Rant: Tip Culture

[33anda3rd]

I've always thought it would be a great idea to undercut everyone on wine if you can get away with it. Margins are great, but profits are better.

Do you guys do that across the board, or is it scaled towards the price point? Ours range from 400 to 100%, with 250 being the average probably.

Sometimes lower on the big stuff. If you like wine and you know that you can get a bottle that you'd pay $150 for at a white-tablecloth place for $80 at our place, we believe that's a draw and you will come in (both of us are paying ~$60 for it wholesale.) Most of our stuff, though, on the list is priced between $37 and $50. Re the higher priced items, we believe that wine has become a little too elevated, with a lot of the public thinking of it as a white-linen thing that is reserved for big-bucks expense account dinners and something that they should be intimidated by--moreso than beer and cocktails, which are trendy, growing fast, and far easier for most of the drinking public to understand and grasp than wine. Not that there's anything wrong with craft beer and cocktails, we love those and push them too. But we believe there's a slice of the dining public that wants to drink wine, and we want to deliver it in an approachable and casual way that makes it something you share and enjoy with a table of friends. We want to provide value to the knowledgeable wine drinkers. We also want to open up something new to the novices who like wine and who can afford our $80 bottle of pinot nero that's $150 at Spiaggia or somewhere a little more high falutin.

We agree about profit v margin. We think what we do with wine (and craft cocktails, our most expensive is $9) influences people's decision to dine with us significantly. We believe it means our food cost goes down because we are busy enough that we 86 a fish entree frequently but toss out 3-day-old fish never, due to extra volume. We believe that it helps to sell it low so that the inventory moves and our small list constantly evolves, keeping people coming back. We could price that $60 wholesale bottle at $120 or $150 and it would take us months to sell it. Hell, we'd probably still have a couple from the day we opened. Instead we push through a case of it at $80 in 10 days and then either get more or get something else that excites us.

Edited to add: we don't have a cellar or a huge amount of wine storage. This certainly is a from-necessity-comes-innovation thing that plays a part. We can't hold several hundred bottles, let alone thousands like some places. We can hold about 240--not selections, but physical bottles. So our list at any time is ~30 wines with an inventory of six of this, twelve of that, eight of this, four of these, a couple dozen of this one that moves like crazy, and so on. We can't have stuff sitting around not moving. It's not the deciding factor, or even a big deciding factor, but it plays a part. If we had a cellar (hopefully in the future) we'd have a bigger list and a larger inventory. We're not winning any Wine Spectator awards, but we have a program I believe in that works for both us and our guests.

[go birds]

applicable

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rocunited/the-t ... oesnt-jw09

[33anda3rd]

The big corporate restaurants are the problem children. Do the math in your head. What does an average server at Denny's make per cover in tip? $2? To get to just $30K/year that server has to do like 60 covers per shift, 5 days/week without a break. That's messed up. There's a lot more Denny's and their ilk than there are fine dining restaurants and upscale neighborhood restaurants, so the industry trend is going to be driven by them.

It disappoints and frustrates me that many people have a hard time making a living in this country, restaurants or other. I'm lucky that I'm not involved in the really crappy side of the industry. None of the stuff in that buzzfeed thing embarrasses me, because I happy to say we do all those things the right way and treat our employees well.

[stlouie_lipp]

Tips aren’t something ‘extra,’ they’re the majority of a server’s wage

This is something most people would do good to remember. I remember the summer I spent in France I was surprised at how little people there tipped, if at all. I was told that servers there actually get "real" paychecks and the the tip is something extra over there.

[cardsfansince82]

The big corporate restaurants are the problem children. Do the math in your head. What does an average server at Denny's make per cover in tip? $2? To get to just $30K/year that server has to do like 60 covers per shift, 5 days/week without a break. That's messed up. There's a lot more Denny's and their ilk than there are fine dining restaurants and upscale neighborhood restaurants, so the industry trend is going to be driven by them.

It disappoints and frustrates me that many people have a hard time making a living in this country, restaurants or other. I'm lucky that I'm not involved in the really crappy side of the industry. None of the stuff in that buzzfeed thing embarrasses me, because I happy to say we do all those things the right way and treat our employees well.

Gee, I wonder why there are more Denny's? Maybe because 95% of the population can't afford fine dining, even the ones that charge "only" $80 a bottle.

[33anda3rd]

The big corporate restaurants are the problem children. Do the math in your head. What does an average server at Denny's make per cover in tip? $2? To get to just $30K/year that server has to do like 60 covers per shift, 5 days/week without a break. That's messed up. There's a lot more Denny's and their ilk than there are fine dining restaurants and upscale neighborhood restaurants, so the industry trend is going to be driven by them.

It disappoints and frustrates me that many people have a hard time making a living in this country, restaurants or other. I'm lucky that I'm not involved in the really crappy side of the industry. None of the stuff in that buzzfeed thing embarrasses me, because I happy to say we do all those things the right way and treat our employees well.

Gee, I wonder why there are more Denny's? Maybe because 95% of the population can't afford fine dining, even the ones that charge "only" $80 a bottle.

First, you're way in the [expletive] out of line with that comment. You wanna tell Haltz or Fan_In_NY that they're somehow less than good people or what they're doing is somehow a less-than-noble thing because they sell expensive F&B stuff to people who can afford it?

