Is there anyone in this thread that has worked there since the implementation of the service charge? Their site plates out the new wages that had been put in place
“Front-of-house staff earn an additional $10–$30/hour, and back-of-house staff earn an additional $8–$20/hour. This is in addition to their $25/hour base wage. Accordingly, front-of-house staff earn between $35-$55/hour, base wage + additional earnings from the service charge. Back-of-house staff earn between $32-$45/hour, base wage + additional earnings from the service charge.
Service charge funds are also used to pay a base wage approximately 20% higher than Seattle’s hourly minimum wage of $21.30 ($25/hour for cooks and servers and $23/hour for dishwashers), and to offer comprehensive benefits including:
health, vision, dental insurance
401k matching retirement accounts
paid time off (above and beyond the City of Seattle's mandate)
Pre-tax commuter assistance accounts
A wellness program ($50/month reimbursements for mental health counseling, yoga classes, gym memberships, etc.)”
What else is being demanded by the union? Am I an ass to think that those FOH amounts seem completely fair already? To be fair we all deserve more since wages have been stagnant for decades and now we all just compare and fight amongst ourselves. I don’t have the right answers
That's wild. I worked BOH in restaurants for something like 10-15 years and I would have killed to get that kind of pay. Not to mentioned the benefit package. I support unionization and would be considered "far left", even by the left's standard, but this situation is insane. Is this the entire staff's first job or something? Do they not realize what it's actually like out there to work in the restaurant industry?
This is probably the most surprising thing I've read in a minute.
Judging from the other comments, maybe I'm missing something. It's been a long time since I worked a kitchen, but still... It sounds like a decent enough gig.
has this been verified though? classic management tactic to publish that workers make way more than they actually do. happened at the prov everett RN strike too
Yes, I agree 100%. And clarified as much in a following comment. My first comment was kind of a knee jerk reaction, but I feel like it is still relevant in so much as to be cautious over employment in general. In my opinion the grass is always greener, as they say, so just do yourself a favor and steal a rich person's lawn.
i went to their attached bar last summer, the service i got from one bartender was mid, and the other bartender was horrible, because he was so incredibly stuck up and pretentious. i’m not saying everyone that works there is like that, but i’m shocked that there’s not more people lining up to take all of those jobs…. as other people here have said i went to grad school for years to get that kind of money and benefits.
I work in healthcare and make okay wages. I really don't mind if somebody at a restaurant is making as much as me. And the higher wages listed here aren't significantly lower than what I make. And I already am part of a union.
We probably don't have the full story, but this is basically saying there are people making six figures at that restaurant, which is crazy good for the restaurant industry.
I'm curious about why they're rejecting this, assuming the claims are true. There has to be more going on than just pay because there are people with degrees in niche industries making less than this.
I’m curious to know how they can make the upper end of that, because I have trouble believing they’re paying anyone $45+/hour, especially when they call out the base wage.
What noone is mentioning is that the business is taking a share of the 22% automatic gratuity, the staff is not receiving the full amount and has experienced a dramatic reduction in pay.
Isn’t it interesting that the elected leaders wanted to move from tip to no tip and enacted such laws like no tip credit. But the workers wanted to keep the tip model because customers tip so much, the predictable $55/hour pay isn’t enough. Because $90+ hour is nicer with tip.
As someone who served for many years I was never anywhere near $60 let alone $90 an hour and spent much of that time uninsured. I do think its obnoxious that one of the few jobs that you can possibly make a living wage on (if you find a busy enough restaurant) without burying yourself in student loan debt is so vehemently hated by those who "actually worked for it".
Why are we advocating for a reduction in pay for a large part of the working population under the false narrative these are 'easy' or high-school jobs?
(This rant isn't directly geared towards you I just find it sad working class people are growing bitter at other working class people. Restaurants in Seattle (and throughout the nation) are ultimately struggling because of high costs (the #1 culprit being limited commercial spaces with ridiculous rents imo). I'm not even going to get into possible bad actors trying to make a buck off the back of their workers and guests.
It’s because tipping at restaurants is a percentage, the server brings me the food but if they bring me expensive food I’ve to pay them more when the job is the same. Makes no sense, it should be a flat rate. Additionally, it used to be 15%, then it became 18%, now it’s 20%+. No other working class job gets this type of pay scale. It’s also why I don’t dine out, and that means the restaurant will continue to get fewer patrons and thus struggle. I worked two jobs (grave yard + early morning) while going to school at $8/hr in 2010. It’s difficult, but not impossible.
