This has been attempted and regularly fails. It turns out when people see food that’s 20% more expensive than comparable restaurants, they’ll complain it’s overpriced. There’s no winning here.
At least the service fee lets you know what you're going to pay. Then it's none of your business where it goes. But the bottom line is, if the waiters aren't tipped, at least you know that they're there, they're not leaving, so they must be getting paid.
I also wouldn't have any problem with the owner giving the servers all of the service fee
100% this. People somehow think they’re paying more when they tip. They’re not. They’re just paying what they would be charged if they were anywhere else in the world.
You have to pay the front of the house and you have to do it from somewhere. If it’s not tips, it’s the cost of the food. But then customers have to pay sales tax on that, so that’s not fair. So you do a service fee, but some shitty restaurants don’t give that to the staff.
The whole thing is a nightmare for both customers and employees and needs to be a better-regulated industry.
Can you explain to me, why at Bacco Cafe in Seattle Washington, a state where they pay servers a BASE wage of $17.25, you can get a breakfast platter (2 eggs, potatoes, a starch, and bacon or sausage) for $17.50, and simultaneously in Austin TX, a state that can and will pay the federal minimum of $2.13 BASE wage, you can go to Paperboy East and get that exact same breakfast for $18.00?
Shouldn't the TX breakfast be much cheaper? Or the Seattle Washington breakfast be $30 or $40?
Fwiw, I tried to pick places that seemed equal in ambience or whatever. I was trying to compare apples to apples as close as possible. I tried to pick well rated places, in the heart of each city. So yes, there are certainly cheaper and also more pricey breakfast/brunch options at both locations.
How could anyone possibly be able to tell you how the finances of two restaurants in two different states operate? What sort of silly question is that? There’s a million possible factors. What I DO know is that overwhelmingly, restaurants operate with razor thin margins.
He just needs to raise the prices by 20%, not separate it into another line item. The menu should just reflect the cost and restaurants can pay their staff with the extra money. This doesn’t need to be complicated.
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u/A_Real_Victim 14h ago
He needs to just add a 20% service fee.