Dec. 28, 2016 "Year of upheaval for no-tipping restaurants": Today I found this article by Julia Moskin in the Globe and Mail:
Businesses that adopted a gratuity-free pricing model have had a rocky transition, for customers, employees and owners
The owners of Huertas, a cheerful Spanish small-plates restaurant in the city’s East Village, knew they would have to raise prices when they abolished tipping last December. But when the octopus plate rose to $21 (U.S.) from $16, they looked at the plate and realized another adjustment was needed.
“We decided to add a tentacle,” an owner, Nate Adler, said. The extra limb costs about a dollar, but the more substantial dish eased the sting of the $5 price increase.
“Ultimately it’s not about the numbers on the check, but about whether the balance and the value feels right to people as they leave the restaurant,” Adler said. “It’s not an entirely rational system.”
A rational system is exactly what he was hoping for when Huertas joined several restaurants in Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group – Maialino, Marta, the Modern, North End Grill and (as of last week) Gramercy Tavern and the newly reopened Union Square Café – that have stopped accepting tips.
The switch is part of an effort to bring the country’s roughly $800 billion restaurant business, with its
frequently chaotic
and unprofessional practices and traditions,
in line with modern workplace standards.
Instead of expecting customers to tip the people who wait on them, tip-free restaurants pay all employees wages that reflect their skill and seniority.
The customer pays a fixed amount, stated in writing (in menu prices), as in virtually every other kind of consumer business, from Nordstrom to Netflix to The New York Times.
This service-included system – also called gratuity-free, tip less and, within the Union Square group, Hospitality Included – has been in place for several years at expensive restaurants such as Per Se and the Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare.
But this year, influential restaurants up and down the price scale and around the country signed on, including Le Pigeon and Park Kitchen in Portland, Ore.; Dahlia Lounge and Canlis in Seattle; and Comal, Cala and Petit Crenn in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It is too soon to tell whether the no-tipping model will become the standard, or simply an option for a few restaurants that can make it work.
What is clear after about a year is that it has forced a number of unforeseen changes, large and small, in the places that have embraced it.
To manage costs without inflicting sticker shock on customers, restaurants have to hunt down every possible savings.
At Huertas, where the octopus grew another leg, the kitchen staff has shrunk from six cooks to four or five per shift.
At Roman’s in Brooklyn, the bar is no longer always stocked with organic lemons.
The Union Square group, with its deep pockets, has begun buying more items in bulk, like paper towels, laundry services and software.
Its chefs are co-ordinating menus so they will be able to share whole animals, like holistically raised lambs from Elysian Fields Sheep Farm in Pennsylvania, instead of buying individual cuts.
Because restaurants have for so long relied on tips as an important financial element – essentially subsidizing the entire payroll for the service staff – what sounds like a simple policy decision can require a complete overhaul.
“This is more like opening a new restaurant,” said Dino Lavorini, the director of operations at the Modern, which ended tipping in November, 2015, the first restaurant in the Union Square group to do so.
In the year since, the restaurant’s profits have slipped, company officials said; they would not say by how much, but added that they had anticipated the drop and expect it will correct itself.
But some restaurants that adopted a no-tipping policy in 2016 have already revoked it:
New York restaurateurs David Chang, Tom Colicchio and Gabe Stulman all found it unworkable in the small-scale experiments they tried.
“We continue to be supportive of the no-tipping movement,” Colicchio said, “but we’ve heard from our customers and team that they just aren’t ready for it yet.”
Adler of Huertas, and others, say that one big reason to end tipping is the need for more equity between those who work in kitchens, who earn straight wages, and those who work in dining rooms, who receive tips.
A more immediate motivation, local restaurateurs said, was the approach of the $15 minimum wage in 2018, proceeding in New York on Dec. 31 with a raise to $11 an hour (from $9) for non-tipped workers.
“Labour is just going to cost more and more, and all restaurants will need to rethink how their people get paid,” Lavorini said.
The “automatic service charge” imposed at many restaurants like Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and Alinea in Chicago, can redistribute money the same way a no-tipping policy does, although states treat that revenue in different ways.
Tips are also handled differently in different states, but in New York, by law, they can be pooled and distributed only to “front of house” employees: those who work in the dining room, like waiters, bartenders and back waiters (formerly known as busboys).
“There was regularly a 500-percent deficit between the back of the house and the front of the house,” said Abram Bissell, the executive chef of the Modern.
“Like every kitchen in New York, we were having trouble attracting and retaining talent at that pay grade.”
Retaining expensively trained staff members is a major concern at the Modern. Along with the new Hospitality Included system, the restaurant started a separate revenue-sharing program for the front-of-house staff, so that raises for the other workers would not cost them money.
Some left nonetheless, believing that they could earn more in tips than the restaurant could compensate them for. (The Union Square group acknowledged that there had been “some attrition” but would not give specific numbers.)
James Napolitano, 25, a bartender, said that most of the bartenders senior to him had left.
“You can’t blame them,” he said. “They have strong skills that they can take anywhere.”
But for him, the benefits of a regular schedule and steady income – with medical insurance, paid leave and revenue sharing – have proved more valuable.
Apr. 2, 2015 "Apps are changing how we tip": Today I found this article by Nick Bilton in the Globe and Mail:
Apps like PayPal, Square, Breadcrumb, Apple Pay and Facebooks new payment feature are supposed to be making paying for things easier. Want to figure out a complicated dinner tab among five friends? Just tap a few buttons on your smartphone.
