I haven't done the restaurant gig in over 15 years. That being said, I always tip the waiters and bartenders on the liberal side. To this day, I still remember some of the shit I'd have to deal with and to me these people earn their tips for the most part. Even the shittiest service usually gets 10%, average gets 15%, and if I receive really good service I have been known to do 20-30 percent depending on the actual service and amount of tab.

Some of us have been in the restaurant business. I have been in the restaurant business for over 30 years. Though I have never done pizza, I have worked with tipped wage employees a good portion of that time. I would be upset if any of my employees contacted a guest to discuss their tip. I agree that you took a chance on not accepting the automatic gratuity and justified it by saying that you think it is tacky. It is customary so few guests are surprised. It is my opinion that you understand this and also understand that most people will tip more if you give them the option (and decline the auto-grat). So you took a chance with your tip. When you got screwed, you were angry and wanted revenge. I would terminate any server who contacted a guest about this and have terminated many servers who were rude to guests. I have also asked guests to find another place to do business if they crossed the line to my employees.

I understand your need to make money. My daughter is a server and struggles to make ends meet. But the big picture view is that chasing off business is a bad thing - for both the owner and the server. With the average restaurant making 3.5% profit and business in decline in most restaurants, it just doesn't seem like a good business practice. Then again, I've never had a restaurant that has so much busines that it can chase customers away. Maybe I'm the one doing it wrong.

well my position is very unique...

as the spot where I work never hurts for business and the dude, if he wanted to, could probably sell and make his entire family wealthy for generations...

business is never in decline here...I work at a recession proof pizza place

Sorry...there is no such animal that is recession proof.

well then clearly you have no idea...

you all laugh at this "pizza place" but we get more business than any restaurant in the entire city in which I live...and it's been like that for a long, long time.

Just to rebut your comment....

Many people used to say the following were recession proof:

Mortgage lenders
Banks
Grocery stores...

Now use that business acumen you tout and see how much disintegration there has been in all of those. In just the grocery store industry alone there has been retail closings and mergers to survive that no one would have dreamed of.

Some things are "recession resistant" but NOTHING is recession proof.

You have alot of good points. I did 10 yrs of the restaurant thing, 6 yrs in mgmt. All this being said, I don't understand where people are coming up with the 3-5 percent profit margin that I've seen pop up on the boards more than once. Maybe during a bad economy in a low volume area, yes, but during even a halfway decent year numbers should be WAY better than this. Maybe times have changed since I was in the game, but if memory serves me correctly(been a LONG time ago), I have seen numbers in the 20% + range in a high volume store when all controllables(food cost, waste, labor, etc) were in line. No restaurant owner I knew would ever sink 1-2 mil capital to open a restaurant(probably higher now) for a $53,000.00 return assuming yearly volume of around 1.5 mil. I'm not trying to start an argument here but there's GOOD money to be made in the restaurant business if managed properly from what I seen as a manager years ago.

If you are working for the highest volume restaurant in Normal, why would you worry about one tip? I mean J Alexanders has an AUV of $4.4 million. If your pizza place is doing more than that, why would this one tip be so important?

I told you from the get go it wasn't about the money...

I took the 3.5% from Jim Sullivan (sullivision.com).

Are you looking at P&L NIBT, net profit or cash flow? And are you looking at the P&L before G&A?

BTW, good discussion.

drinking your own urine is more productive and enjoyable than engaging in a discussion with hootie where you assume that he's familiar with even the most basic accounting / finance concepts.

If you don't know this clown worked pulling beers and running the till for a 6 buck pizza joint in a 50,000 person town, you'd think he was the owner at dorsia by the way he carries on

Very good discussion indeed. And, after thinking about it, my numbers were, as you stated, a little vague for an honest evaluation. Of course, the volume numbers I mentioned were gross figures. And, the profit numbers(percentages) I quoted were indeed before taxes which is a healthy chunk from the bottom line. And there were lots of things like interest on notes, equipment depreciation, franchise fees if applicable, and the like that can have a heavy effect on a balance sheet that I failed to mention. Also, the owners I managed for over the years were big boys in the restaurant business who owned multiple units(One guy owned like 15 restaurants). The reason I bring this up is that guys like this are not as reliant on borrowed money to get the business off of the ground as the little guy. I can see where things could get real tough for the mom/pop operation just trying to get started in their first restaurant when they had to finance a big chunk of that initial cost. Properly managed, income would be good once some of those notes were payed off but the first 2-3 years the finances could get interesting. Especially if there's a road bump in the economy.

There is definately money to be made, but I just don't think it is as much as some people think. A lot of people think that a QSR doing $1M a year should be throwing off tons of cash. When in reality, that is probably break even for an awful lot of restaurants. And losing money if you spent much on land. And when the economy tanks, it means big problems. There have been a whole lot of restaurants that have closed inthe last 2 years. When you are only making $.035 on each dollar, you dont have to lose much in sales before there is no profit left.

At $4.4M, thats about $12,000 per day. I really don't know pizza, but a Hooter's runs about 24% beer and liquor. So let's say that this place does 75% food. That's about $9,000 a day in pizza. Open 14 hours? That's $643 an hour in pizza. Each one costs $8? That's 80 pizzas an hour from 11am until 1am, every day of the year. That's about 1 pizza every 45 seconds, evrey hour, every day. Now that is impressive.

Now his place probably holds 100 people. The average person sits at an Intalian restaurant from about 45 minutes. Let's say pizza is 30 minutes. Now let's say Hootie has a 6 table section (full service has a 3 or 4 table section generally, but we're going to give him the benefit that he is this "awesome" worker). He's going to turn those tables 10 times? That's 60 tables a shift. If each table has 2 pies and a couple pitchers of pop, that's what, $25? $25 time 60 tables is $1,500 in sales each day. At 20%, that's $300 in tips each day. The man is pulling down $78,000 in tips alone. That doesn't include his wages. No wonder this wasn't about the money.

Isn't this the same guy that got arrested because he refused a bouncers direction to leave because he had just bought a drink? He thought the cost of the drink was worth being thrown in jail?