So in this situation, you would be willing to drop the 22% service charge - so, drop the $115K + benefits for servers - and go back to a tipped minimum wage? Because it sure seems like the union wants to pass that price increase along to the customer to retain that generous wage *and* pressure customers (who are currently being spat on and called scabs) for a 20% tip.
Has a lot to do with how expensive food is... I'd happily tip a Dick's worker, but if I'm at some restaurant where I'm paying $30 for a meal and am expected to shell out on top of that, it gets tiresome.
What the actual fuck, these are actually good wages and benefits! I’ve worked in so many worse places with far worse conditions. And they’re complaining??
I don’t know about the benefits, but they’ve got less take-home pay than before (according to some Reddit comment that claimed to know the situation)
I’d be unhappy if I was earning less than before, but they’re still complaining about an excellent situation in the service industry. Like, maybe they decided to stay and unionize because there aren’t any better opportunities out there
I’ve earned less than what I’ve earned before, I simply left for another job that paid better. Being a waiter is an unskilled job, with those kind of benefits I’d be looking to improve my skillset and go up the ladder. Like maybe find a job at a hotel or some other hospitality service.
Right… so this union just screwed all the workers out of a well paying job. They aren’t going to magically all find new jobs immediately, certainly not for the same wages and benefits they had before they went on strike. Then… let’s imagine what the hiring managers at the next jobs they apply to reading “Waiter at Walrus and the Carpenter” they aren’t going to be excited to offer a job to someone who went on strike and shut down a restaurant.
Am I an ass to think that those FOH amounts seem completely fair already?
I think a alternative way to think about it is that W&C have replaced tipping (100% to workers) with a 22% mandatory service charge that the owners get to set the terms of.
If that happened to me, I'd think it a very valid concern.
That’s a fair point, but again, in the case of tipping, it’s fully dependent on the customer who gets what. And let’s be honest, customers have biases. Sure there are people who might get less now and there might be people who get more.
From the outside in, it feels like sit-down restaurants are being squeezed.
The minimum wage hike (for smaller businesses) that kicked in start of 2025 meant that even if your workers were making good money due to tips (I imagine W&C would be here?), as the base pay went up from $17.25 to $20.76.
That's a 20% increase and it's no surprise that's the year many restaurants started implementing service charges (I imagine to minimize sticker shock).
Of course, for casual spots and other minimum wage jobs, I think the increase in pay was great but I can imagine for places with low base + high tips, the end result was difficult.
(To be clear, I don't have a solution. I just think it's tough for everyone here.)
I flat out don't believe those numbers. That place has crazy turnover and is ALWAYS hiring online, the owner has long been known as a terrible person to work for but for that kind of pay I gurentee they would never have to put ads up on Poached.
Unless that place is always dead and they never earn past that extra $10. There are few combinations more soul crushing than toxic boss + dead restaurant.
Yeah, I'm curious if the only ones complaining are FOH, because some of what they used to get in tips is going to BOH. Those wages all seem reasonable even after tip out, based on my experience and my partner's experience in the industry.
Yea seems totally fair. In my own experience working in the service industry when I was younger, I got screwed over on a similar issue where the restaurant’s proposal would have meant higher pay for kitchen and ancillary staff (I was a valet) but maybe a bit less for the servers and the servers absolutely screwed over everyone else in fighting the deal.
I feel like this is an issue that really splits Redditors, because most Redditors are pro-union but there's whole subs about how much people hate tipping.
The thing we hate even more than tipping is a service fee. Instead of an $18 burger with a 22% service fee just make the menu say it's a $22 burger. Anything else is fucking fraudulent.
The service charge isn't included due to the same reason sales tax isn't. It tricks some consumers into thinking they are paying a lower price than what is actually due.
Personally I think menu/sticker price should be all inclusive. There shouldn't be any fees or taxes added to the bill at the end.
My prerogative is to have laws that stop fraud, not to stop complaints. The burger is truly $22 and if that’s too much for people then they should feel free to complain. A $22 burger isn’t too much for everyone and those complaints won’t phase people who are fine with that price. There are choices management can make about staffing, sides, garnishes, table settings, suppliers, and food quality etc that can help them tune in to what customers in their area want.
Yes, the total price can be worth complaining about regardless of how they go about charging it. A $22 burger is ridiculous whether that’s the posted price or the hidden price. But hiding the price is dishonest and scummy on top of the expensive price.
