Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2020/08/restaurants-toronto-rid-of-tipping/

by colinprince • 6 years ago

36 80 6 years ago

smnrchrds• 6 years ago

No, they did not. It is more accurate to say two restaurants in Toronto just mandated 18% tipping:

Tips will still be split between front and back but Ten will now be "adding a flat untaxed 18 per cent service charge onto each bill no matter the size of the group,"

The more sensible thing would have been to increase menu prices by 18%. But they are not being sensible. They just increased their prices while pretending they have not done so. I hate it when you have to treat a menu like a legal document and be looking for the fine print.

jszymborski2• 6 years ago

and while we're at it, include the taxes!

tony1012• 6 years ago

I think separately listing taxes has the benefit of transparency - you know how much the government is taking and can make more informed electoral decisions.

bronson• 6 years ago

Covered in the article: "To me it really doesn't seem like too radical of a change, my hope is that after people get comfortable with this, we will be able to scrap a service charge completely and just increase our menu prices by 18 per cent and then pass that 18 per cent into higher salaries for all of our staff."

I hope it catches on.

jbob2000• 6 years ago

Urbanite restaurant-goers aren’t so price sensitive that they can’t handle a price increase from $20 to $22. I think they’re doing it this way so that if it doesn’t work out, they already have the previous infrastructure in place to return to tipping if need be.

petre4• 6 years ago

18% price increase during a pandemic? Wow. They have it in Hungary too, but it's 8% as far as I can remember, not 18%. But we didn't mind as in Budapest the service and the food was almost always excellent, even in a bar that served mainly cocktails but had some easy dishes so that the customer doesn't leave the place if they're hungry.

I don't like service tax. If you don't like the service you have no other option but to pay it. With tips you would just not tip and walk away.

fireattack2• 6 years ago

It's not 18% price increase though. People normally already pay tips just not a fixed 18%.

untog2• 6 years ago

The more sensible thing would have been to increase menu prices by 18%.

That would not be sensible because when people are comparing restaurants they will appear 18% more expensive than an identically priced competition when they aren’t.

I hate it when you have to treat a menu like a legal document

I don’t know why you’d need to. I’ve travelled in Europe plenty, where restaurants charge a service charge. It’s right there in the receipt. I don’t know why this would be any different.

petre4• 6 years ago

It’s right there in the receipt

That's the main issue with it. It should be on the menu, on every page that contains prices. Once it's (only) on the receipt it's too late to pick another restaurant. In Europe they're required by law to list it.

moltar4• 6 years ago

That restaurant would def go on to a mental ban list. I hate when they do that. It’s like an extra sales tax. I want the total number, after all of the fees.

A true place I know that banned tipping is Crew Collective Cafe in Montreal.

It’s the same group that started crew.co and Unsplash.

lostgame• 6 years ago

Good riddance. Tipping is racist/sexist, and is more often than not an excuse for the restaurants to use it for exploitation. I live in Toronto and everyone I know working in the food industry is happy to hear this.

tptacek9• 6 years ago

It isn't hard to find servers who do support tipping; especially in high-end and fine dining, it's relatively lucrative.

skj3• 6 years ago

Racist/sexist in that it allows racists and sexists to express their biases via poor tips? Or something else.

Pfhreak2• 6 years ago

Are tips universally distributed? I would suspect that unconscious bias can impact tipping norms and result in certain classes of people getting smaller or larger tips. I don't have data to back up my hypothesis, however. Additionally, tips tend to go to front of house staff, where certain groups are more/less represented.

tsherr• 6 years ago

Tipping isn't racist or sexist any more than language is, but you can have sexist or racist tippers.

I won't eat at a restaurant that decides I must pay X% tip. I occasionally get tips at work when I do outstanding service, and it's awesome but not required. I pay tips on the same way.

vecinu• 6 years ago

I'm so happy to hear this. I cannot stand tipping and genuinely get anxiety when I'm out with friends and the wife and she sometimes pays without knowing what the right "tip amount" is.

It happens to me too, where I have to pay attention to what the waiter/waitress is doing that is exceptional or bad so I can adjust my tip accordingly.

It's bad for the customer and the employee, the employer is the only one winning by exploiting its own workers. I wish we would just pay our servers a living wage with health benefits and stop hiding those as "Extra surchages" as San Francisco is doing.

While we're at it, show me the final price with taxes included please.

tptacek9• 6 years ago

You do not in fact have to pay attention to how well the server performs. You can just take the final price, divide by 10, multiply by 2, and round whichever direction you want. You should look at tipping as a cost sharing measure, not an incentive system.

dwohnitmok5• 6 years ago

Fascinating. Are we now at 20-23% (exclusive of taxes, as I think they're usually calculated, so the variance here is entirely how much meals tax you have on your meal) tip rates as the new normal?

BoorishBears• 6 years ago

It just occurred to me maybe the reason some people find tipping so stressful, is that they think they're supposed to be grading someone with it.

Because in the US it's not like taxes are included either, and and the "default" tipping percentage is much easier to calculate than tax percentages.

I've lived in countries that tip and don't tip, it's honestly not a huge deal. The fact the menu says a service charge is included or not doesn't really change much at all.

Jedd5• 6 years ago

You can just take the final price, divide by 10, multiply by 2, and round whichever direction you want.

a) this sounds horrendous, and

b) so there's zero pretence that tipping is somehow related to quality of experience?

(I ask as a fairly well-travelled Australian, but who rarely sojourned into North America.)

rascul• 6 years ago

Give me the price up front, including cost for the staff to get whatever is determined to be a decent wage. At the same time, pay staff a decent wage.

sudeepj2• 6 years ago

As someone from India, I never understood the the tipping culture when I went abroad. It is not that tips are non-existent in India. It is not mandatory in India. However in UK, any tip < 10-15% is judged and hence the reputation of Indians as poor tippers. This leads to lot of mis-understanding.

