A Tipless Restaurant is a Well-Run Restaurant?

This is an old article - Jay Porter&#x27;s tipless restaurant, The Linkery, has since failed. This is my comment from the last time the Linkery came up on hackenews (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6127536" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6127536</a>):<p>&gt;Back when I lived in San Diego I took my parents to the Linkery. The service was so bad it actually reversed my opinions against tipping. The servers clearly didn&#x27;t care much about making us happy, messing up almost every aspect of the order. They put meat in my food - I&#x27;m vegetarian. My father got his food 20 minutes after my mother and I did. The waiter forgot one of my drinks. We called over the manager who offered us a free dessert to make up for it. Guess what? The dessert was on the bill. I&#x27;m always happy to tip 20+% for good service, but being forced (yes, we asked) to pay the service charge added insult to injury. This is just one data point, but the Linkery was infamous around San Diego for having much worse service than other places in a similar price range. I&#x27;m convinced their experiment with tipping was correlated with this.

&gt; The other has refused to accept them, instead charging a fixed percentage service fee.<p>Why not just show the real price in the menu? I feel offended when I&#x27;ve gotten shitty service and have to pay a &quot;service fee&quot;. I also hate when my tip is what&#x27;s paying the wages. Just set the price higher to cover the wages!

Mildly tangential, but I&#x27;m always surprised when people express so much anger about being expected to tip in restaurants (in America, at least). Not people who come from other places where the conventions are different, but people who have lived here their whole lives.<p>I&#x27;m not surprised (and empathize with) people who are reacting to the inefficiency of The System (&quot;why don&#x27;t restaurants just charge more and pay their employees reasonable wages?&quot;). This is correct, but as others have pointed out, in the US at least we seem to be stuck at a suboptimal local maximum in this area. It would be impractical (and maybe catastrophic) for any one restaurant to suddenly adopt this policy, so that&#x27;s not going to happen anytime soon.<p>Rather, I&#x27;m always amazed at the portion of people who have a visceral reaction to tipping due to what appears to be just plain lack of empathy. These aren&#x27;t the people who are saying, &quot;why doesn&#x27;t the restaurant just pay better?&quot;. That totally makes sense. These aren&#x27;t the people who tip less (or not at all) when they&#x27;ve had a really bad experience with the server. That makes sense too.<p>Specifically, I&#x27;m talking about the people who deep down inside just always have a reflexively negative reaction to directly giving their money to the person who just served them. These are the people who feel happy about themselves when they say things like, &quot;my tips start at 0% and go up from there&quot;, or who seem to put way, way, way too much mental energy into grading the level of service that they&#x27;ve received and coming up with a number that reflects that level of service each and every time they go to a restaurant. If anyone posting is that kind of person, please just shut up and start being a better person already. I encounter these people all the time in SV. These aren&#x27;t poor people for whom the tip is ever a meaningful amount of cash. These are people making many times the annual income of their servers, getting continually worked up over a few dollars, supposedly because of &quot;the principle of the thing&quot;. These are always people who have never worked in a restaurant, and are almost always people who never even had a job until after they got out of college. If anyone posting here is posting for this reason, please just get over it and find more constructive things to get worked up over. Ideally something that doesn&#x27;t directly impact the income of people making way the hell less money than they do.

I hate the idea of implied mandatory tipping.<p>Pay your staff sufficient wages please.<p>Whatever laws allow the below minimum wage loophole should be eliminated or overwritten, or whatever you do to laws to make them invalid.

I think that this is missing the biggest critique of all - it doesn&#x27;t make sense to allocate 15-20% of the payment to something that is only like 1% of the value you&#x27;re receiving.<p>The real value in going out to eat, in roughly decreasing order of importance:<p>- The quality of the actual food and drinks that you consume.<p>- The convenience of not having to spend the time and effort to shop, cook, and clean.<p>- The atmosphere and joy of &quot;going out&quot; (with your friends).<p>- The fact that someone takes your order and brings your food to you.<p>There&#x27;s no way that the fact that someone takes your order and brings your food to you consists of 1&#x2F;5th of the value of your experience. An efficient market should then adjust to this by offering the option of not tipping, having all the consumers go to that restaurant because it&#x27;s a better value, and then the other restaurants would have to adjust.<p>Unfortunately, this doesn&#x27;t happen, probably for a variety of reasons.<p>1) People don&#x27;t have enough information when choosing where to eat.<p>2) There are biases where people don&#x27;t really consider the cost of tipping when they consider the cost of going out to eat.<p>3) People have gotten used to it, and &quot;don&#x27;t mind&quot; tipping.