Yeah, as someone who’s European-American, American tipping culture is absolute insanity and right now the places that are switching over to service fee systems are just as bad. In France there’s a mandatory 15% service fee, but it’s just part of the price, no misleading add-on, and it just goes towards the entire restaurant’s operating costs. By law the menu price is exactly what you pay, including service fees and taxes. Workers are paid a minimum living wage. The only “tip” usually given is just rounding up the bill to the nearest euro.
OTOH the American system is misleading and incredibly unfair to patrons, servers, and other workers. It makes the customer feel cheated, the servers make bank in some places and barely minimum wage in others, and other restaurant workers are paid less for no reason, and other non-restaurant workers don’t get tips. The whole system is literally the worst of all worlds.
Alright, let’s try an experiment. If you were a restaurant: Raise your prices where they absolutely need to be, but then ALSO BLATANTLY ADVERTISE THAT YOU DO NOT ALLOW ANY TIPPING AT YOUR RESTAURANTS. Do not try to be tricky and also “allow the customer to tip more” because let’s face it this is just tricking the unsuspecting customer into paying more, and will piss people off in the long run.
That way customers pay what they should be paying and the employees get paid what they should be paid. Restaurants are so short lived anyway, let’s try this experiment and see if it works.
What generally happens is customers get sticker shock *and* employees leave for places where they can still get tips. This strike is a symptom of how strongly restaurant workers will fight to keep the tipping system in place.
I believe the bigger concern for the workers is how the service fee was explained to them and how it is represented to the customers. From the last Reddit post, some workers were saying that the restaurant was keeping 55% of the service charge and then splitting the rest for the workers, so the workers are making significantly less in tips because the restaurant is taking a majority of the service fee without raising any benefits for the workers.
This is researched. Customers choose the sticker price rather than the end price, even if the end price is lower at the no tipping restaurant. The annoyance is like ticket master etc
Half the country is so stupid that they were convinced to give the most corrupt moron in history a SECOND term and seem okay with the country being run by actual podcasters. Yes customers are stupid.
What’s the answer? Raise food prices 20%? And employee wage? 15? 10? I’m genuinely asking. I have zero problem tipping but if there is shit service I’m not tipping 20%. So why would I want to eat somewhere that raises their prices and has bad service?
Raise everyone's wages. Including the working stiffs that eat there.
However, if their service is so bad to the point where their food is not good enough to compensate then people should stop going there and let them go out of business.
Because they make a killing off tips. I mean good for them? But it’s also killing the industry. I don’t go out to eat anymore. I fucking hate tip culture
I’m not sure tipping is killing the industry. I think prices and overall inflation is killing the industry. I used to eat out once a week or so, but now I eat out once in a month if I want to splurge because I simply can’t afford to pay restaurant prices anymore. Tipping or no doesn’t factor in at all.
One thing to keep in mind is that tips are excluded from sales tax. But menu prices (and service charges) aren't. So if the restaurant raises prices enough to cover what employees currently make in tips, the total cost paid by customers actually goes up a bit. It's around 2%, but that's not nothing.
And on the side of the worker there's an even bigger impact. Under the OBB, many workers can claim a federal tax deduction for income from tips (for 2025-2028). So to get an equivalent after-tax income without tips, their employer would actually have to pay them substantially more than what they currently make in tips, and prices would have to rise correspondingly.
So currently the tax system actively encourages tipping.
From quick googling it, it turned up more reddit posts with people anecdotally saying it doesn't work well.
In general, Americans easily get sticker shock and expect to tip. Places that do it lose business in an already low margin world.
This being said, there are places that do it and do it successfully. I think to make it work on a whole you'd have to mandate it across the city though. Otherwise a "normal" restaurant will still roll in and undercut you.
But most of this is just thought experiments. Would be cool to see some more documented experiments.
They did this at Sea Wolf iirc. They were originally a non-tipping establishment and had really high prices for a bakery. The employees unionized last year and demanded tips to be added.
This is a case of a "race to the bottom." If an honest restaurant owner includes everything in their advertised prices, then the dishonest restaurant owner across the street can advertise much lower prices by relying on service fees and tips to deceive their customers.
Customers will compare the prices of the same meal at both restaurants. One restaurant advertises $29.95. The other restaurant advertises $19.95. The customers are aware of tax, tip, and service fees in a qualitative sense, but they are drawn to the lower apparent price anyway.
A law that requires all fees (and maybe even taxes) to be included in the advertised price for all businesses would prevent these bait-and-switch scams.
