Kevin Lemus/The Cougar
Dine-in Restaurants have traditionally fought to separate themselves in order to draw in a higher clientele that would provide their wait staff with tips.
The goal of a restaurant should be to retain wait staff in order to build long lasting client relations.
“People that have just a flat hourly wage don’t normally care enough to give the kind of effort as if you’re having to earn your wage yourself,” Arturo Murcado, a 34-year veteran to the restaurant business and currently a server at Outback Steakhouse, said. “I know people that can make $800 to $1000 a night, depending on the level of service they give in certain restaurants.”
The reason excellent service has come to be the norm for serving in restaurants is the fact that each waiter is working for the ultimate goal, a high end tip based on their aptitude to connect with the guest and elevate the going out experience.
Servers in the restaurant industry strive on the gratification that comes from seeing the accumulation of tips at the end of their shift. Most restaurant servers will constitute that quick cash, flexible scheduling and high-energy atmospheres are a saving grace from the typical 9-to-5 job.
Recently, Joe’s Crab Shack became one of the first restaurant chains to pilot a program where tipping is not necessary, due to the increase in wage of their servers to $14.
In making this shift, the money that funds an hourly wage is going to derive from a 12 to 15 percent price increase in menu items, Ignite Restaurant Group CEO Ray Blanchette said in The New York Times.
Chain restaurants typically appeal to the public for their accessibility and commercializing. They are sinister in their efforts to provide all your favorites, but now they come with a heftier price tag.
The relief that comes from daily cash flow will cease to exist for the wait staff at the 18 locations where this program is being tested.
The Modern, a New York restaurant, is converting to a new “hospitality included” policy. After three consecutive meetings, the employees were more than a little concerned about how this would affect them.
The employees “showcased an uneasy mix of go-for-broke exuberance and I-don’t-want-to-go-broke jitters” said Danny Meyer to the New York Times.
It is valid to assume that an increase in price could cause a decrease in service when considering the no-tipping policy would not longer separate a dine-in restaurant from fast food joint.
The News-Press Food Critic Jean LeBoeuf posted a Facebook poll last month that asked consumers whether they would prefer an increase in menu prices if it meant they would not have to tip the “70 percent preferred tipping.”
If the tradition of tipping is revoked from all restaurants, the customer service factor would not be vital in whether or not one would get paid. A cultural shift that makes dining out a positive overall experience would not be as consistent.
It is a commendable attempt to level the playing field for servers to be paid hourly to compensate for slow customer traffic, but with the demands of restaurant standards the gratuity given should be in the hands of the customer.
Opinion columnist Phylicia Davidson is an English senior and may be reached at [email protected]
Ah … the consequences of low pay economics. It gets you in the backside … every time.
Jones, your racism is showing. You should probably cover that up with your tin foil hat before the evil, socialist Daily Cougar takes over your mind forcing you to tip black waitresses an extra 20%!
Christ Organite … don’t you get it. I’m numb to your calls of racism. The sky has fallen once to many times, and I and so many others are no longer afraid. I fill your small brain with fact after fact … and all you got is Race. How small of you. And apparently you seem to post the same stuff as if you were a Socialist robot.
So numb you sought to say something extraordinarily defensive in the most reactive way possible.
So unafraid that you invent wild conspiracy theories that would put John Greenwald Jr. to shame.
So factual that you have contributed virtually nothing to this board other than hate, ignorance, disrespect, and outright stupidity.
Again … numb.
*numb-minded
Numb-minded ‘eh … and not yourself … you can’t write more than a few lines without thinking of someone else’s words, and you think of yourself as an elitist.
I’m not a racist. But you throw the word around, and now someone refuses to cower to you worthless self, and you are flailing in the wind.
Oh, you got something brown … on your nose.
Bo, first your statement about Seattle is miss-leading and all the conservative reports (Fox, Forbes) have been miss-using the data. “Decline In Restaurant Employment Is Less Than 1 Percent. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)”
http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/08/11/fox-hypes-cherry-picked-data-to-attack-seattle/204889
Your statements on abortion and black populating have no bases in any study or fact.
