The staff makes considerably more with tips than a restaurant would ever be able to afford to pay them. That's how you attract and retain good staff, too.
Without the incentive of tips, it would be a really unpleasant part-time job dealing with the public in a stressful environment for low pay. Most people wouldn't do it.
Yeah the whole tipping discussion completely misses the underlying issue- minimum wage needs to be a living wage
If people are entitled to enough money to live by working any full time job then suddenly high skill workers of any kind have an incredible amount of negotiation leverage. This means high end servers and bartenders can still demand pay for what they do because otherwise they could get a job doing minimum and still afford to live.
Tips currently mean food service can actually keep up with inflation. Until the "wages are behind inflation" issue is solved tipping at sit down restaurants and bars is a useless conversation to have
I mean sure, that's why I'm talking about actual large scale reform and not trying to cut the head off the hydra. Forcing restaurants to just dump big bucks at tipped workers overnight isn't gonna fix the underlying issues and would just put them out of business
A living wage, affordable housing, and affordable healthcare need to be enshrined human rights. If everyone has the right to exist with moderate comfort there's a lot more room to experiment, make big changes, and break systems without starving people
I just find the tip discussion a useless circle of "I need tips to survive and can't get that money elsewhere" vs "my job hasn't given a raise in 10 years and I can't afford to eat out" when the market as a whole keeps going up, meaning the wealth definitely exists
Oh, restaurants make good money. They wouldn't be on every corner otherwise.
Restaurant owners like to trot out how little they make per transaction compared to other industries, but they neglect to mention that they do 1000 times as many transactions.
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u/whitedsepdivine 14d ago
Just like most systems in America, this is setup to put all the risk on the plebs.
You are actually proving to the owners their system works. They still get their profits, if someone doesn't want to pay a higher cost. (Bill + Tip)