I was looking at the New York Time Food issue where they brushed the topic on tipping, “Why Tip
“?. I thought this article brought up many good points. Why tip? Why not have a automatic service charge? What a wonderful point! The article talked about a restaurant San Diego called the Linkery that has done away with tips all together and make their customers pay a mandatory 18 percent service charge. I have worked in many restaurants where the back of the house (kitchen staff) and the front of the house (Servers, hostess, and bussers) never really see eye to eye on alot of topics. Some cooks simply do not care that your table has been waiting for 45 minutes for their food. They don’t care because they’re aren’t seeing any of your tips from your tables, so they don’t care if you get a tip or not. Chefs do make more hourly wage than the servers, but the servers are bringing home the big money at the end of the day. This difference in income makes for a unbalance in power. The chefs become resentful to most service crews. It’s just the way it is? I have seen the unbalance in all of the restaurants I have been employed at. Making a mandatory service charge would change the unbalance between the chefs and the servers.
I honestly don’t know if they made a mandatory service charge if I would still serve tables, because I work at a restaurant now where we kick back to the house three percent of our sales (to the back of the house). Most restaurants do not employ this house rule. l would not serve tables anymore because I would not be making the money that I am use too. Where I’m employed now has a great system, you tip the house (Chefs, bussers, and hostess) a portion of your total sales. This is so the back of the house sees some of your tips, but the restaurant does not have that mandatory service charge. So at the end of the day the money I make is all up to how hard I work. This topic is a double edge sword to me. I think that is a a wonderful point and would help run a restaurant as a team, but they would be taking money out of my pocket. What’s a server to do?
Tipping is very old fashioned, but it’s the way restaurants in America have done it from the beginning. Many people don’t like change. Change has to happen one restaurant at a time. Here is some audio from a local server on automatic service charges.
May I take your order?
