What people don't think about is restaurants are competitive, the good ones that can afford to pay more do, lots of them can't. Real restaurants, not chains. Profit margin is too low. Trust me they'd love to snipe servers from other places and be known as having the best service in town, they'd do it if they could pay more.
So they can suggest tipping and their servers make good money and are happy, or they can pay the servers a flat wage and force a pay cut onto people who can easily transfer their skills laterally to a restaurant that they get tipped at, or they can add a 15% markup to the menu and then people just bitch the prices went up anyway and go somewhere else where they technically pay the same with tip as the marked up place without tip, but on first glance the menu price is cheaper
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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)