Minimum wage $15.

[dubhead]

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Random thought, would you guys be opposed to a restaurant charging a 5% service fee? To protect the servers from out of pocket tip outs.

I ran into a few places in Portland that had a built in fee of about 5% essentialy saying it went toward paying a living wage and benefits. Thought about factoring it out of the tip but the food and service was out of this world compared to here so still felt fine tipping 15%.

[Mitsu3000gt]

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No one is really disagreeing with you Mitsu as what you are saying is really reasonable but then this is the system we have in place so that's that I have always looked at it as a when in rome thing. My biggest concern right now is not tipping but where I can travel to and whether weed is legal there haha

So in Calgary Earls tried that 16% flat tipping but it didn't work. Has any local restaurants tried anything similar or no tipping at all?

Has anyone been to Seattle? Curious how it's going over there as they have a $15 min wage. Google tells me some places have raised their prices by 20% and no tipping and others do the flat tipping 15-20%.

Random thought, would you guys be opposed to a restaurant charging a 5% service fee? To protect the servers from out of pocket tip outs.

Why would menu prices go up? To my knowledge the restaurant isn't taking the tips, only the staff, and they aren't paying the staff below minimum wage which would be the only real argument to expect tips. Wait staff is already getting paid a fair living wage before tips are factored in. If people still want to tip, they can go right ahead, but it shouldn't be an expectation - if that were the mindset, people would actually work for their tips. Everywhere else in the world I've been with no tipping has had comparable or cheaper restaurant food pricing to Calgary - probably hard to do a direct comparison but it really didn't seem like they had to add ~20% to everything to pay their workers a fair wage and still make money. The skilled employees in a restaurant (cooks, maybe a manager) would require more money by default, but any successful restaurant would have no trouble paying them.

Auto-grat or service fees are the absolute worst forms of 'tipping' because it requires the customer to make a big deal about it if they want to get it to get it removed or lowered. Also, restaurants that do this always award themselves an extremely generous auto-tip amount. Further, it applies to wine and booze which is ridiculous - ordering a $500 bottle of wine should not automatically cost an extra $100 because I am in a party of 8 instead of 2. Again it preys on the likelihood that the customer won't want the hassle or possible uncomfortable situation of asking for it to be removed - this is backwards of how a business so deeply rooted in the customer service sector should operate IMO.

Other than obviously no tipping expectation, the best way to do it is before we got into the chip/pin credit cards - bill is left on the table and there is no employee hovering over your shoulder or feeding you fake compliments at the very moment you are entering the tip amount into the machine. You just write down the tip, if any, sign and leave - you will be gone before anyone sees the tip amount, taking most of the awkwardness and expectations out of the picture.

At the end of the day I think the two best solutions are 1) High minimum wage (like we already have) and no tips, or 2) Low wage (Like $3-5/hr) + tips. The restaurant owner is in the same financial position either way, and would probably MUCH prefer option 2 haha. The problem is tipping culture is so ingrained in Calgary that I can't see anything really ever changing.

[sabad66]

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It's funny that tipping comes up because minimum wage went up. These poor fuckers are still making $15/hr, give them a decent damned tip if you can afford it lol.

agreed. maybe it's cuz my sister is a waitress, but i'm gonna go against the grain of this thread and say that i won't change my tipping habits. it's still 10-20% from me.

[msommers]

It's pretty common for the house to take a cut of the tips: 2-3%

[dubhead]

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Why would menu prices go up? To my knowledge the restaurant isn't taking the tips, only the staff, and they aren't paying the staff below minimum wage which would be the only real argument to expect tips. Wait staff is already getting paid a fair living wage before tips are factored in. If people still want to tip, they can go right ahead, but it shouldn't be an expectation - if that were the mindset, people would actually work for their tips. Everywhere else in the world I've been with no tipping has had comparable or cheaper restaurant food pricing to Calgary - probably hard to do a direct comparison but it really didn't seem like they had to add ~20% to everything to pay their workers a fair wage and still make money. The skilled employees in a restaurant (cooks, maybe a manager) would require more money by default, but any successful restaurant would have no trouble paying them.

Auto-grat or service fees are the absolute worst forms of 'tipping' because it requires the customer to make a big deal about it if they want to get it to get it removed or lowered. Also, restaurants that do this always award themselves an extremely generous auto-tip amount. Further, it applies to wine and booze which is ridiculous - ordering a $500 bottle of wine should not automatically cost an extra $100 because I am in a party of 8 instead of 2. Again it preys on the likelihood that the customer won't want the hassle or possible uncomfortable situation of asking for it to be removed - this is backwards of how a business so deeply rooted in the customer service sector should operate IMO.

Other than obviously no tipping expectation, the best way to do it is before we got into the chip/pin credit cards - bill is left on the table and there is no employee hovering over your shoulder or feeding you fake compliments at the very moment you are entering the tip amount into the machine. You just write down the tip, if any, sign and leave - you will be gone before anyone sees the tip amount, taking most of the awkwardness and expectations out of the picture.

At the end of the day I think the two best solutions are 1) High minimum wage (like we already have) and no tips, or 2) Low wage (Like $3-5/hr) + tips. The restaurant owner is in the same financial position either way, and would probably MUCH prefer option 2 haha. The problem is tipping culture is so ingrained in Calgary that I can't see anything really ever changing.

