This is hardly a big deal, but a short piece over at National Review provides a short, snappy example of how conservatives manage to stoke the culture wars with wildly misleading accounts of wokeness sweeping the nation.
The outrage du jour is Broders' Pasta Bar, a restaurant in Minneapolis that charges a "benefits and equity" fee. The entire NR piece is copied from John Miltmore, who says, among other things:
Telling your customers you are going to begin charging them more because they are too bigoted to tip fairly might not be a winning restaurant strategy. Just sayin’.
....If Broders’ doesn’t feel restaurant workers in the back are earning enough money, there is a solution to that: pay them more. This action doesn’t require any surcharges or public lectures on systemic oppression. It only requires the restaurant to run an efficient and profitable business that allows them to pay workers a wage they believe is fair and “livable.”
But wait. The original statement from Broders' is here. Go ahead and read it yourself. They say that:
- Their original intent was simply to add an automatic gratuity to all checks and then divide the tips fairly between servers and back-of-house workers. However, Minnesota law doesn't allow this.
- So instead they're adding the B&E fee and then returning 100% of the money to workers, which allows them to pay back-of-house staff $18 per hour. In other words, the intent is to pay them more.
- However, customers are not being charged more (except for lousy tippers, I guess). The B&E fee replaces the usual tip. There's still a tip line on checks, but it's optional for those who want to tip more than 15%.
However, the statement also says they hope to reduce unconscious bias in tipping. "In general, Black or Brown servers receive less tips than Caucasian servers. There is gender bias as well."
That's it. All that happened is that a restaurant in Minneapolis decided to implement European-style gratuities included in the bill. They hope this will allow them to pay back-of-house workers more fairly and they also hope it will overcome known bias in tipping behavior. But apparently Miltmore's polemic went viral, so Broders' has updated its statement to make all this crystal clear. The NR writer doesn't seem to have noticed this, just copying Miltmore's week-old piece verbatim.
Broders' implemented this policy more than a year ago, by the way, and I gather that no one has complained since then. But even though it isn't costing customers any more, and even though the main intent appears to be paying all employees more fairly, conservatives just can't stand it if a new policy might also reduce racial bias. Hell, they hate the idea of acknowledging that racial bias even exists. It just throws them into a tizzy. So they write angrily about it, stoke the outrage, and lie about what's going on. Gotta get a piece of that sweet Tucker/CRT/wokeness action sweeping the nation, after all.
Gotta say: the real lack of tipping is one of the unexpected joys of living in Asia. I say "unexpected" because it's not something that typically bothered me, and, in typical blind, smug, Yank fashion, I thought our system guaranteed superior service. What it really guarantees, I've found, is forcing servers to act like lackeys to earn a living wage. In particular I don't miss:
1) the ambiguity concerning final (including tip) price;
2) being forced to subsidize cheap people (aka poor tippers)
3) tip creep (I find it's absolutely out of control now in the States)
I actually don't mind a service charge automatically added to the bill, however. That seems to me a good way to do it.
Just my two cents.
+1.
Also, having, in my student days, worked as a waiter, my perspective is that the tipping system sucks. It really puts you at the mercy and whims of the customer. Some use it abusively, especially with waitresses. And others reward or punish you over the quality of the food (which you have no control over, whatsoever).
It's also actually unfair to the customers as well. As waitstaff, we came to know which of the regular customers were bigger tippers and which weren't. We did treat the big tippers better. Well, sure, you want to encourage generosity and discourage stinginess and free-riding. But some of the low-tippers were just people living on tight budgets.
The whole tipping system needs to go. All restaurant staff needs to be paid fairly.
I'm fine with the cost including tip so I don't have to do anything except pay the bill. Then again I've heard service workers on Europe are rude. Hope that doesn't catch on here
I think it depends on the country. And even there, it's probably dangerous to generalize. I mean, can any American claim with a straight face they've never encountered bad service? In my experience the tipping culture hardly guarantees it. But frankly, I'd put up with a modest increase in surliness on the part of wait staff to jettison the US tipping system. (To me the episode that takes the cake is the time I encountered a digital tipping device in a California hotel room; why not just put a sign on the wall saying "we pay our cleaners starvation wages?")
Stoking culture wars is sort of what conservatives do. Also, being outraged, being aggrieved, and being petulant.
From the restaurant's statement:
So the direct-facing service employees of the establishment were not willing to pool tips?
They still however could have simply increased prices explicitly and instituted a no tipping policy.
Of course if they are still "competing" on prices and how many $ signs appear in reviews based on the menu prices, it stands to reason they would want to follow the lead of the airline industry and break-out fees away from the fares...
An automatic gratuity is not a gratuity. Gratuity implies voluntary. It is a surcharge.
Interestingly, both quotes from the original are no longer in the current version. Archive dot org early. Archive dot org often.
Surcharge, gratuity. Who cares?