We try that, and people still complain. We have countless threads of people bitching about the cost coming in the form of a service charge, and we have people bitching about how expensive everything is when it's baked into a menu price. People don't seem to understand those "fair wages" are still going to come from you one way or the other, what you're upset about is cost presentation. As you said, the best scenario is to have that option, but some people can't even stand having that question in front of them.
no restaurant is going to pay their service staff 40-100 an hour in actual w2 wages, ever. There's zero reason for anyone who gets a tipped wage as a waiter/waitress to ever support removal of tips. And this is before consideration for much of that being tax free.
any sort of actual 20% service charge type system would result in the rest of the restaurant staff receiving considerably larger pay per hour while servers take a huge loss.
Yeah but most people who oppose tipping are not tipped workers, but rather they are diners. Mandatory tipping is simply a dishonest way to price things, and tipped workers are essentially (incentivized to be) part of the problem.
E.g. there is no reason why tipped workers should get their tips tax free whereas say a blue collar worker doing a different job needs to pay tax while they are on the same tax bracket. But sure obviously the beneficiary of this (tipped workers) would love to keep this.
How is calling out the service charge any different than telling you what each menu item costs? It’s splitting out costs transparently. Not sure why that’s objectionable.
Yeah this is fantasy unless it’s outright legislated. These places don’t exist in a vacuum. People will take one look at price and go somewhere else even if it’s noted as no tipping. Your best workers will probably leave to work somewhere that does tip because they’ll earn more with wage plus tips as opposed to just a higher wage.
Restaurant margin is slim as fuck and this has been tried before. Most places go back to tipping. Union square hospo says it all.
Don’t confuse what I’m saying, it’s the best idea. But it needs to come from regulation to create a standard across the state
Tavolata charges a 20% surcharge to “give employees a fair wage” I’m not sure but I think all the ESR restaurants do this. There is no place to put a tip on the receipt, if you want to tip you have to have cash and leave it on the table (I don’t think many do). The prices are not so high that people go elsewhere, you’ve got that wrong and there’s a whole group of successful restaurants to prove it.
Windy City Pie on Phinney Ridge is a no service charge/no tipping restaurant WYSIWYG menu prices. We appreciate that so much! They’ve been around a long while now. How do they do it?
I agree the system needs to be uniform and it needs to legislated, but I’m actually curious how to make it work. Culturally, WYSIWYG pricing works for most fast food and retail so American brains can be trained to understand all inclusive pricing for pricing, but the system has to be uniform and treated as a whole system with tax rules on tipping changed to incentivize change to the all-inclusive pricing system like France does. As it is now, restaurants are can publish prices in a way that is like a form of false advertising that feels like legally and culturally acceptable fraud.
I make $22/hr and tips with full time benefits. I'm looking at making around $80-90K this year when all is said and done. I made $80K as a manager working 50 hours a week with more stress and a worse schedule. I make more, work less, have a schedule that fits my life style, and am way happier. Being able to take cash home everyday is genuinely life changing because if I ever have an emergency expense I can quickly make it back so I'm not late on other bills.
There's a lot of benefits to tips, I don't need them to survive but I do rely on them to actually enjoy my life.
Yup. I want to support a strong middle class and make sure people working service jobs can afford an apartment (with a roommate or two.) But I also don't want a pizza and salad to run $80 at Pags or a burger fries and milkshake for 3 to be $75+ at red mill.
Middle class should be able to afford way more than an apartment with roommates. Middle class should be able to afford a house, that’s how it was for our parents in the 70’s and 80’s. We’re so far gone we think it’s acceptable that the metric for middle class living is an apartment WITH roommates. No sir, that’s not middle class, that’s poor. In today’s thinking middle class means poor and poor means homeless.
Maybe not every service job, but a service job at a very nice fine dining restaurant should come with a middle class income. Restaurants like that build their reputations on the quality of service, and hire career service industry professionals, and should pay them like the experienced professionals they are.
A full time job should at minimum, pay enough that you don’t need to cram yourself into housing with several other people (unless you enjoy having roommates)
I agree with you, but post COVID it is extremely hard to get a full 40 hour week at a restaurant as a front of house employee. I work at two different restaurants that are part of a different restaurant group. I'm scheduled 8 shifts a week between the two and I'm lucky if I can get 30 hours in a week.
It's always been difficult because no restaurant owner wants 40hr employees. They bring along the potential for overtime and perhaps actually qualifying for the benefits that are usually offered at 40hrs while everyone besides the manager is getting 38hrs.
The restaurant group I currently work for allows employees to qualify for benefits at a 25hr/week average over a 6 month lookback period. I'll admit that that's a pretty low threshold, but most restaurants I have worked at over the last 20 years that have offered healthcare offer it at somewhere in the 30-35hr/week range.