The worst when you’re out with a larger group and they tack on 8% but don’t bother telling anyone. Then the machine goes around to each person and they just hit their auto tip on top of the 8% already added. Sneaky.

[Mitsu3000gt]

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It's pretty common for the house to take a cut of the tips: 2-3%

I didn't think restaurant owners were allowed to take tips from their staff but I could be wrong. 2-3% is pretty low though at least. And they are surely getting 0% of any cash tip haha.

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The worst when you’re out with a larger group and they tack on 8% but don’t bother telling anyone. Then the machine goes around to each person and they just hit their auto tip on top of the 8% already added. Sneaky.

I've seen that happen a lot in large groups for work lunches/dinners, they never warn you. I guess to be fair it might be in some tiny print on the back page of the menu, but it's just shady all round. Even if you notice it later, very few groups of customers are going to go up one by one and have their tips adjusted - especially if you don't notice it until later. Usually it's an 18-22% auto grat though, 8% is low. I remember one time our group got kicked out of our table and moved outside in the rain, nothing at all was offered as an apology or compensation (you'd think a free dessert or shot or something that cost the restaurant almost nothing), but instead just an auto-grat for 20% haha. Bill was around $800, half booze.

[spikerS]

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call centers etc all take a ton of shit from the general public and their pissy attitudes. I really think that everyone needs to work those jobs at least once in their life to understand that shitting on people in jobs you deem 'below you' makes you a piece of shit.

QFT. Back in the day when I started with TELUS, I worked in technical support for cell phones. You would not believe the amount of shit dumped on me by customers because something didn't work on their phones. And how angry they would get when I asked them to just power off and then turn it back on. It would be a constant barrage of insults and snide remarks until the phone turned back on and magically worked again.

[msommers]

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I didn't think restaurant owners were allowed to take tips from their staff but I could be wrong. 2-3% is pretty low though at least. And they are surely getting 0% of any cash tip haha.

Lots of things that happen in a restaurant aren't supposed to lol.

[prelude98h22]

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It's pretty common for the house to take a cut of the tips: 2-3%

It is actually more common to take a cut of the server's total sales. And its closer to 5-7% with the new minimum wage increase. Ie a server rings out $1000 in one night they have to give at least $50-$70 to the house. It does not matter if the customer pays cash or debit/credit.

[max_boost]

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Why would menu prices go up?

My guess is, when min wage goes up, it goes up all across the board. I only have one employee that was making less than $15 and everyone else is around $20 so min wage increase is okay for me.

The guy making $13 goes to $15

Buddy making $15 isn't gonna be happy and wants a $2 bump too.

Buddy making $17 isn't gonna be happy and wants a $2 bump too.

Menu prices go up to make up for the increase in wages.

Add a 5% service charge to prevent servers from going out of pocket.

Customers tip if you want but not expected.

Seems reasonable. Dunno. lol

[blownz]

^ that is the problem so a restarants total payroll costs see a significant bump. The way I see it, servers got about a 10% bump this week. Owners raised prices about 5% to cover. So last week, on a $100 meal I tip $20% so a total of $120. This week that meal is now $105 and if I tip 20% that is a total of $126. So not only did the server get a 10% increase to their base wage, they earned an extra 5% tip money. So to compensate I honestly think I (we) should in general tip about 5% less. Servers should still be making more than before and we aren't really spending much less. Make sense? That said last night I went for dinner with my wife and it was just under $200 and I tipped $40 (I always like even numbers...) but it is a small place, and we are always served by one of two people and one of them is the owner so I don't really want to be cheap there. But I honestly think I am going to try to start tipping in the 10-15% range instead of the 15-20% range.

[spikerS]

i still tip the traditional 0-5-10-15% model.

[dirtsniffer]

I highly doubt servers tip out 7% in total let alone to the house. More realistically, they tip out 5% in total. And that gets split between the kitchen, the bar, and the house. Which includes runners, hostess and manager. Doesn't go to paying for salaries or business expenses.

[CompletelyNumb]

Most Calgary restaurants ive come to know have a 5% to 8% tipout on a servers sales. I've heard of a few real fancy places that pushed 10%.

Biggest split goes to bar and kitchen usually. Hostesses, runners and management come second to them.

[speedog]

I wonder how many people that have posted in this thread about restaurant/bar tips/tip outs/whatever have actually worked in a restaurant/bar or are they just going off of second/third hand information or better yet, are just talking out of their asses?

It just seems like there's an incredible amount of knowledgeable people in this thread when in reality there's probably very few who have walked the talk.

[CompletelyNumb]

Believable for many here to have worked in hospitality at one point.

I've worked in a bar, wife worked as a server during the mega recession. Several friends in hospitality. One MWD hand took a full time cook job at a restaurant here in town, still there to this day.

I'd be more distrustful of the advice in the investing forum :p

[bjstare]

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Believable for many here to have worked in hospitality at one point.

I've worked in a bar, wife worked as a server during the mega recession. Several friends in hospitality. One MWD hand took a full time cook job at a restaurant here in town, still there to this day.

I'd be more distrustful of the advice in the investing forum :p

Haha

[max_boost]

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I wonder how many people that have posted in this thread about restaurant/bar tips/tip outs/whatever have actually worked in a restaurant/bar or are they just going off of second/third hand information or better yet, are just talking out of their asses?

It just seems like there's an incredible amount of knowledgeable people in this thread when in reality there's probably very few who have walked the talk.

You can trust me bro. My entire squad is in the industry.