But the advent of these exciting new payment technologies is actually creating its own challenge: tipping. If you’ve purchased a ristretto in recent months, chances are you’ve experienced that awkward moment when your finger hovers above an iPad, anxiously trying to figure how much to tip.
It makes for a less- than-“seamless experience”, to borrow a favourite Silicon Valley buzzword. Part of the problem is that these devices are forcing customers to make a new and difficult choice.
Tip of the iceberg
The big issue here is that this is putting a new social pressure on customers, said Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behaviour at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, who studies tipping.
It’s up to me to leave the change in the tip jar, or not. Yet when you turn the screen around and I have to explicitly click No Tip in front of you, that’s a lot harder.
These new electronic tipping platforms are spreading quickly, not just in cafes, but also in restaurants, beauty salons, taxis and anywhere a tip jar used to be (and places it didn’t).
Technology has essentially reprogrammed tipping convention, said Nir Eyal, a tech writer and entrepreneur, who wrote a column in TechCrunch in February called, How Technology Is Tricking You Into Tipping More.
He noted that the base tip for taxi cabs used to be 8 per cent, yet with new apps, it has climbed to 15 per cent and even 25 per cent.
We’re now seeing that convention change in restaurants, too, where 20 per cent is the base tip price, he said.
A study from behavioural economists at the University of Chicago and Columbia University showed that preset tip prices in taxis generates higher tips.
(Though when tips were set too high, some people opted to not tip at all.)
People are generally lazy and pick the easiest option, Eyal said.
This is all causing more strife between customers and business owners.
Some argue that tips should be abolished altogether, and that customers should not bear the responsibility for making up for low minimum wages.
Under U. S. federal law, restaurant owners are required to pay waiters only $ 2.13 an hour, provided that tips bring their hourly pay to $ 7.25, the federal minimum wage.
Tech to the rescue
But before you switch back to old- fashioned cash, there could be a solution on the horizon from the very tech sector that created the problem in the first place.
Lockhart Steele, a founder of the restaurant blog Eater and editorial director of Vox Media, suggests that tipping may soon be a thing of the past.
It seems that the great minds of the restaurant industry have decided that the era of tipping is over.
May 8, 2022 Post Secret:
Jul. 13, 2022 Leo opinion:
For or against the abolition of tipping?
For: 51%
Against: 49%
My opinion: I am "For" after I saw the episode of Adam Ruins Everything "Abolish Tipping."
In any other job like retail, no one gets tipped.
This week's theme is about tipping:
"Restaurant finds itself in hot water with CRA over servers' electronic tips"/ "Canada's tipping culture is flawed and there's no clear fix in sight: experts"
"Tip-flation has some restaurants asking for up to 30% in tips"/ "You tip your hairdresser, but what about your mechanic? Expect to see more 'tip creep'"
My week:
Dec. 23, 2023 "Bobbie Jean Carter, Sister to Aaron and Nick Carter, Dead at 41": Today I found this article by Nicholas Rice on Yahoo:
Bobbie Jean Carter, the sister to Aaron Carter and Nick Carter, has died, multiple sources confirm to PEOPLE. She was 41.
Bobbie Jean died on Saturday morning in Florida, TMZ reported, citing her mother, Jane Carter. "I am in shock from learning of the sudden death of my daughter, Bobbie Jean, and I will need time to process the terrible reality of this happening for the third time," Jane told the outlet, referring to Bobbie Jean's death, as well as those of Aaron, who died at 34 in November 2022, and Leslie Carter, who died at 25 in January 2012.
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/bobbie-jean-carter-sister-aaron-204454127.html
My opinion: This is sad to hear that this is the third death of these adult children.
Dec. 24, 2023 Christmas Eve dinner: We had the usual roast beef from Costco with vegetables and gravy.
There were leftovers for tomorrow's dinner.
Dec. 25, 2023 Leo opinion poll:
Richard D. from Montreal, QC, would like to know:
Do you prefer a green or a white Christmas?
White Christmas
60.20% (2384)
Green Christmas
20.30% (804)
I have no preference
19.49% (772)
My opinion: I prefer a white Christmas.
White Christmas:
Pro: I'm more in the holiday mood.
Con: There's snow to shovel.
Green Christmas:
Pro: There's not a lot of snow to shovel.
Con: I'm not really in the holiday mood.
Dec. 26, 2023 City Centre mall: I went there in the afternoon for the 2 Shoppers Drug Mart, Dollarama, and Winners. I went to this mall for the last few Boxing Days. I bought:
2 bags of President's Choice Sour Cream and Onion chips: These are the best brands for sour cream and onion.
2 bags of Cheeto's Crunchy: They're my favorite kind of Cheetos.
2 cans of No-Name Regular chips
10 adult bus tickets
Dec. 27, 2023 Cleaning: My mom and I wiped the kitchen cabinets. This took an hr.
My brother wiped the living room and kitchen windows.
My grandma told us to and we clean these once or twice a year.
Only Murders in the Building: This is going to be on CTV. I will check this out.
- CTV delivers the Canadian television debut of ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING, starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez, airing three episodes of the first season nightly on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, beginning Jan. 2
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