If people aren’t willing to pay enough for a service for the seller to make a decent profit, why provide it?
Why are you even on a restaurant board if that’s really where you’re coming from? How is this in any way helpful or contributing to the conversation?
Dynamics CHANGE, costs CHANGE…It is MUCH harder to run a place now than when we opened 5 years ago and I’m sure for a lot of people it makes less sense to open a place now than it did even few years ago, we’ll never know. For me, this is all I have and all I know how to do so I’m interested in making it work. I also like having restaurants that exist, as I suspect most of the others reading this do.
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one way for adjusting price could be cheaper prices on the weekdays vs the weekend where the prices are raised. i think that’s how Alinea does it on Tock.
you get consumers who are wiling to pay less on a weekday to eat there and it also helps the restaurant get weekday business.
i read somewhere that this model worked out pretty well for Alinea.
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To put it another way, what’s different about the restaurant business that everyone doesn’t raise prices to reflect the increased costs they’re all facing, the way that dry cleaners, car repair shops, plumbers, shoe repair shops, and the other services I buy do?
That seems to be the question and honestly I don’t know the answer. But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the general public to educate itself on the systemic issues in the restaurant business, especially given the fierce reactions to some well intentioned efforts to address them (particularly in a relatively “woke” city like LA) eg tipping, health care, discrepancy between front and back of house, etc.
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ive heard the one of the problems about tipping is that in order for tipping to go away the whole industry has to do it. Danny Meyer tried to do the no tipping policy at his restaurants and it caused the good servers who were making a good amount of money to leave and work at other restaurants that were tip friendly.
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Some restaurants manage to do it. I suppose they get servers who care more about health care and other benefits a service charge allows.
Dang, I was going to rebut your comment, because my recollection from his book was while they did lose some staff, they were able to keep many and were able to create a new stable team around the updated policy.
And then I wanted to make sure that they were still operating with “Hospitality Included”.
And…
They are not. They concluded Hospitality Included in July 2020 when they were reopening after the shutdowns. Meyer was one of the main agents pushing hard to change tipping culture in the US. If he has given up on it, the outlook does not look bright.
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In California—and several other states—it is legal to share tips among all employees when a full minimum wage, known as “One Fair Wage,” is paid to all workers (as opposed to the tipped minimum wage paid to tipped restaurant employees in states like New York).
Is that true?
I worked at two restaurants where house tipped out something like 30% to kitchen. Those restaurants had some of the happiest work families I’ve been part of because we all shared the spoils. And foh was there making less than they could elsewhere because they wanted to be there.
One of those restaurants was part of a few in the bay area that chose to enact a service charge and one night local news was talking to diners.
Of course some guy thinks he’s super smart for saying Why are we responsible for paying their wages? First its tipping now its a service charge. We’re just here for food, its up to the owner to pay the wages.
Like where else is that money supposed to come from?!?
That’s part of the impossible disconnect hurdle that stands in the way of restaurants.
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I thought places were moving to service charges when they could specifically because it’s technically illegal to pool tips with kitchen, or at least to force foh to do it. (?)
Last place I worked the servers voted to stop tipping out the kitchen once they realized they held that power. And the kitchen was getting maybe 5% a night. That was before I worked there and probably in 2013.
After a few years the Chefs wound up reinstituting it and making all foh sign these documents. All the servers talked about these lawsuits they were gonna file and this and that but they never did.
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To my knowledge, in California there’s no lower minimum wage for tipped employees, and tips can be pooled only among those employees in the “chain of service,” which does not include cooks or dishwashers.
Yeah that’s what I thought as well.
Lol I gotta say I worked foh and that phrase chain of service always pissed me off. There’s literally no restaurant without the kitchen. Like what the hell would servers be serving?!That’s why I preferred being behind the bar.
I have a vague recollection of reading/hearing about some restaurants rotating foh/boh so everyone on staff would be included in the “chain of service.” But I cannot recall the details (like if it was one shift a week, or a couple of hours, if it was a cook bringing a dish to table, etc.).
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Laws recently changed to allow BOH to be in the tip pool.
See the recent article on Eater LA regarding servers striking due to changes in the split percentage.
Many restaurants are taking the opportunity with reopening to start involving BOH in tip pools.
There was a change in national laws, but I don’t believe it has any effect in California.
To my knowledge, American Beauty’s tip pool was illegal both before and after, since BOH workers are not part of the “chain of service.”
There never was a lower minimum wage for tipped employees. What has existed in some states has been a tip credit meaning that the employer could credit tips towards meeting the minimum wage requirements. If the tips are insufficient, the employer is on the hook for the rest. No server could ever legally make less than the minimum wage even if the employer’s cash contribution could be less than for non-tipped employees.
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California law authorizes mandatory tip pooling as long as the employees sharing in the pool are part of the “chain of service” …
I can’t find any recent court or Labor Board decision that says dishwashers and cooks are part of the chain of service. Though logically, if bartenders are, so are cooks.
Yeah but that didn’t exist in California. The law here is that tips belong to the employees who provide direct service or are in the chain of service to the customer. The restaurant can’t even make them pay their share of the credit card processing fee.
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I believe that there was an appeals court decision in California that made bartenders eligible for tip sharing in the state but that it never went to the California Supreme Court so no final verdict in terms of state law. Laws regarding tipping are among the most illogical possible.
There have been numerous California Labor Code section 351 updates, court cases, appeals, and Labor Board decisions about who’s eligible for tip pools, but if I owned a restaurant I’d rely on the Nolo summary (as I did when I did own a restaurant). Though that’s no guarantee you won’t get sued and lose.
I don’t know if this is current, but it discusses Brad Etheridge v. Reins International California, Inc. and the resulting lack of a clear general rule for which jobs are part of the chain of service.