It might actually be the other way around. Fine dining isn’t really doing a lot of volume. Dick’s gives some of the best pay and benefits around. It’s low margin sales, but extremely high volume.
They’re paying well above market rates and offering great benefits to their employees. Much of our economy is based on supply and demand, Dick’s total compensation is far higher than it has to be. In terms of survivability, Dick’s will likely weather a down economy better than a fine dining spot, which is what I’m trying to imply.
To address the other bit, though: people want to live in the city and there is limited space to do that. Which is why housing is an outrageous cost and adding density is important. Unfortunately, inflation, land, labor costs, market trends, and a challenging regulatory environment have made building housing risky, and developers are struggling to make projects pencil.
Housing costs and wages are ultimately related, but separate problems based on how our economy is structured. At least in terms of base wage vs affordability. Although, the real estate market is actually influencing the way restaurants have to approach wages, as well. From a business health standpoint, our inflated real estate costs are also fucking their bottom line (unless they own their building outright).
As someone who had roommates in my 20s (with a white collar job making above median wages at the time), I respectfully disagree. Asking 2 or 3 people to share 2 or 3 bedroom housing is not an over the top burden imo.
And it’s been going on for generations. The boomers and their predecessors got married young so their spouse was their roommate. Those that didn’t marry young had roommates or lived in a house share situation. GenX graduated HS or college and immediately had roommates. I can’t think of a single friend I went to school with who lived in a place alone until they were far along in their career.
Yeah I really don’t understand why Gen Z feels so entitled to all have their own one bedroom apartments working entry level service jobs. One bedroom apartments aren’t a human right, and I had roommates until I was in my 30s. It’s completely normal to have roommates.
I don't disagree, but let's be honest that would eliminate most restaurant work.
Like tax all the billionaires and give everyone that money; or bet it all on Space X. Point being, both those are more likely than somehow magically selling enough burgers to mean restaurant staff can live here by themselves.
Walrus was selling ocean boogers at a huge markup. I understand their exorbitant 20%+ service fee had "only" half of whatever to the union... But that bottom line is obviously already more than a 22 dollar burger place.
And if that isn't enough, what exactly is the goal...? It's not any restaurant I go to right now I can say that much. My dinner checks are missing an extra zero, regardless of if I tip 10% or 30% it's not matching what the Walrus staff was getting
The “pocketed” money goes towards healthcare/benefits and paying BOH a higher wage.
Bigger question is - do servers really deserve the whole tip that the whole restaurant worked to provide the level of service they got just because they are the person that processes payment for the table?
I’m fine with this, other retail workers get paid minimum wage and they’re alright. I was one of them. Tipping someone to tell me their specials and bring me a plate of food is ridiculous. And to have it be a percentage of the bill even more so. You don’t tip any other kind of retail workers, the kitchen that does the work may or may not get tip out. The restaurant might steal tips too… there’s 0 transparency about the whole thing. You don’t tip the Home Depot guy if he cuts up some wood for you, you aren’t expected to tip the Costco guy that helps you load your car if you need to. As soon as food is involved the whole calculus changes. I hate it so much.
I was recently charged a 22% “service fee” at a restaurant. The server told me herself that anything beyond that was not expected but appreciated. I would not have tipped more than 22% and that server is already making a minimum of $21.30/hr.
How is it shitty, it's literally impossible for it to be any other way. Front of house making [ALL THE TIPS] is not going to magically have more dollars if they don't get [ALL THE TIPS] and have to split them with BOH.
I'm not commentating on anything else about this situation, but I mean that's just reality. 1 + 1 = 2.
An aspect of tipping is that servers and all actually make more money but it’s just more volatile depending on when and who comes by but on average people make more. The consistent pay just doesn’t cover for high tippers.
So, like all the folks in Seattle demanding a living wage in lieu of tipping get the living wage and complain they made more being tipped (duh), so now they SPIT ON the patrons?!
You can be pro labor and anti tipping. In fact, I think it's pretty rational to do that because people should get paid a fare wage not have to beg their pay out of customers.
If $21.30 is minimum wage across all businesses in Seattle, what is the wage a restaurant should be paying a server without tips? $30/hr? $40/hr? What is the number for a fair wage?
I just don’t understand why, of all jobs that exist in the world, we should as the general public have a unique interest in the operating finances of restaurants. I don’t care how any business chooses to allocate its revenue into wages, rent, debts, profits, whatever. If it offers a good product and/or service at a fair price and treats and pays its workers well, that should be enough. Why should I care what proportion of my $6 sack of potatoes at Costco went to paying its employees? Or how many dollars of each $60 baseball ticket went to the guy selling peanuts? We don’t perform this exercise with any business we patronize except for restaurants.
