Should you tip the waitress and how much thread

Trollface_sl said:

I wanna send a mystery diner and fuck your bartender.

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Over a couple chicken wings and a few free drink doubles? Go on with your bad self.

aychamo_aycono_sl said:

So you're rewarding to server for basically stealing alcohol and food from his employer. Nice!

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Well, if the bar is well run and they weigh/measure their booze consumption and the bartender is also on the ball, chances are they're not stealing from the employer. Instead, they're short pouring other people's drinks and keeping track of it in their head to either give drinks to friends, hot chicks, or simply to not ring in the occasional drink and pocket the cash for themselves. Good bartenders can make a lot of money doing that, if they're slinging a lot of drinks.

Unless the bar also has those fancy pouring stops that meter out every single shot, which I understand are pretty difficult to get around. But yeah, overall the bartending industry is pretty rife with various kinds of theft.

Bartenders doing that kind of stuff is accepted by management pretty much everywhere. All bartenders do it for their regulars, and management knows about it but turns a blind eye because it keeps business coming in. As long as the bartender isn't actually costing the restaurant money by giving away absurd amounts of free stuff, management will let it continue.

For a solid 2 years my friends and I would go to this one bar every Thursday. It was hardly ever crowded and we were on a first name basis with all the bartenders. We'd get the special "club" price of $2.50 for any draft beer (and they had some wonderful beers) plus heavy-handed pours in our liquor drinks and the bartenders would occasionally "forget" to ring in a drink or two. The bartender got great tips and the restaurant still made great money and had steady business coming in every week. It's a win/win.

Places that are super strict on their bartenders aren't going to do much repeat business from normal folk.

I owned a high end steak house for 3 years. Right now i am going through a forclosure of the property and in the process of filing bankruptcy on the LLC. All said and done, i am out about 150k right now and have pretty much lost everything that i made in the first 30 years of my life. I was able to get a job quickly enough after the closing of the restaurant, but im going to be dealing with the financial impact for a long long time. I did my due dilligence, i bought a restaurant that had been in business for 32 years. I didnt count on 10 years of falsified financial statements and 5 star resort and golf club going in a mile away.

That being said, restaurant margins are so razor thin doing something like increasing wait staff wages would seriously increase menu price of food. Ideal restaurant costs should be 30/30/30-10. That is 30% labor, 30% food costs and 30% fixed costs with the remaining 10% left over for profit. You would have to double or tripple the wages for the front of the house to keep halfway decent staff. I dont see how anyone but the chains would be able to stay in business. Being new in the business, i was never able to get above a 5% profit threshold. A smaller restaurant doing 1M a year in sales, with the owners pulling in 50k a year would be hard to sell to anyone.

I paid my servers $2.50 an hour, and the good ones walked out with a grand or more a week in cash.

Had a guy from corporate who would come in every so often to check on the day to day operation at our restaurant. Had a few conversations with him about operating costs, and the type of profit we pulled in. He was telling me that from a pure profit standpoint, they were earning 16 cents per guest on average. I didn't believe him at all, but when I dug deeper found it to be true.

My dreams of owning my own restaurant died that day.

Yeah, it's an ugly industry unless you've got an amazing concept or ability to market, or launder money for criminals.

Sorry to hear that, Thorne. It's a rough enough industry as it is without financial backing.

Eomer_sl said:

Yeah, it's an ugly industry unless you've got an amazing concept or ability to market, or launder money for criminals.

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Or you make quality food and don't waste a damn thing. We don't make profits on "dogs" and a steak restaurant is all dog. It's those 9 dollar sides, alcohol, and compost soup from leftover trim where the pennies trickle in.

Anyone who buys beef/veal/pork/chix stock shouldn't be in the business. And I know tons who do that, and write menus that have no interchangeable parts. Then they wonder why they're in the red. Even stuff like darnell and foil really add up over a year if you waste it cater wrapping.

Not Thorne, sounds like he got fucked

The Ancient_sl said:

How do you figure this. At 15% tip you are still subsidizing the wages of servers from all the non-tipping assholes. As others have said, there is really no indication what you are suggesting would actually happen as evidenced by everywhere else in the world.

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Because waiters work more hours than they actually serve tables. So the direct 15% tip doesn't correlate directly to a 15% increase in food costs. Servers have to clean up, prep stations, break down stations. Restaurants have to keep staff on longer than necessary to cover sudden rushes etc. Those are all increased labor costs that are higher than a direct increase in menu items.

So if you want to get rid of tipping for some stupid reason, then you're going to have to suffer higher than 15% increase in food costs. So that $10 sandwhich is not going to correlate to $11.50, it's going to go up to $13-$15 most likely because owners are going to A) round up costs to the nearest dollar and B) put some extra padding on to food costs to cover slow times and higher labor costs. That's if they are being honest.

