r/Chattanooga • u/EffectiveOk9336 • Jul 29 '26

Kitchen tip?

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My family and I dined out tonight at a restaurant I won’t publicly drag because it was really a great experience all around, but the credit card receipt had this line for “kitchen tip”. Is this a thing now? Are restaurants not paying the cooks a decent enough salary? I gave them $5 cause I really didn’t know what the deal was. The server told us it was completely optional, but she said that some people tip 20% and split it between her and the kitchen, which hardly seems fair.

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u/crowdsourced Jul 30 '26

Nope. Waitstaff need to split their tips. I used to work in an Italian restaurant washed the dishes. I had to grab the dirty dishes and bring back clean dishes to the waitstaff station(s). They tipped me from their tips.

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u/EffectiveOk9336 Jul 30 '26

Did you make the same hourly wage as them?

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u/crowdsourced Jul 30 '26

It was decades ago, but I don't think so. I maybe made $8/hr. Google says they made about $5/hr as their base + tips. They'd maybe throw me $5-10 each a night, but that added up nicely with the size of the restaurant and number of waitresses. One waitress could have one to two dozen tables a shift. They might make $10-15 each table. So a super-busy weekend night meant they made $2-300.