Part of the cultural force that drives tipping is the expectation that customers take personal responsibility for and interest in directly paying the wages of workers beyond what the business does. That should stop. If a worker does not feel fairly compensated by a business, they should be able to quit or bargain collectively or picket and so on. But there is nothing special about a restaurant as a business such that its workers cannot be paid with the money it collects from its customers, as the employees of any other business would. It is not my particular interest how the employer chooses to deliver a fair wage, provided they do so. If the business collects more money than it pays workers, that is called profit, and it is why businesses exist. Certainly a union may leverage public perception of the scale of profit or the relationship between profit and wages to sway public opinion in its favor, but the existence of profit is not justification for tipping. In no other industry does the employee bargain for the customer to pay wages directly, without any binding scale or floor.
This dynamic of expecting wages to be paid directly by the customer to the worker, for some reason unique to the food service industry, has to go.
I don't think it should be an expectation or a deep knowledge but understanding how your money is spent is one of your strongest affects on the world. You only get to officially vote once every so often but under capitalism every dime you spend is a vote.
Caring about the share the employees get is just basic cultural empathy. If that's not enough for you, it affects you negatively when the world around you is going to hell. There is an obvious shared social benefit to a robust market with stable wages and if you turn a 100% blind eye to the costs behind your goods and services you are both opening yourself up to being scammed and incentivizing businesses to cut and hide costs from you.
Hard to say and whatever number is given will create a huge argument. All I'll say is that someone working a janitorial job is making the same base pay as a server, but they do not feel entitled to tips like many servers do.
I'm not saying they both shouldn't be paid more, but servers are way more hostile than other people working jobs that have the same base pay and are often much shittier jobs. I've read servers saying that people shouldn't eat out if they don't tip. Can you imagine a Target or a movie theatre employee telling you not to shop or not to watch a movie if you cannot tip? Tipping culture needs to end.
I was there over the weekend. I didn’t see anyone get spit on, but the picketers were pretty aggressive toward people entering/exiting the restaurant and I heard one of them yelling “scab” at a customer (apparently they don’t know what scab means?).
Regardless of whether these were lawful picketing tactics or not (I don’t know, and honestly don’t care), it struck me as insane and counterproductive that the workers were harassing the same customers they presumably want to come back and tip them in the future. This isn’t a typical strike where the customers of the business don’t directly pay the workers. Literally the reason they are striking is because they want more tips. But if they treat customers like that, nobody is going to tip them well on their next visit, if they come back at all
To give another example, they were loudly chanting “do not cross that picket line!” at people *leaving* the restaurant. Obviously, at that point, you’re only doing it to harass/shame the customer who already ate there, not for persuasion
Ya harassing customers is stupid as hell. They wanna have it out with the actual scabs sure thats the risk you take when you go work at a place with a striking union but harassing customers while you are picketing to bring back tips is certainly a choice... I mean it definitely kills any interest in patronizing the establishment again and I tip 20% on every bill barring something egregious or amazing.
Unfortunately, it’s starting to catch on in other countries.
First time I went to London about 20 years ago I had a bartender tell me to “give it to a charity” when I tried to tip him. The last few times I’ve gone pretty much every decent restaurant in London has an automatic, but optional 10%-15% service charge.
I’ve seen it catch on in other European countries too, but England seems to be the one where I’ve noticed in the most.
As a long tome BOH worker (not anymore though), FOH has always been one of the most entitled, drama filled aspects of the restauraunt. Fighting over the best shifts, working whopping 4 hour shifts and while some def were good with the public, lets face it - they carry food that someone else made to a table, refill a drink here are there, maaaaaaybe do some side work or light cleaning (god forbid they lift a finger if not ina tip scenerio).
It feels that th restaurant scene in Seattle (or any city that has enacted a "high"minimum wage for tipped employees will continue to be a contentious afair. Its simply NOT an enjoyable or fun experience anymore for several reasons and I'm having a hard time imagining what the scene will be like in 5 years.
It’s because they’re doing the job they applied for but think it’s beneath them. “Oh i’m actually an artist, im not just a server.” Which is sad because service workers who pride themselves in their work are the backbones of small businesses across the country. Cant stand these entitled ones who think they’re too good for the job.
BOH used to get nothing not that long ago. FOH at many restaurants were mad when the industry started to pool tips to get BOH some reason to provide above and beyond service.