The premise of the article may be valid, but the author&#x27;s top source is not sound. The piece quotes Jay Porter extensively and links to his blog post. Jay Porter is a failed restaurateur whose restaurants have all shut down [0] [1], not a source to be trusted on the subject of well-run restaurants.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/el-take-it-easy-san-diego" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.yelp.com&#x2F;biz&#x2F;el-take-it-easy-san-diego</a> [1] <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-linkery-san-diego" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.yelp.com&#x2F;biz&#x2F;the-linkery-san-diego</a>

This article is very poorly written, and many of the points made in it are unfounded or irrelevant. I completely support abolishing the practice of tipping, but using bullshit arguments like &quot;it&#x27;s un-American&quot; and &quot;Economists don&#x27;t get it&quot; don&#x27;t lend any credence to your stance on the issue. The only point that directly cited actual data was the first point. This article shouldn&#x27;t be voted up as much as it is.

There&#x27;s nothing that grinds my gears like that blank tip line staring back at me when I pay for my takeout or counter order. The soured rapport is palpable when I hand back the signed receipt and the cashier glances at the striked-out tip space. It leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth after what should have been a simple transaction. Ugh.

As a dishwasher who makes $8&#x2F;hr, tips are very important. Mine are based on a percentage of sales, like the &quot;tipout&quot; mentioned in the article. I don&#x27;t know where the author gets their information or if they have ever worked in a restaurant. Some of the information is ridiculous. In California, everyone is payed at least $8&#x2F;hr before tips. Tips only add to take home pay.<p>Without tips, I can&#x27;t imagine making more than minimum wage. Last night I made $15.50&#x2F;hr, nearly double what I or someone else would be payed without tips. The market clearing price for a dishwasher is much lower than minimum wage.

I hate when I get takeout pizza or etc and the hostess asks for a tip. I would be more than happy to tip the chef if the pizza is good but that isn&#x27;t the case. The tips go to the hostess.<p>Sometimes the hostess shares tips with chefs at the end of the night but still.

Why not install ipads in the tables and do away with waiters? All one needs are food runners. Pay them normal working rates so no tips needed, even for them.

That&#x27;s one thing I never understood with the US. When you need a haircut, or you want to take a cab, or go get a drink... you always have to tip. Whereas the tip should be something you want to give to show appreciation.<p>So every time I went to the restaurant, I knew that the prices displayed were NOTHING like the prices I&#x27;d have to pay in the end. They would add taxes and if I didn&#x27;t tip I would be seen as an asshole.

I&#x27;m more annoyed with the normalization of tipping for behind-the-counter service.

And you don&#x27;t even create a service charge, you just include your staff costs (and your taxes while you&#x27;re at it) in your food prices. What&#x27;s written on the menu outside the restaurant is what you pay at the end of the meal the customer can shop around comparing the prices (like deciding between 2 restaurant, but also between a restaurant and a movie), and your market is healthy.

In America I generally tip pretty well regardless of service, just because in some states their pay is so low. In some states when you receive tips, you can be paid as low as 2.xx$ an hour. Which should be against the law.<p>In Germany a tip is not percentage based, but usually only 1-2€. But pay tends to be a little better, everybody has health insurance , sick time and vacation.

I always tip a reasonable amount (15 to 50 percent) because it&#x27;s what Americans expect and I&#x27;ve already factored it in.<p>One thing that bothers me, though, is the view that&#x27;s prevalent among wait staff (if reddit posts by them are to believed) is that black people and Indians don&#x27;t tip. Well, the tip comes after the service.<p>No person is going to provide equal service to a perceived good tipper and a perceived bad tipper. If, after providing inferior service, they receive a bad tip, it just reinforces the view. If they get a good tip, it is too late for me to receive good service.<p>Well, they&#x27;ll still get the tip, but it makes me seethe when people say that.

Tipping in Canada prevents you getting rude reminders from staff. We Brits find it truly baffling having to leave 50c-$2 for a drink you fetch yourself from a bar.<p>Canada is all smiles and great service (sincerely) until you forget to tip.

A great (for the owner) side effect of tipping is it allows restaurants to remain open even during times they are slow (weekdays, off-season) by passing much of the financial burden to the waitstaff instead of the owner. Otherwise hours would probably be much less convenient for the customer. This may not be the case in a large city but in smaller towns the weekday shifts are also a rite of passage to earn a good night where you can make some money.

