LAT: Some restaurants face pressure to trim menus and staffs under California's wage hike

they are trying this approach and it doesn’t appear to be working.
apparently the market doesn’t seem to agree with your assessment that servers are overpaid.

enjoy bucking the ticker

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Ns1:
unless an employment contract is in place, there is NO reason to stay at any level of compensation/package of benefits that is inferior to what another comparable employer is willing to pay you.

most of my career and compensation can be viewed as a testimonial to this.

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robert:
having access to that information and making enough good decisions based upon that information are two different things.

very often the disconnect between the two is shocking/mystifying/unbelievable/nonsensical.

just look at what is going on with valeant these days.
most everyone had access to plenty of relevant info.
the folks that are getting barbecued seem to be the ones who had the MOST access to correct info.

The owners or managers of any restaurant that is moderately successful for several years are looking at the numbers all the time.

A wildly successful place, maybe they could coast along without that for a while, but they’re likely to crash and burn without warning.

I would argue that the no-tipping movement is gaining momentum, and $15 minimum wage is helping to push it along.

Guess we’ll see in a few years how this plays out.

unless an employment contract is in place, there is NO reason to stay at any level of compensation that is inferior to what another comparable employer is willing to pay you.

this is why I specifically stated that I do not believe no-tipping will work until all restaurants employ a no-tipping model. I do not disagree with your sentiment, and I do not blame those servers for going to greener pastures. I blame the system for moving the responsibility of fairly paying employees onto consumers instead of employers.

i will probably be dead before the system changes.
i intend to have a wonderful time eating out and imbibing and tipping until i keel over–
whatever the restaurant system may or may not do.

i leave the job of changing the system to young folks like yourself.

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What are the alternatives?
After a few bumps in the road, the $15/hour works (seems unlikely).
After general havoc in the industry, the law gets changed (possibly).
After the havoc, most restaurants go to higher prices/no tipping and life goes on. Servers in high end restos have to alter their lifestyles or get other employment.
In any case, kids working at McDonald’s live more lavishly. Or is there an exception for young workers?

REGULARS are an extremely important asset for most high-end restaurants.
REGULARS are kept in place, in large part, by the SERVERS in those establishments.

therein is a core problem with your analysis…

Really? I go for the food. People certainly don’t follow servers around the way they follow chefs around.

wsg, pardon me, I’m from humble stock and am not getting what your analysis is. Perhaps you could spell it out for me in greater detail. I agree that regulars are important and I agree that servers in some cases foster relationships that cause patrons to become or remain regulars. I’m not sure how this impacts the issue of what will happen in the restaurant industry after $15/hour takes effect (or indeed in the step increases on the way there). I have to confess I have at times been a regular and found that a comfortable status, however, whenever I ceased being a regular (which has happened several times), the restaurants seemed to carry on fine without my patronage.
So are you saying we all need to become faithful regulars to save the restaurant industry? Or are you suggesting that the industry will carry on regardless of what we do?
In any event, I am wondering what will happen as a result of the wage increases. I suppose why it might happen is also a part of any analysis of the situation.
What are your considered thoughts?

I doubt that regulars are mainly kept in place by servers. You might get to know certain servers if you are a regular but even the best server can’t “save” a restaurant if the food is not consistently good for regulars.

I think you identified the problem. Or at least the issue.

Most servers are not competent enough to get another job. At least another job that compensates them more (either in terms of $ or total benefits).

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according to the article, your premise doesn’t seem to be accurate:

<<“They became more and more disgruntled, and we started to experience turnover,” he said. “We were spending a lot of time and energy hiring and training, and rehiring and training.”>>

People quit the restaurant biz, either back or front of house, many times for reasons other than money.

I’ve known people who have stopped waiting tables to take a less paying job, simply because that other job was less stressful.

And I’ve known how wait staff have refused to quit, despite knowing that they were being underpaid (at least on an hourly basis, after tips, vis-a-vis comparable blue collar work) because they could not find comparable work.

Of course, then you have those anecdotal stories, esp. here in SoCal, of those unemployed actors waiting tables while waiting for their next big break. Then they end up waiting tables, until they become just too old to do it productively.

And don’t forget that there are few jobs, esp. blue collar ones, that have as many fringe benefits as working in a restaurant. Depending on your shift, you often times get 2 free meals (or at least one), which depending on your lifestyle means you get to save not only of food costs, but expenses related to cooking at home or eating out after work.

There is no simple answer to this issue, and certainly not just one answer to this issue.

ok
what i am saying is that i am doubtful that all the sacrifice will be coming out of the servers’ /FOH hide.
there is a lot of money that flows to restaurants from regulars BECAUSE of the consistency and skill of the FOH as much as any other part of the experience.

i’ve spent most of my career taking sales prospects to meals.

i, and many of my contemporaries have become fond of the experience of being a regular at high-end restaurants, basically continuing our lifestyle whether we are on or off the job.
we will often stay with the same restaurant because we have a degree of certainty about how we and our prospects will be treated as well as the food.

it is a good thing, for folks like myself, to walk into a restaurant (especially if we have a prospect in tow) be treated like royalty–having everyone from the hostess to the server to the gm knowing who we are and coming around being warm and solicitous, knowing what we like to eat and how we like it served.
when there is turnover occurring in the FOH, it disrupts this.
for a restaurant owner, such interruption puts your relationship with your regulars at risk.

speaking as a regular, when you have a great relationship with the FOH, the type of evening you can provide for yourself, your prospects, your friends, your family, etc. is nothing short of amazing.
(there is a reason we keep giving those tips.)
no rational owner wants to imperil the reliable and generous flow of money that comes from regulars.

this is not the case for folks who are following chefs around town in search of the most precious budino served on the west coast.

could any new-to-the-restaurant server or new hostess or new gm step in and pull this off?
no.
roiling the front of the house comes at great risk.;

my point is that, imho, the entire brunt of the readjustments that will need to occur in order to accommodate the $15 minimum, will not be able to be entirely dumped on the high-end servers
possibly, it will not be able to be even primarily dumped on the high-end servers.

the fact that any one restaurant was able to “carry on” after you left it, means exactly what?

i don’t thing “we” need to do anything other than respond.
the owners will make various adjustments.
“we” will decide which ones “we” find acceptable.
the smart owners will figure out what they need to do with that feedback.

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let me restate:
my points were made about PROFESSIONAL SERVERS-- people who look at serving as their CAREER, people who had already decided that the restaurant business was their CAREER.

(obviously, when i worked in a hot dog stand in college, my decisions about my job were not made on the same basis as the decisions that i made later in life about jobs that i considered to be my CAREER.)

there are MANY people in the restaurant business who are not owners who absolutely see it as their career.
this group is less likely to hang around for a set up that is inferior to one that a competing owner would offer them.
the article lays this out pretty clearly.
it’s what i have watched and experienced in my entire business career.
talking about folks who see the job as a tide-over situation until they get another career going is, for the purposes of my comments, changing the subject entirely.

In a curious way, I think we are saying the same thing: the restaurants will find a way to carry on. What I am curious about is what that way will be. Isn’t the statewide legislation presently pending before the legislature? Perhaps there’s an answer there.

The plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2022 is reportedly a done deal in the legislature.

When a restaurant switches from tips to service charges, some servers may look for jobs at other restaurants where they’ll still get tips.

Now why would anyone would ever want to be a server making $15.00 a hour with no tips ? You would be poor with a suck ass job .

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They might have to pay $25 with no tips, or $15 plus tips. Either way, we customers are going to pay more. Guess we’ve had it easy for a long time.

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