise and concerns of discrimination by customers, restaurants are introducing plans to end tipping.
Celebrity Chef Tom Colicchio is trying out a lunchtime experiment at his flagship restaurant, Craft.
WNYW-TV reports the Colicchio, known by many as a judge on the hit show “Top Chef,” decided to eliminate tips during lunch. In return, he’s charging customers more for their meals and paying his servers a higher hourly wage.
He stopped short of revealing the new hourly wage, but told the station it is “substantially higher” than the $5.00 per hour many tipped restaurant workers earn in the area.
The idea is appealing for restaurant owners because they know their employees can depend on a more stable paycheck while they end up having to do less paperwork (particularly where laws require more complicated accounting). It also means the money from increased prices can be better distributed to servers and kitchen staff, which is often left out of the tip distribution.
Then there’s the discrimination factor:
Several also cited research showing that diners tend to tip black servers less and that the system can encourage sexual harassment of women.
I have no doubt that this kind of thing occurs. If efforts to end tipping can get everyone treated fairly, I’m all for it.
There’s just one little problem here.
Some restaurants that have attempted this or are in the process of mulling it over have actually removed the “tip” line from receipts, forcing customers who want to leave a tip in addition to the higher fees to do so in cash. Others still have the tip as an option, even though the customers have already been charged more.
Scott Rosenberg of Sushi Yasuda discovered after establishing his restaurant’s no-tip policy that patrons were still leaving money on the table, resulting in instances of waiters having to track them down outside the restaurant to return the cash.
I’m glad to see a restaurant would return the cash; after all, if you’re going to do something as culturally bold as creating a plan to end tipping, something that has been around in American culture forever, you have to be all in with it.
But there are some people who’d still feel obligated to tip.
I’m not one of them: if I’m charged more for the food so servers can be treated more fairly, I’m not going to pay more again for additional gratuities. For what it’s worth, I usually leave about 20% as a tip. (The math is easier that way, after all.)
But if food prices are increased by at least 15% to make up for people who tip nothing, then I see no need to tip on top of that. Somehow, that seems like “double taxation” to me.
