GatewayRedbirds.com

Kitchen staff already gets paid hourly at something minimum wage or above, so they wouldn't stand to make anything extra from the change. Servers it all depends on what the owner decides to pay them hourly and how much customers are charged to make that happen.

According to this article, wait staff often clear $80,000 per year, while kitchen help is about $35,000. A couple of articles that I've read say that no-tip restaurants tried to "distribute the wealth" more evenly, but ended up losing wait staff because of it.

These are obviously isolated situations, and may not be the norm. I don't know.

http://www.nimble.news/no-tipping-polic ... hing-back/

Yes that's what I meant.

I think we dug into this when Danny Meyer (big time restaurateur, StL native, Shake Shake founder) first proposed it in 2015. Looks like he and a few other high end places are still on board despite some front of house turnover and now a ridiculous class action lawsuit.

Wait staff making 80k is certainly not the norm, or a lot more people would be waiters. There's too many variables to say for sure whether it would work at your average restaurant, but I think people would generally prefer to not have to tip as long as the price increases weren't outrageous and quality of service didn't suffer.

Probably right.

I think IMA made a good point too.......... there needs to be a way to make sure the price increase goes to the employees.

And what if the restaurant owners start colluding? MLB all over again, amirite?

It can easily happen in NY, San Fran, Chicago etc, but you would be at the very top industry in STL making $80k in straight tips, especially if you're a server tipping out support staff. That means you're walking out of the door with an average of $325 five nights a week. There are maybe a handful of servers and bartenders at the top of the food chain in certain restaurants that do those kinds of numbers in St. Louis. I could probably name most of them.

The reason Danny Meyer does it is because he needs to subsidize back of the house wages with front of the house tips in a market where you can't live anywhere close to his restaurants for $15/hr. And yes, he'll lose his best servers. I'm sure he knew that. It's probably worth it.

I think the shift will continue towards fast casual. I had a lovely time at Grace+3 for lunch today and ordered at a counter and got my own drink.

lol thats definitely not the norm

Some of those fast casual places have gotten a little too proud with their prices. $15-20 for food you have to work for that isn't all that great to begin with. Obviously there are some exceptions that are worth it, but I think some of the others are going to start to struggle. There's several places where I can get a better meal, full service and a tip for the same price or even less (as if I needed another reason to eat mexican food all the time). If a guy like me is actually starting to pay attention and cut back on some things, I'd have to think people with families are even further down that path.