I feel like there&#x27;s a business opportunity here. There is a large group of people who don&#x27;t want to think about tipping, and would always just tip 20%.<p>Could a payment system or card do this automatically? Or perhaps legally signal to the server that they should take 20%?<p>This doesn&#x27;t seem impossible, and I think the idea has a reasonable market.

Tipping extra sometimes encourages behaviors that are materially detrimental to the business itself. This effect is pretty well known in the industry, so I can&#x27;t imagine many restaurateurs would complain if tipping were universally ended for everyone. But are restaurant owners ready to start employing servers and bartenders on professional terms?<p>The article alludes to the practice of tipping out the bussers and dishwashers, but is a bartender more or less likely to do that with a $60-80K salary? Maybe the back of the house could see a percentage of sales instead... Or just food and wine, but not cocktails. There are really too many corner cases and caveats to work through up front, but if this becomes a trend it could open new opportunities for POS providers who might appreciate the shot at staying relevant.

OT, an aside, but from when I last ate there ~ 2.5 years ago, Sushi Yasuda was probably the best sushi restaurant in NYC. Maybe Masa, the famous place at $300&#x2F;head minimum was technically &quot;better&quot; in terms of the sushi you got, but Yasuda was up there in terms of the quality of the fish and preparation, at a much more reasonable price. (not cheap, but not outrageous like Masa).<p>Yasuda can probably get away without tipping, I am assuming, because the wait staff is probably higher trained and more professional than your average student or aspiring actor trying to pay the rent at the Denny&#x27;s down the street...<p>Heck, I now live in LA, and I can&#x27;t find sushi that good.

Before I even read the articles, here&#x27;s how it goes:<p>- Where I live, there isn&#x27;t a culture of tips. Employees are paid by employers.<p>- Some employees though, and businesses, delight me. Like I &quot;really&quot; enjoy it there. So I tip.<p>Look at what happened here: I tip in an environment not used to tips <i>at all</i>.<p>Tips should be a consequence for delight. Not some thing you do. It&#x27;s just that I can&#x27;t help tip people who take care of me (and I&#x27;m from that culture). Sometimes, they&#x27;ll offer a discount and I&#x27;ll insist on paying the full price.<p>It happens I enter a shop only looking for directions to somewhere, and the person there goes beyond it. I buy something. It&#x27;s natural for me.<p>Now, the very thought of <i>having</i> to tip, as if it is a given, granted thing I <i>have</i> to do, whether the waiter&#x2F;waitress was good or bad would make me sick.<p>I understand they are under pressure, but I have seen waiters&#x2F;waitresses under pressure behave with an unimaginable class and composure. With whom things that would piss you off would magically disappear. They exist, you should hire them. Not some snorky bitch waiter&#x2F;waitress(yeah, there are waiters who are bitches. It&#x27;s not just waitresses) who&#x27;ll treat you like crap, and then have the gall to even <i>expect</i> a tip (I mean, you screw up, you go incognito and pray you even get to keep your job, not ask for a tip and have an attitude).<p>So I say this:<p>- Their revenues are mainly from tips and they are not very well paid: It&#x27;s not the customer&#x27;s problem what your employer does. But <i>you</i> can delight a patron, and most people who are delighted pay beyond reason for service beyond &quot;normal&quot;.<p>- If you&#x27;re a waiter and think this is unfair, look around you. I am sure there are other waiters who get tipped regularly and fatly. What are they doing you&#x27;re not ?<p>Humans are generally not assholes. If a patron gets treated really well, only a small percentage will be assholes.<p>I help my friend with his business (car accessories, installing alarm systems, etc) and people just don&#x27;t believe the length we go to. They just are shocked. They&#x27;ve never seen that. The welcoming, the explanations, the garantees, etc.<p>I have a friend who sells computers and repairs them (and some other stuff like flash drives, etc). People would drive 30 miles to buy a flash drive from <i>him</i>. They could buy it anywhere, but they buy it from <i>him</i>. People came to him from 400 miles away, because of reputation and service and referrals (his regular clients vary from normal dude, to senators).<p>Your behavior matters.<p>I once called customer service of my crappy ISP, as usual, and that day, a tremendous guy answered the phone. This is something I have never seen before. I was literally in frigging bro love with him. I mean, I asked him if there is any way I could like give feedback to his supervisor or something. He treated it with grace saying he was flattered, and he was only doing his job. And no, he wasn&#x27;t just doing his job: He went the extra 100 miles.<p>I&#x27;ve eaten in many places. Some places I wouldn&#x27;t let them keep a 5 cents change because they were cunts. Some places I&#x27;d have no problem leaving 30% to even 50% at times because they were simply surreal and treat people like royalty.. Like really, really, really cater to you. And it&#x27;s no difference of small restaurant, big restaurant, or someone just outside grilling rabbits.<p>Behavior matters.