There are more Denny's because the margins at Denny's are huge because their food cost for a Grand Slam Stuff Your Fat Self Breakfast Of Champions is like 8 cents in eggs, 20 cents in bacon, 3 cents in bread and 10 cents in potatoes, if that. That that gets marked up to like $7, for something like a 1800% markup, is more gouging than me selling a bottle of wine that costs me $60 for $80. They don't bridge the gap between food cost and cost to the consumer via labor, FF&E, utility, franchising fees, etc. There are more because they're way more profitable. And if you wana get all socioeconomic about it, their placement near freeway exits where it's convenient for even the laziest traveller to go "oh, Denny's, fine", their purveying of artery-clogging [expletive], and the wage they pay their staff is where you can find all your offense.

[lukethedrifter]

33's not wrong. The real trick is to find a way to get real food to the masses at a reasonable price cuz they ain't getting their money's worth no matter how little they're paying now.

[cardsfansince82]

The big corporate restaurants are the problem children. Do the math in your head. What does an average server at Denny's make per cover in tip? $2? To get to just $30K/year that server has to do like 60 covers per shift, 5 days/week without a break. That's messed up. There's a lot more Denny's and their ilk than there are fine dining restaurants and upscale neighborhood restaurants, so the industry trend is going to be driven by them.

It disappoints and frustrates me that many people have a hard time making a living in this country, restaurants or other. I'm lucky that I'm not involved in the really crappy side of the industry. None of the stuff in that buzzfeed thing embarrasses me, because I happy to say we do all those things the right way and treat our employees well.

Gee, I wonder why there are more Denny's? Maybe because 95% of the population can't afford fine dining, even the ones that charge "only" $80 a bottle.

First, you're way in the [expletive] out of line with that comment. You wanna tell Haltz or Fan_In_NY that they're somehow less than good people or what they're doing is somehow a less-than-noble thing because they sell expensive F&B stuff to people who can afford it?

There are more Denny's because the margins at Denny's are huge because their food cost for a Grand Slam Stuff Your Fat Self Breakfast Of Champions is like 8 cents in eggs, 20 cents in bacon, 3 cents in bread and 10 cents in potatoes, if that. That that gets marked up to like $7, for something like a 1800% markup, is more gouging than me selling a bottle of wine that costs me $60 for $80. They don't bridge the gap between food cost and cost to the consumer via labor, FF&E, utility, franchising fees, etc. There are more because they're way more profitable. And if you wana get all socioeconomic about it, their placement near freeway exits where it's convenient for even the laziest traveller to go "oh, Denny's, fine", their purveying of artery-clogging [expletive], and the wage they pay their staff is where you can find all your offense.

Sorry to interrupt your humble brag fest that's going on. Show me where I criticized anyone for working where they work. I don't give a [expletive] what Denny's mark up is. A couple can eat there for $20 or somewhere you approve of for $100+. When the median income in this country is $50k it's not hard to figure out what they are going to choose.

[33anda3rd]

The big corporate restaurants are the problem children. Do the math in your head. What does an average server at Denny's make per cover in tip? $2? To get to just $30K/year that server has to do like 60 covers per shift, 5 days/week without a break. That's messed up. There's a lot more Denny's and their ilk than there are fine dining restaurants and upscale neighborhood restaurants, so the industry trend is going to be driven by them.

It disappoints and frustrates me that many people have a hard time making a living in this country, restaurants or other. I'm lucky that I'm not involved in the really crappy side of the industry. None of the stuff in that buzzfeed thing embarrasses me, because I happy to say we do all those things the right way and treat our employees well.

Gee, I wonder why there are more Denny's? Maybe because 95% of the population can't afford fine dining, even the ones that charge "only" $80 a bottle.

First, you're way in the [expletive] out of line with that comment. You wanna tell Haltz or Fan_In_NY that they're somehow less than good people or what they're doing is somehow a less-than-noble thing because they sell expensive F&B stuff to people who can afford it?

There are more Denny's because the margins at Denny's are huge because their food cost for a Grand Slam Stuff Your Fat Self Breakfast Of Champions is like 8 cents in eggs, 20 cents in bacon, 3 cents in bread and 10 cents in potatoes, if that. That that gets marked up to like $7, for something like a 1800% markup, is more gouging than me selling a bottle of wine that costs me $60 for $80. They don't bridge the gap between food cost and cost to the consumer via labor, FF&E, utility, franchising fees, etc. There are more because they're way more profitable. And if you wana get all socioeconomic about it, their placement near freeway exits where it's convenient for even the laziest traveller to go "oh, Denny's, fine", their purveying of artery-clogging [expletive], and the wage they pay their staff is where you can find all your offense.

Sorry to interrupt your humble brag fest that's going on. Show me where I criticized anyone for working where they work. I don't give a [expletive] what Denny's mark up is. A couple can eat there for $20 or somewhere you approve of for $100+. When the median income in this country is $50k it's not hard to figure out what they are going to choose.

Yes, it's virtually impossible to detect any judgement in your post, you're right.

Someone on an average wage (though not someone who works at Denny's) can eat at Denny's where the food is cheap largely because the waitress is on food stamps.

They're way better for the 'average American' than what I do.

[stlouie_lipp]

Denny's sucks.