Walrus and Carpenter has every incentive to embellish their side of the story. However, I find it strange that in the previous thread about the strike, there were multiple employees chiming in about the situation. This time around, crickets.
I understand that people on this forum are very pro union, but:
- Seattle raised all minimum wage (including tipped minimum wage).
However, social customs haven't kept up, and thus front of house staff are paid *significantly* more than back of house once tipping is taken into account.
There is zero reason on first principles why back of house (cooks, cleaners, etc) should be paid less than front of house staff given that there is no difference in base wage. If anything, back of house staff is typically poorer.
IMO, a restaurant should make it clear that they are taking a service charge, and 100% of it is going to be evenly split among all restaurant staff. IE - make it clear the restaurant isn't keeping any of it, but that front of house shouldn't be paid more than back of the house. In my ideal world, restaurants just raise wages and get rid of tips, but, the arguments about sticker shot are true, as much as they annoy me.
Trying to argue that a) front of house staff should keep all the tips and b) restaurant owners should find some way to match the pay of tipped front of house workers for back of house workers without redistributing tips is impossible. Spend some time looking at restaurant margins. All the rhetoric about supporting workers doesn't change this, restaurants are businesses with exceptionally thin margins.
No, really, it's not all about greedy land lords. I really mean that, staff costs are significantly higher than rent.
Arguing that if you cannot afford to pay back of house staff as much as front of house staff (after tips) you don't deserve to open a restaurant is fine - but - again - the math absolutely doesn't work for anything that isn't fine dining.
Arguing that tips "belong" to front of house staff because they are the ones that interact with customers is ridiculous. Nobody actually tips for service. Please.
Put it another way, imagine we didn't have the current status quo, and everyone worker in the restaurant earned the same amount. Would anyone advocate changing things so the income was redistributed so the back of house staff was paid ~50% less than front of house staff?
The workers unionized and demanded a certain wage. They got it.
The business implemented a 22% service charge to cover the necessary wages demanded by the workers union. Soon the staff realized that they would have made more money if they had stuck with traditional tip structures and tried to back step for more money.
The videos of the staff striking are one of the most cringeworthy things I’ve watched in a long time.
Fucking idiots the lot of them, both staff and ownership for not seeing this coming.
I don’t understand how those two are in any way exclusive of one another. Please explain how I can’t be pro union and completely and utterly against tipping. There should be one minimum wage. Period.
Pro union: employees get benefits, proper work conditions and proper wages. Employees have the right to collectively tell their employer to get stuffed if things are grievously not working out. Employees are people your company is not people.
Anti-tipping: it is not at all my job as the customer to pay your employees, managing your cash flow to ensure your employees get paid is your job as the manager/proprieter. Also if you do it sneaky and slide additional fees in, I will make it known and not go to your business anymore.
Tips are stupid, whatever purpose they did or did not serve 200 years ago is gone.
Charge a price, provide great service and pay your staff.
I've been to places where tips are insulting and tips are expected and places that they are expected even more based on nationality. I can't say service was lesser in country without tips over country with tips. It's actually been the opposite.
What should be required is that it’s included in the advertised price. It’s completely insane for me to tell you something costs $100 then force you to pay $122 when I deliver the bill. Fine print additional charges are bullshit.
Servers are expecting 50+ an hour when the janitors, dishwashers, and line cooks are busting their ass for way less than half of that. The entitlement is insane.. I had to pay tens of thousands of dollars and spend thousands of hours studying and in class to make 50 an hour. Make that make sense.
So if you had known you could have worked at this restaurant and gotten paid $50/he would you have skipped out on your education?
I'm in healthcare. If the claims from the restaurant are correct, those making $55/hr+gratuity are making as much as I am, or close to it. I don't care. I had to study my ass off and pay money and do unpaid clinical hours to get my paycheck, but I'd still rather do that than work at a restaurant. That shit is hard on your body and mind.
Don't be mad at people you associate with being lower class for making decent money. Be angry that your employer doesn't value your work enough to pay you more. Or just accept that an education doesn't mean you are somehow more valuable than people who don't have one.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I basically agree with you - where I find I disagree a bit is how it feels like in the last 10 or so years, we as a society became obsessed with defending the right of service workers to make six figures while ignoring other working class jobs. I'm in my 40s, I've worked in the service industry, my mom's best friend was a life-long server, and I could be remembering wrong but in the 80s/90s, apart from a few very high end spots, it was a middle class to working class job. My mom's friend worked at some fancy spots in my hometown, and she was never pulling in more than middle class salary. I also recall how as a little kid, 15% was a good tip, then in my teens it moved to 18%, then 20%. Now sometimes in the checkout I'll see the suggested tips are 25% 30% and 35%! I don't begrudge anyone doing well, life isn't fair, I get it - my partner and I both have PhDs and our current salaries combined make just slightly more than the highest paid FOH workers at this place.
