Need this nationwide. I hate having fees added on to the price of what I’m ordering.
This might be a weird question but when people tip for a good service, what exactly is good service?
If I go to a restaurant I expect them to take my order, bring me the food and when I’m done bring me the check. That’s it. I want nothing else from them. Should I tip them for not spitting in my food or not stumbling and throwing it all over my clothes?
If I go to a restaurant I expect them to take my order, bring me the food and when I’m done bring me the check. That’s it.
I’ve been to a Michelin Star restaurant where a pair of waiters were constantly hovering over your table to clean it and refill drinks and offer provide conversation.
The chef comes by and makes a presentation of every dish (the bananas foster was practically a magic act, the way they assembled the meal and then light it on fire). The staff practically wingman for you, if you’ve got a date. Everyone is beautiful and charming.
But that was something like $300/person just for the table, with 20% gratuity as a fixed fee on the final bill.
There are lots of restaurants that don’t charge through the nose for the meal but offer comparable service. Charming friendly waiters who weedle your favorite food and give excellent recommendations. Staff that sing or make clever jokes or entertain small children or share a cocktail with you at the table. I know a few high end restaurants in Houston that will try to pouch waiters from one another because they’re friends with particularly wealthy regulars.
You see less of that now (at least in the states) because individual waiters are expected to cover more tables, turnover is more important than relationship building, and the quality of food has taken a real nosedive as we replace professional chefs with meals made in microwaves.
Now a tip is much more like a Coperto - a cover charge for seating - than gratuity for exceptional service.
Oh wow that sounds awful. I already don’t like when they come check on me mid-meal about wether the food is good or do I need anything.
Maybe eating out isn’t for everyone…
Eating out in Korea is great.
You need more water? They either have a fridge of jugs, or a water dispenser.
Side dishes are help-yourself; you just go up and get them. Unlimited and free.
The person who makes the food is sometimes the person who brings it to you.
No tipping, no tax added to the price you see on the menu, and no stupid prices like $19.99 instead of $20.00.
And even after all that, the prices are still cheaper than the bare menu prices for me back in Canada.
Sounds great!
As a mildly introverted person, this sounds like hell. I’d pay a tax to be left alone
A good waiter who earns his tip will have the skill to recognize that you want to be left alone, and will serve you quickly and efficiently and unobtrusively. Good waitstaff will quickly figure out what each patron needs in order to have an excellent dining experience, and then will deliver that.
My tip heavily depends on how full my water glass is kept and how long my dishes sit in front of me before they’re cleared.
I don’t need chit chat or being flirted with, I just need my meal in a prompt and courteous manner, that’s worthy of 15-20% IMO.
So literally you say it’s okay to pay extra for a server to do their job, because the restaurant isn’t paying them enough?
Hells no. I’m all for prohibition on tipping, because it WILL be abused. Just pay servers a normal salary like everyone else
I literally say that I am fine to pay extra when I believe the service is worth it. I live in a country where servers earn above minimum wage typically.
You do you, some people are cheap, some are ignorant some are both.
Why is the price you put on a full water glass dependent on whether you got an expensive steak vs a cheaper pasta dish though? This is why percentages are so dumb.
It’s representative of the service ime.
Yeah, Cali can shut its mouth. Tourists, look at your resort bill or hotel bill next time you pay. See if everything was baked into advertised price.
Yeah… Maybe it should be that way for resorts or hotels too??
Lol, what a weird take
Why is that a weird take? Seems to me the price should be the price across the board.
Yeah, that’s the reasonable take.
Badbytes was siggesting that because hotels do this, restaurants should be allowed to do this.
Only fees that are entirely optional — like leaving a tip for staff — can be left out of the posted price.
Wrong move. They should have outlawed tipping too. No more hiring for shit wages and leaving adequate compensation up to chance. Bump up the menu price and pay your staff an enticing salary.
Not disagreeing, just providing a counterpoint.
Take your basic non super fancy restaurant, dinner for two with appetizers, entrees, desserts, a two rounds of drinks will probably be $100ish. And that table of two will be there for an hour. Assuming server gets 20% tip average, that’s $20 for the table. An average server will have four tables in their sections. That means if the restaurant is full, they are making $80 an hour in tips. They will get to keep 60% to 80% of that, the rest going in a tip pool that benefits kitchen staff, bussers, barbacks, etc. But they’ll still be making pretty good money.
Of course if the restaurant is empty or they only have one or two tables with people seated, they are making less.
The problem comes that if you get rid of this system, there’s a lot of financial risk for the restaurant owner. Currently they don’t have to pay the server or the staff very much, most of their compensation comes from tips, meaning there is less risk to them keeping the restaurant fully staffed if it’s not going to be busy. If you pay all these people are constant hourly, now there is risk on the restaurant owner in terms of staffing. Bring on too many staff when it’s quiet and they will lose a bundle. Don’t bring on enough staff when it’s busy and those people don’t have a financial incentive to bust their ass. It also becomes solely their job to ensure quality, because the server that spends half the time on their phone in the back room is making the same money as the server who is attentive to their tables. It also means less risk for hiring an inexperienced server, because if the server does a bad job they just won’t make good tips.