Gratuity is voluntary even if pushed by social convention. A surcharge is not. Words and meanings.
1) Pooling tips has to be approved unanimously by the waitstaff. Individuals may contribute if they wish without unanimity, but that's not going to get you very far.
2) Studies have demonstrated conclusively that people think of a meal costing the listed menu price, without including any gratuity. Even if the meal would cost them the same amount either way, they will think that the restaurant that raised the menu prices in place of a gratuity is more expensive, and they will be less likely to eat there. So, your desired system would put the restaurant at a competitive disadvantage. Human beings can fail to be rational at times.
So, your desired system would put the restaurant at a competitive disadvantage.
I have zero doubt this is the case. Also, when it's the USA we're talking about, the reality is a lot of restaurant patrons would feel funny about not leaving a tip. So they'd continue to do so (along with the now higher prices). I still think this is the way to go, though. Don't even add an explicit surcharge: simply disclose right on the menu: All prices reflect an 18% service charge; please, no tipping.
It's a service charge. Hotel room service has been levying it for years. You pay for your food. You pay for someone to haul it up to your room. If you don't want someone to bring the food to your table, you can always go to a takeout window.
If Broder's does not change its menu prices, if servers were formerly getting an average of 15% in tips which went only to them (not back-of-house workers), if patrons no longer tip because they are paying the B&E fee, and if the B&E fee now is split with all workers, then it seems that the servers are losing the (tip) money that is now going to back-of-house workers. Servers will make as much as formerly only if patrons now add a tip on top of the B&E fee.
Maybe the simplest interpretation of all this is that if Broder's is not shortchanging servers - on the assumption that they will get tips on top of the B&E fee - they are really raising prices in order to pay the back-of-house workers more. This is a desirable thing, but why disguise it with the B&E mumbo-jumbo? Miltmore seems to be mostly right about this, but it is more about disguising price hikes than wokeness.
If the restaurant just raised prices, the increase would be taxable. The nominal 15 percent increase would end up costing the customer an additional 16ish percent. As a fee, it's not taxable.
So they are engaging in tax avoidance to the detriment of the locality.
"Miltmore seems to be mostly right about this, but it is more about disguising price hikes than wokeness."
How is he mostly right about this when his entire premise is wrong?
Well, if you ask me, and I know nobody did, we need legislate to eliminate both tipping and all forms of price obfuscation.
Welcome to capitalism, National Review. Just like airlines advertising one price but later letting you know the plane and pilot cost extra, restaurants are trying to raise prices without making it look like they're raising prices.
Gonna be seeing this in a lot of industries as we as a society decide it's not so hot for the CEO to make $100 million and everybody else to go to the charity food bank.
If National Review and the risible FEE want to advertise they're against workers masking a living from work, let em.
"making" a living...
Airlines make bank on luggage fees, seating charges, carry on fees, change fees, cancellation fees and so on. Hotels were making plenty from mandatory resort fees, fuel surcharges, internet connections and the like. Those are more pernicious than restaurants charging a service fee. They are often about gaming the search systems. People search for the cheapest flight, but while they might search for restaurants by price category, but no one picks Italian food because it's $15.23 instead of $16.14 for Chinese food. Sane people look at the general meal price and make an allowance for tipping or a service charge. Republicans and religious sorts resent having to pay people for their labor, so this kind of thing rankles. White southerners hated having to pay cash to their black "help". They'd rather give old clothes. It might not be all Republicans, but religious people have long had a reputation for being lousy tippers. No one wants the Sunday brunch shift if the restaurant is next to a church. There's even a religious tract they'll hand out that looks like currency, but is actually about saving one's soul by becoming a cheap bastard.
It's not only Broders in Minnesota. Here in Denver, a local ice cream shop and bakery has instituted a similar policy and so has a local restaurant group that operates under several different names. It's the future.
There are a bunch of restaurants in Minneapolis that are adding 15-18% surcharges to support staff who aren't tipped. I would say 1/3 of the restaurants I order from or (now) frequent here are doing this, with many shifting to this model during COVID as a mechanism to support staff when limited to takeout business models, which I assume generate less tipping than in-person service.
Broder's is different in flagging the bias / equity aspects of this, but the practice itself is common.
Conservatives don't hate people because they're racists, they hate people because they love hate.
Once again, an allegedly well-meaning Broder fucks the Democrat Party.
I hope this Minnesota fuckwit Broder joins his WaPo fuckwit cousin David in hell.
Tipping is at he discretion of the customer and should not be automatically included. I do somewhat understand doing this for large parties but it's unacceptable (in my opinion) to do it for smaller/regular sized parties.
Why do people eating with lots of other people deserve to be more limited in their discretion
I don’t agree with the automatic gratuity for large parties either but I get the idea. There’s a difference between being stiffed on a party of three and a party of twenty.
I’m a fairly good tipper. But I certainly don’t want a restaurant determining how much I choose to give.
Yeah, prices are for suckers.
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