This article is clearly not written by anyone with service industry experience.<p>1) Tips are unrelated to good service...good tips are mostly good luck<p>False, I could rely on 25%+ tip average, and as a server&#x2F;bar trainer I trained my staff to receive the same, by giving excellent service. <i>Being able to rely on tips for income (as most of the industry does) is by definition not luck.</i><p>2) It&#x27;s un-American<p>Tipping is a direct way for the consumer to reward and punish a worker or market based on perceived value. If being capitalist is an American trait, tipping is very American.<p>3) Economists don&#x27;t get it<p>Where is the source cited for this? I know plenty of people who work in finance, and tip very well. Professors however, seem to value service workers differently...<p>4) It’s borderline racist<p>Because more minorities receive tips? The service industry gives countless minorities and other disadvantaged groups (criminals, drifters, youth) opportunities for employment and advancement not found in any other industry. Most people who work in the kitchen do so by choice, anyone who desires and has people&#x2F;sales skills can just as easily get a front-of-house job. As a service worker I was generally hired by and reporting to a minority.<p>4b) &quot;it&#x27;s usually illegal to redistribute tips among the staff.&quot;<p>False, tip pooling is extremely common between service workers and even back-of-house (kitchen). Only tip sharing with managers is not practiced, because they have higher guaranteed pay and it would be a conflict of interest for all involved.<p>5) We don’t tip doctors, flight attendants, and any number of occupations where service is important.<p>This is a personal anecdote of the writer. I tip flight attendants anywhere they still take cash. And a surprising number of occupations are happy to accept tips if you try. Tips don&#x27;t have to be monetary, they can be free tickets to a show or food or a vice (i.e. cigarettes or alcohol). Doctors don&#x27;t get tips because of the high pay of their job, but many industries have bonuses provided by the buyer in exchange for a job performed beyond expectations.<p>5b) [Workers practice tip-sharing] according to a culture called “tipout.” But as this is not obligatory, it is inefficient and can foster cheating, resentment, or worse.<p>False, and this clearly shows the writer does not have service industry experience. Anywhere tipout is practiced, it is required as a percentage minimum of sales. However, often workers &quot;tipout&quot; above and beyond the required percentage, to anyone and everyone who earned it. In many service jobs your co-workers are like family and you all take care of one another.<p>Priceonomics usually writes great articles, but this one should be taken with a grain of salt.

I think averaging out all the numbers and reporting service doesn&#x27;t matter may be missing those rare occasions when the restaurant really does screw up and you want to punish them with no tip. I want the waiter to go work hard and get me the right thing, etc., after a screw up or to know not to ignore my table for an hour. I don&#x27;t have that option with an enforced service charge.

&gt; 5) We don’t tip doctors<p>Not in Romania and probably other former communist states. Though this is more like a bribe than a tip.

Tipping isn&#x27;t a requirement for good service. Plenty of countries don&#x27;t have a culture of tipping and restaurants still exist. Tipping is just a convenient way to dance around the concept of minimal wage and exploit workers, almost to the point of slave labour.

You ever tip the chef? The guy who cleans the table after you? The lady who cleans the dishes? Or the guy sits at the cash counter? Or the guy who opens and closes the door after you? Or the guy who walks around taking everyone&#x27;s orders?<p>So why do we start making a noise when it comes to tipping a waiter? Is it only him&#x2F;her in a restaurant who deserves to make some extra money? Or others are well paid? Well, then why not pay him well too?<p>I have always found this attitude, that not tipping means you get the service what you pay for, disturbing. This is regressive. The worse are the people who chime in with their moronic &quot;if you can&#x27;t tip, stay at home&quot;. All the good restaurants I&#x27;ve been to, the ones which are famous for both the food and service, offer good food and service and food whether you tip or not. If there&#x27;s an exception that restaurant needs to have a closer look on its policies and staff.

&gt; We tip barbers and coat checkers along with waiters, but not doctors, flight attendants<p>You don&#x27;t tip people who already get paid really well. I guarantee that you would tip your doctor a lot if doctors usually only made $8&#x2F;hour.

The first time I heard about the importance of tips as a french guy, I thought waiter&#x27;s only income were tips, so in my brain it implied waiters worked for free unless you give them tips !

Mandatory Reservoir Dogs clip: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4sbYy0WdGQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=V4sbYy0WdGQ</a>