I was surprised even getting a simple haircut had to be tipped in UK. I do not mind if the appropriate tip amount is factored in the price itself. The guilty-feeling and ambiguity whether I am being miserly or not made me avoid such places whenever possible.

Note: I learnt later that waiters in an restaurant are not that well paid and they have to "earn" it via tips.

simonbarker874• 6 years ago

I’m British. I’m sorry you feel this way. It’s the thing I hate the most about visiting the US. I’m going say this once and really big for you:

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TIP IN THE UK.

You can if you want but, having worked in the service sector, it is not expected, service staff won’t think worse of you and please don’t feel guilty.

Unlike the US we have a vaguely liveable minimum wage that is nearly £10 per hour now and tipping is absolutely not required.

I only tip when the service was excellent or the person actually went above and beyond.

tptacek9• 6 years ago

£10/hr sounds significantly lower than what a US server would make in a $$ restaurant (based on industry norms for diner/day/server), let alone a $$$ or a $$$$. If they're relying on that little cash, I'm definitely tipping next time I'm in the UK.

Accacin3• 6 years ago

Where in the UK is this? I don't think I've ever tipped, although some restaurants do add an optional service charge (if you pay by card, it'll ask when you're paying).

I've never once even considered tipping for a haircut, and I've also never heard of Indian's having a 'poor tipper' reputation :)

I sound grumpy, but I do tip when I feel it's required. Once I went to a restaurant with family, and realised that they had no vegan food (my dad had thought a green 'V' meant vegan), and the chef and waitress went way above in preparing me some off-menu food for me, even though it was quite late in the evening. For me, that was an example of where tipping was required and I've been back many times since.

sudeepj2• 6 years ago

Since I do not have evidence for what I had experience. Here are some advice on the net:

https://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/tips-on-tippi...

https://www.lhaa.co.uk/blog/how-much-to-tip-a-hairdresser#:~....

Although it is always worded "if-you-want-to" or "if-you-can-afford". I feel this is a bit ambiguous.

wenc4• 6 years ago

I hate the idea of tipping. I tip generously. Both of these statements are simultaneously true.

The vast majority of the countries in the world (that I've visited) do not believe in percentage based tipping as we do in North America [1]. A tip either involves rounding up to the nearest unit of currency, or takes the form of a small service fee added to the bill.

In North America, we've arrived at a situation where waitstaff actually prefer a tipped environment (due to high upside potential, especially where alcohol is served) and are also beholden to the tip (due to huge downside potential i.e. laws that mandate a lowered minimum wage for tipped workers).

Getting rid of tipping by instituting a living wage can sometimes result in lower upside, so many workers end up being against a fixed livable wage. The calculation is that stochastic/high upsides (at bars, large groups) is preferable to stable but middling upside (i.e. living wage).

On the other hand, the laws of supply and demand still apply. Without high food prices and corresponding demand at those prices, a restaurant can't sustain an untipped staff. So getting rid of tipping is a gamble and not many restaurants, especially low end ones, are able to swing it. Restaurants that are looking to get rid of tips are banking on the fact that the demand will remain the same at higher sticker prices (which in theory, should be true since the effective prices have not changed -- culturally a 15-20% tip is almost mandatory) but psychologically this often isn't the case -- unless you have a sign at the door that says (no tips required).

It's a little bit like Uber/Lyft. The economics doesn't actually work out, but there's something propping it up. In the restaurant world, it's tipping. Getting rid of it is like getting rid of VC money for gig companies. There's a tightrope you have to walk to balance the books.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity

untog2• 6 years ago

I hate the idea of tipping. I tip generously. Both of these statements are simultaneously true.

I strongly agree with this. Particularly in the US, where tipped workers are allowed to be paid less than minimum wage on the assumption they will be tipped. So yeah, I’ll tip. But what a damn stupid system.

swimfar• 6 years ago

In addition, the amount a waiter is tipped is also often influenced by their race, sex, and physical appearance.

9nGQluzmnq3M• 6 years ago

The thing I don't understand that mandatory fixed service charges (in lieu of tips) are already standard for large groups in many if not most US restaurants, because negotiating tips and who pays what in this situation is even more complex.

Why is it so hard to just extend this existing, well accepted practice to smaller tables?

wenc4• 6 years ago

I think it's cultural. Minnesota is doing it though.

https://www.minnesotamonthly.com/food-drink/new-restaurant-s...

The other issue is US consumers get confused and don't know what to do. The difference between a tip, a surcharge, and a service fee is so subtle that it's a mess to keep up with.

https://laist.com/2019/08/26/restaurant_surcharge_tip_los_an...

I think for this to work, it needs to be established as a new widespread social norm. Otherwise the confusion actually increases the friction of dining out (well pre-covid), and restaurants lose. It takes brave restaurants to risk being a casualty of confusion. A good number of restaurants might need to be sacrificed.

silicon2401• 6 years ago

I also hate tipping, and as a result, I just do takeout. No tips expected, no tips given, no problem.

scott31• 6 years ago

Ugh, I generally pay 0% tip and these kinds of restaurants just add friction where I have to send the bill back for them to remove it.

Pfhreak2• 6 years ago

Several restaurants have gotten rid of tipping in Seattle, either through just eliminating it or through the "we charge a fixed additional fee that goes to staff". Either way, I'm a fan (though I prefer the former) if the business provides a living wage, benefits, etc.

Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

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