By Aine O'Connor
St. Louis Public Radio, October 22, 2015
St. Louis native Danny Meyer recently rocked the restaurant world, making national news with his decision to eliminate tipping from his family of New York City restaurants. ... Meyer’s decision to eliminate tipping comes at an interesting time in labor politics. Service industry workers all over the country are raising their voices for a higher minimum wage, federally and locally. The federal tipped minimum wage has languished at $2.13 since the early 1990s. In Missouri, tipped minimum wage is $3.825, or half of the $7.65 general minimum wage. ...
Last year, Chris Sommers, owner of Pi Pizzeria and Gringo in St. Louis, voluntarily raised the minimum wage at his restaurants to $10.10 an hour—while keeping tips for wait staff—without substantially raising the price for his food. But that kind of move is only possible when restaurants have good profit margins and some money to spare. Otherwise, as with Meyer’s restaurants, prices will rise. ...
A more equitable restaurant
... Top-of-the-line cooks in many dining establishments make significantly less than front-end staff. As culinary school becomes more expensive and the number of talented cooks increases, offering cooks a competitive salary is getting more and more difficult.
The disparity in pay from the front to the back of the house can be as large as 2:1, Sommers said. His increased minimum wage was one way of coping with that; eliminating tipping is another, more radical one.
“I think it makes a much more seamless restaurant dining experience for the guests, as well as creates a more level playing field between those who serve the meal and those who cook it, and that creates a much better culture within a restaurant,” Sommers said. ...
But servers who are in the industry for “the right reasons” will continue to be, Sommers said, and service may even become more equalized. A top server who used to work only Friday and Saturday nights for the good tips would now be incentivized to work during a Monday lunch, for example, meaning that Monday customers would receive top service regardless of their reservation time.
Predictable income is also an important part of a server’s cost-benefit analysis, Sommers said. “Unless a restaurant is 100 percent packed all the time, there are ebbs and flows in that income, and spikes and valleys. And this model would at least equalize it and average it out after a week, and help provide a little bit of predictability in a server’s income.” ...
But all in all, Sommers said, it seems that eliminating tipping would create a more collaborative service environment, where everyone working in the restaurant—servers, cooks, managers—is concerned with all aspects of the business.
“Danny has always been about taking care of employees first, and his employees will take care of the guests,” Sommers said. ...
Even Sommers, who said he loves the idea of eliminating tipping, made a point of noting that his restaurants would not make the change any time soon. All the restaurant world, it seems, is waiting for results from Meyer. ...
Copyright St. Louis Public Radio