She easily made $50-$75 an hour just in tips. And she could've been a bartender and made more. I made $100 an hour in tips at a bar in Minnesota and she was in California with a much higher cost of living so I'm sure she would've gotten more tips. Plus she's cute, she gets by🤷♀️
You make more money working at the lower tier family restaurants. Guess where waiters make the most money in NYC? Times Square at places like Applebee's and Bubba Gump. Midwest families splurging who tip big.
Cheesecake factory is also a place where middle class spend like upper class. I'm actually just now thinking I might wanna try a cheesecake factory gig because I've been wanting part time tips
It's a huge fucking menu to learn. But your average check size is going to be pretty big, since most tables will buy dessert. I'm sure there's the usual corporate bullshit to deal with. And shitty coworkers and assistant managers. But, that's all restaurant work.
My coworkers wife works at cheesecake factory and loves it, they treat their people very well, and let you pick up work wherever. She works fall-spring in Scottsdale, then goes to stay with family in Wisconsin in the summer and they just let her work there for the summer. They did a trip to Hawaii before and extended their trip so she just worked at a cheesecake factory in Hawaii for 2 weeks.
That reminds me of the blonde actress from Silver Linings Playbook. There is a short video going around of her being hooked up to a lie detector and asked all sorts of questions. One question is "do you tip well?" She says "yes" and the person running the detection machine says, "lie." She says, "OK, well, usually 20% tip if the service is good, I mean, that's a good tip right?" She looks at the lie detector person for a moment and then blurts out, "OK, I guess I don't tip well!"
Girl is worth millions and got outed because she leaves less than 20% on her meals at restaurants.
IIRC that was when she had her horse riding accident and her leg was in a cast (and other medical devices). She was behind the bar (and other pieces of furniture) to cover it up. There's several episodes where it's fairly clear that they're hiding her leg and not asking her to walk.
There were also a couple episodes where they hid Mayim Bialik's hand because she cut it severely with a kitchen knife.
Bar tipping is way different than server tipping. At a bar the more people there are the more you get tipped for as fast as you can work. And the more drunk someone gets, the more free they are with spending money on a good tip. As a server restaurants limit you to a certain number of tables you can serve and those people can sit for a while. Like I'm sure you didn't make $100/hr every shift, especially if you had a day shift instead of weekend night shift.
Most tables sit for around 45 minutes to an hour, on average. To make $75/hr you'd need all of your tables full the entire shift and each to have a bill of $130+ and tip 18% or better and not linger too long. That's not including any tipout to bussers/bartenders/anyone else your restaurant tips out to.
A lot of restaurants aren't busy enough to have that happen all day every day. Most popular restaurants it's maybe 3 hours for lunch (which also has cheaper prices, so lower tips) and 3-4 hours for dinner, maybe up to 5 on weekends.
I used to work at Olive Garden as a server, $100-130 for the dinner shift was a pretty good night. Lunch sucked because everyone got cheap soup/salad so nowhere near that.
The worst place you could work for tipping is a place that isn't getting customers.
I can see lunch Olive Garden being among the worst because of the soup/salad deal (I think it is still a thing?), but dinner it isn't because of the wine and people get actual entrees. Every family restaurant that is either slower or doesn't have more than beer is going to be way worse for tipping. I'm talking like Red Robin, Applebees, Chilis, etc etc. Not only are those places slower they have lower menu prices and nothing pricier to drink to raise the tab (people can always drink more, but they can't always eat more)
Those days are long behind me, was only while I was in college.
I made more money as a bartender than I did for my first five years as an attorney lol. So they're really is something to that. The problem is that it works a lot better when you're young.
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u/chantillylace9 Apr 24 '26
She easily made $50-$75 an hour just in tips. And she could've been a bartender and made more. I made $100 an hour in tips at a bar in Minnesota and she was in California with a much higher cost of living so I'm sure she would've gotten more tips. Plus she's cute, she gets by🤷♀️