Quote:
Originally Posted by mrroandrro
Aside from what has been mentioned above, the places you mention require smaller staffs to operate allowing them to pay minimum wage or better. A restaurant, in order to serve 300 people on a good day, requires a staff of about some where around 40 people. Waitstaff, usually the largest make up around 60% of that or so, with bartenders, cooks, bussboys, dishwashers and management. If you paid everyone minimum wage or more, factor in food costs, supplies, utilities, your profits would be minimal at best. Now they could bump everyone up, but then the restaurant will make it up by charging the patron. So you now instead of a 20$ bill at Applebees for lunch plus 4$ tip, you are paying 40$. That's the restaurant business. Don't like to tip? Go eat at places that don't employ waitstaff. Or you could just go to Applebees/Chili's /TGIF, pay 20$ +4$tip, have a decent meal, and also have the satisfaction of knowing that you may have helped someone.
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No it's not. The size of the staff is irrelevant. You must not understand what I'm proposing. What I'm talking about would not be removing any money from the cycle. It would simply be transferring 18% from the customer's tip line, to the customer's menu price. Then passing the additional profit from the 18% increase on the menu item, to the waitstaff's wage. The food would still cost the same. And customers could still tip if they would like. But the waitstaff's wage is no longer dependent on the customer's
choice to tip. Because the choice is gone and that tip is now guaranteed. And the customer has no guilty expectation of saving a poor single mom or college student from the horrors of tip reliance.
It wouldn't skyrocket food prices. It would stabilize waitstaff wages and remove the confusion and guilt of the whole screwed up tipping system.
Very Overly Simplified Example:
Tip system
Turkey Sammich food cost: $3
Turkey Sammich Menu price: $10
Expected Customer tip: $2
Waiter wage: $4/hr
Waiter profit: $4wage + $2tip(Maybe)= $6/hr(Maybe)
No Tip System
Turkey Sammich food cost: $3
Turkey Sammich Menu price: $12
Expected Customer tip: $0
Waiter wage: $6/hr
Waiter profit: $6/hr(Guaranteed) + $tip(Maybe)
I think many consumers and most waitstaff would like something like that and could absolutely make it work without having menu prices double. Every other country except the US uses a system like this, and it's somehow worked just fine. We could make it work and eliminate all the unnecessary BS...