As for tipping, ask yourself, why is it the only industry where customers are responsible for paying the employees, why don’t the restaurants do what every other business must, pay their employees a fair wage? When you purchase any other good you are not expected to tip nor are the wages of the workers depended on it. Tipping started in America after prohibition and restaurants saw a massive drop in profits. So owners started encouraging tipping just so they could pay their servers. Before that tipping was seen as undemocratic bribery.
As for the author’s claim about better service with tipping, a study at Cornell University in 2000 showed customers that receive great service tip on average just 1% more than customers that don’t tip. So that argument that “valid to assume that an increase in price could cause a decrease in service” is completely unfounded.
I beg to differ Theresa … give it time if you are so sure of yourself. Heck, it took Che Guevara a few years for him to ruin the Cuban economy. In running restaurants … generally 30 to 35 percent of costs go to labor. Restaurants have seven years to raise the MinWage to $15/hr. But the restaurants that have old owners or want to pull up stakes and open out side city limits or out of state; some close because of bad or under-performing locations, that accounts for your 1% closings. But some of those closures were beloved Seattle hangouts.
And it doesn’t just include restaurants … business with 500 employees or more will take hits with mandated increases as well, and the $15.00/hr mandates are only a few years away. And do look for layoffs to get under the 500 number … lots of layoffs. SeaGovs insistence on artificially raising pay really bites into salary allocations, and messing with tried and true methods; well, look at ObamaCare and the disaster it has become.
Mandated pay raises instead of merit based raises will force changes by businesses big and small, and quality control will suffer. And with SeaGov, Schedule 2 will mandate upwards of $17/hr by 2024. All of this will come back to bite SeaGov … in time. There are a lot of Socialists in Washington state; but even the Socialist Rich Elites, which are the majority of rich people … have their price. By that time most of the mandated MinWage increases will have taken place, and the numbers of business closing will not be 1%.
Then how come in Japan and almost every other modern country where they pay a living wage and don’t tip they are not economically ruined? As our own history showed, tipping used to be considered bribery and did not happen until prohibition. Until then we got along fine with serves being paid so they did not need tips. And if raises wages is bad then why did Henry Ford make it a corner stone in his company and give time off? Simple reason, if people have money over what they need to live and the leisure time, they buy things. Consumerism is the end and be all of capitalism, with out it there is no capitalism, no economy. We work harder and longer hours, and are more productive now then at any other time in our history but wages are flat unless you are a CEO or executive. This is fact. Its time companies re-balance and pay workers fairly and restore the middle class.
SocDems always point out the virtues of other countries … if you like Japan … and all the smallness that goes on there … please move. Ford paid his troops double the going wage, to get the most qualified people he could get. And this living wage that SocDems speak highly off; no one seems to be getting above it; and experiencing prosperity is never talked of by the SocDem leaders, at least not for the unElite.
Wrong Ford paid his workers more the the reason I stated and so they could afford the car they were making. That is historical fact. Tell me why conservatives always tell anyone that points out something another country does successfully to move there?
With Ford it semantics. And I tell you move there … because people are so easy to put down the US … which is not a perfect country, but its the best out there. Yet SocDems see it as the most evil country. Ridiculous. I’ve noticed that you’ve purposely avoided my abortion comments?
What abortion comments? Sorry did not see any and how are they relevant ti the conversation? No we are not the most evil country, but we have done a lot of S**ty things and we can improve a lot. It is because I love my country I want the best for it and FROM it. I patriot is not one that parrots “we’re number 1” they are the one’s that stand up and say “Hold on, that is not right and lets fix it!” They are the ones always looking to improve the system, call out the wrongs despite it being unpopular. And with Ford it was not semantics, it was literally what he wrote and said as to why he paid his people more and gave them Saturday off as well as Sunday, so they could afford to purchase the cars they made and send the money, thus helping the economy. There is no debate there, he inked it himself. It was not to hire the best, but to improve capitalism.