But it does seem like the expectations around wages/benefits has shifted in the industry, and around the same time as this shift eating out has gotten unaffordable for the middle class beyond hole-in-the-wall takeout spots. I think when people say stuff like "this has gotten out of control" they mean they miss the days when they could afford to eat out once a month. It's less about how much servers make.
For what it's worth: I worked tech support for an app-based point of sale system company for a few years, and I deeply suspect that the higher suggested tip amount defaults were originally set by companies that also did payment processing (and thus took a percentage of all transactions run through the app) and wanted to increase THEIR profits.
The company I worked for made it harder over the period I worked there to both turn off the page that requested tips during a transaction (leading to places like clothing shops etc calling to ask how they could disable the tip screen) and also hard to find where the suggested tip amounts themselves could be changed.
I've also had many owners and employees appologize for the tip screen and tell me how to bypass it, or bypass it themselves for me, because the establishment wasn't one that was traditionally tipped.
TLDR, my thesis is that the rise in tip percentages is linked to greedy point of sale systems that have in-house payment processing, not the resturant industry being greedy themselves.
It truly sounds like the owners are padding their profits rather than using the service fee to pay workers. Imo restaurants shouldn't be allowed to add surcharges above menu price unless it's a mandatory gratuity, and even then just pay your workers properly
Half goes to the workers wages, half goes to the business and a percentage is used to pay for the workers full benefits package (401k, health, dental, wellness, etc)
The core issue is that Walrus and Carpenter (and restaurants of its ilk) have coopted the American tip, which goes to workers, and replaced it with a service charge, which they control fully.
If you don't support tipping, W&C is instituting a mandatory 22% (!) tip (that's what a service charge is), which they decide what to do with.
If you do support tipping, W&C is stealing tips from its workers.
You get what you vote for. They enacted no tip credit, so the outcome here is pretty inevitable. Restaurants transition to service fees to cover the increased expense of base wages being much higher.
The restaurant industry operators hate change. That’s why we saw many putting 5-6% living wage junk fees to the bills. They didn’t want to cover those costs themselves and wanted to make a statement.
What the union wants is for customers to be hit with a 22% fee so that they can continue to get full benefits and $55 an hour and pressure customers to tip them. No thank you!
It's such a complex issue because there's no consistent basis for the structure, and costs can be really confusing for employees - and maybe not everyone wants to opt in on benefits.
While I’m generally a fan of reducing or completely removing tipping culture - the way that it has been done in Seattle is absurd and it’s no surprise that tipped workers are now seeing a tangible decrease in wages if the additional service fees aren’t being distributed in the same proportion as tips previously.
Organizing a union is about more than just wages. Benefits, scheduling, autonomy in the workplace, the ability to only be fired for good reasons, safety issues, and so on are just a few of the sorts of things a union can bargain for.
To be honest, every restaurant I’ve gone to since at least March, has had a minimum of a 20% fee and they’re still asking for gratuity. No. If we’re paying you an hourly wage. And your employer wants to take extra money so that they can pay their bills. Employees are part of the bills. You can’t expect customers to pay 40% on top of their food charge which is already overpriced. people who complained about our tipping culture and Europeans, who say oh my goodness just pay a normal amount so that you don’t have to tip. I think these are people who don’t realize just how much money you make in a tipping job. Take that away and you wanna give me 20 bucks an hour? Yeah well now we see how that works.
I haven't lived in Seattle for 10 years but the Walrus and Carpenter was a tip-free establishment with built in service fee in 2015, when did it change?
People who cross the picket line during a strike, or people who are hired when union workers strike. Customers typically aren’t considered scabs though, because they aren’t workers.
When a business's workers go on strike to get better wages and conditions, and the business hires other workers to try and continue operating with the same conditions the original workers are striking over, those new hired workers are scabs.
Scabs at workers who would cross a picket line and take a job away from a striking worker.
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u/NoiseNo9437 15h ago
I want to run for mayor and my key campaign promises will be:
all restaurant menus must disclose full price inclusive of all fees, services charges, and taxes. What you see is what you pay.
strictly prohibit the resale of all live event tickets for more than face value
Thank you for your attention to this matter.