All that said, I agree something has to change. I think perhaps one answer would be a law requiring that each restaurant put 15% of gross receipts into a virtual tip pool. That way they aren’t paying through the nose to staff and empty restaurant, there would be a line item on the check like ‘automatic gratuity paid the staff $whatever on this check, further tipping is optional’.
dinner for two with appetizers, entrees, desserts,
Why on earth would someone go out for dinner, have two starters, and then jump to dessert? 😂
Just in case this isn’t a joke, then this is probably a country difference. In America, “entree” is synonymous with “main course”. I know, I know. That’s not what entree means. But the fact remains.
Where im from ive never heard of that, entree is usually a starter snack to hold you over till the food is done. But this could also be a regional thing still.
It’s specifically the US that calls main courses entrees. No clue why.
Probably an imperial vs metric thing.
Ive never heard of that, and Im from SoCal. Shouldve made it clear im from the US but yeah never heard of folks calling an entree the full meal.
I am from Texas and have lived in several states in the eastern half of the US. “Entree” on a menu has always been the main dish in my experience. You also frequently see it used that way on recipe websites. This is the first I’ve heard that entree has a different meaning elsewhere. Merriam Webster has a bit of background info on how that came to be.
there’s a lot of financial risk for the restaurant owner
Risk for the business owner, what a concept. The workers aren’t there to defray risks for an owner, they’re doing a job. If the restaurant founder wants to push risk to their employees, make it a coop, then they can share in the profits as well as the risk.
Well if the risk is that they are paying $300 an hour in unnecessary labor, that’s a risk that would put almost any restaurant under. Perhaps a better answer would be a commission-based system, just build a 20% commission into the price of the food rather than making it a mandatory tip or a line item on the receipt. Problem is that makes marketing harder because you have to explain why your food is 20% more expensive than the competition and try to get people to understand that their bill will actually be the same or less. It also doesn’t necessarily incentivize the employee to provide better service. And while I conceptually agree that should be the responsibility of the manager, in practice it’s difficult. I’m not sure what the solution is. I agree there needs to be one.
Only fees that are entirely optional — like leaving a tip for staff — can be left out of the posted price.
How do you say you’ve never worked as a server without saying you’ve never worked as a server?
Edit: I think there’s a misunderstanding. I’m commenting on describing tips as “entirely optional.” If you can’t afford to tip, don’t eat at a restaurant. Servers are paid below minimum wage because they receive tips.
Second edit: My bad. NY has a tip allowance, and that’s where I waited. I didn’t know it varied so greatly from state to state. California does, in fact, pay their servers $16 per hour minimum.
https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/minimum-wage-tipped-employees-by-state/
Servers are paid below minimum wage because they receive tips.
Not true everywhere. For instance Washington requires servers be paid the full minimum wage of $16.28/hr before tips.
California, ie the state this fucking article is about, also mandates the full minimum wage for servers.
Restaurants should be forced to pay their workers a living wage, which is how it works in developed countries. And paying below minimum wage should be illegal.
it’s such a fucking joke that they’re allowed to pay like $2/hr because they’ll make it up in tips. just because customers are nice doesn’t mean the employer should get off the hook like that. even the joke federal minimum wage is fuck all, that’s like 1-2 sides at a decent restaurant
Don’t take the downvotes too seriously. Your original point was succinct and poignant. On average, lemmy bombs on anyone going against the popular stance. A whole lot of paper activism goes on here.
Your point is valid. Not tipping because “fuck the man” only serves to hurt the servers. From a moral consumer standpoint, there’s no winning. You either cut out restaurants entirely, which still fucks the wait staff, or you tip high and hope enough of it ends up in the their pockets.
I’m downvoting because he’s wrong about servers getting paid below minimum wage in California. That’s true in his shithole state but not ours.
Work a Sunday brunch shift and watch the raft of churchies leave nothing but condescending notes, if anything.
i thought you weren’t meant to use the lord’s name in vain
Do it like in Europe. Prices are all inclusive, any kind of tip is just a thank you for outstanding service, and not a necessity so the waitress won’t starve.
It is a sales business with service, like buying clothes. Can you imagine having to tip the salesperson in a boutique?
It really depends on the country. France and Belgium, as you wrote. Germany, they expect a tip and look at you angry if you don’t. Italy, they add a service charge at the end that is nowhete advertised. Turkey, they invent a random price at the end, complaints only taken if you’re local. (I’m slightly exaggerating)
In Germany it’s typical to do so just to make the change easier, you might catch an angry glance by making them make small change.
Italy will list a coperto or servizio on the menu.
I was just in a smaller city in Germany and flew back to the US after that. I look German and speak German. When paying with card, Germany felt exactly like the US. At every restaurant, the tip request automatically came up within the thing used to process your card, just like in the US.
My new favorite is a hotel tax I just saw today which conveniently isn’t included in the room rate.