Cooks clean, prep, and inventory their own stations and even plate the food before some dumb ass kid carries it out and guess who gets the tip?

Servers are the big salad person from Seinfeld.

Elurin_sl said:

I don't agree that prices would go up 15-20%. The reason being that wait staff don't make minimum wage currently. Eliminating tips would save me 15-20% off the top. Raising the employees from their current age to minimum (or minimum +, which is more likely) will end up being less than that.

For instance, I go to a restaurant and end up tipping 15% on a $30 check, or $4.50. In total, I'm paying $34.50.

Current minimum wage is $7.25, and I'll just say wait staff makes about $4/hr. We'll say the waiters here are going to be brought up above minimum, to $8. To do that, the restaurant needs to raise the average price of a meal $4.

My meal now costs $34, as opposed to $34.50. The restaurant also has to make up the difference in FICA, but the difference in wage is only $0.75, since they had to pay that out on minimum wage regardless (due to always having to pay minimum wage). In the end, I just don't see how costs are going to increase dramatically.

As far as service turning to shit because the staff aren't working for tips anymore, I think that's bunk too. What world do you live in that people can just be an asshole to other people and keep their job? It's like people are arguing that the workforce in restaurants is the lowest scum of the Earth, who are only somewhat amiable due to the prospect of a few extra bucks. It's ridiculous.

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Your math pretty much ignores the normal costs of doing business. It's not that simple at all. When I say service will turn to shit, I don't mean people are going to be pissing in your face and telling you to fuck off. Servers are going to go up to your table, ask you what you'd like eat, drop off drinks, bring you your food and bring you a bill. If that's the type of service you want, then fine. That's what you'll get if you pay waiters $8 an hour.

That's also ignoring the fact that people that are satisfied making minimum wage are the best workers or higher quality employees. I can tell you now that those people would not be able to handle a high capacity, high flow restaurant. That means restaurants would probably have to higher even more servers so that instead of taking care of 3 tables, they are taking care of 2. You get quality employees because they can make decent cash. Stick minimum wage on there, and you lose all those people.

I would rather work 30 hours a week as a grocery store cashier than deal with the running around, stress, and pace of a restaurant at the same price.

Also, the workforce in many restaurants are pretty fucking scummy.

Ultimately i would have been fine if not for the golf resort being put back in. I spent 6 months with the owner of the place working out food and beverage services for the club. They were going to keep it to light fare and burger/basket type food, then at the last minute went all out with a 200 seat 5 star dining room with no expense spared on anything. The worst part was the clubhouse and restaurant were funded by a 125M TARP fund approved by the county. So my tax dollars went DIRECTLY to funding my competition. That part still pisses me off.

All in all it was still a great experience and i learned a lot. Ive got a decent gig right now and money isnt that hard to make.

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There is a reason why so many fancy and high end restaurants are owned by extremely wealty people, its a way for them to lower thier taxable position on income from other sources. Its almost always going to be a loss. Its prettly much impossible to make it rich off of one restaurant. You may get lucky and pull in 75k a year profit, but its not likely. You have to find a concept that works and get the 3rd, 4th and 10th restaurant open to bring any significant income.

Ortega_sl said:

Yeah, understandable you don't have a response. Even if she was paid no hourly wage she would've made $13.35 an hour at a buffet where tips are much lower than your average restaurant.

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Actually, I just got tired of arguing. I had a response and decided that it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference because your opinion is based on living in Bizarro World wage and tip-wise. That said, today is a new day. The response went something like this: 1) bullshit on $2.00 reporting - that will get you audited in a fucking heartbeat. 2) That money looks suspiciously like tip-outs, a concept that has not been much discussed in this thread. Servers tip out support staff, even at shitty restaurants. At nicer restaurants, tip outs can end up representing 8, 9, or 10% of what servers make, depending on how the restaurant operates. You stiff your server, they still have to pay out their percentages. They are, in effect, paying for you to dine out. 3) For the hundredth time, other than WA, CA and maybe another state or two, servers don't have anything resembling a decent hourly wage.

Enter "restaurant makes up the difference by law" "bullshit unskilled job" "I have a degree and a real job and am salty about these assholes making a comparable amount of money" blah blah blah response. I look forward to hearing all again.

When I worked in one, servers were not required to pay out tips to anyone. The good ones did however.

Draegan_sl said:

Because waiters work more hours than they actually serve tables. So the direct 15% tip doesn't correlate directly to a 15% increase in food costs. Servers have to clean up, prep stations, break down stations. Restaurants have to keep staff on longer than necessary to cover sudden rushes etc. Those are all increased labor costs that are higher than a direct increase in menu items.

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What does that matter, you are still offering them compensatory wages to match up to the take home.

Agenor_sl said:

When I worked in one, servers were not required to pay out tips to anyone. The good ones did however.

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It is compulsory in many restaurants, although obviously not all.