Why We Have A 20% Service Charge On All Checks

The Long Answer

Tipping is an old custom, but nothing more than a custom, and an ill considered one at that. 

Tipping creates price uncertainty for the business and the customer, wage uncertainty for employees, and wage discrepancies between different jobs within the business - Discrepancies that are out of balance with the importance and difficulties of the different jobs. This is partly just the nature of Tipping, but it is also a result of how Tipping has been enshrined in tax law and employment law. Believe it or not, The reason for enshrinement is racist employment practices from the Jim Crow South (see “The History of Tipping” below**). 

Consciously or unconsciously, tipping also creates an environment of perceived behavioral control that encourages the possibility for all kinds of shoddy behavior on the part of employers, employees and guests. For most of us, Tipping is just something we do and do generously because that's the best way to handle an old, weird custom. Unfortunately, for others, both employers and guests, it is seen as an invitation to act like an asshole. 

We would like to help forge a new sustainable economic and cultural path for restaurants & the guests, workers and owners who love them. There is no better time to start than now. 

And it forces people to do MATH, often after drinking. Where is the fun in that?.

Why a service charge?

Short Answer:

If a restaurant eliminates tipping, a significant portion of employee pay has been eliminated. Obviously this has to be filled in. 

It’s an easy and mostly familiar way to replace the tip.  Most people see it as the amount they would pay anyway if they were tipping. Or maybe even a little less. 

The longer answer:

If a restaurant  eliminates tipping, a significant portion of employee pay has been eliminated. Obviously this has to be filled in. 

Legally, there are only two ways to replace the portion of employee pay: raise menu prices or apply a service charge. 

Raising menu prices has proven to not be an option. Danny Meyer, the famed restaurateur tried this with ALL of his nyc restaurants for a couple of years before determining that it just didn't work.  

Why? A complex answer can be boiled down to 2 words: Sticker Shock.  For whatever reason, 

Our perception of how much we are spending is completely thrown off by higher upfront prices. Even if the total bill that is based on HIGHER menu prices but NO TIP is IDENTICAL to the bill you would have received with LOWER menu prices but  WITH A TIP, each individual item SEEMS MORE EXPENSIVE when you sit down and look at the menu at the beginning of the meal, even if the sum total bill is would be exactly the same. And it is those  prices of  individual menu items that seem to shape our sense of how much a restaurant costs - not the final bill.

Suddenly a restaurant that costs the same as similar restaurants seems way more expensive. People start to think about the restaurant differently, to order differently, to engage differently, even though fundamentally nothing about how much the restaurant costs has changed.  

This seems needlessly damaging to a restaurant that has not actually increased what guests pay, but has changed ONLY the way the bill is created. A change driven by the desire for a more sustainable and equitable way of being a restaurant.

So, until tipping is extinct for all restaurants, a service charge is the easiest, most straightforward way to replace tipping for a single restaurant.  

Why is there a tipping line on the bill?

NOBODY HAS TO LEAVE ANY GRATUITY AT OUR RESTAURANT, because with the service charge, we pay over the California standard state minimum wage to everyone who works here (yes, even though we are in Illinois). We have found, however, that some folks really like having the option to tip. So we left the tip line in. 

No guilt, No pressure: If you pay your bill, you are settled up and we are super happy you joined us! COME AGAIN SOON!!!!

The History Of Tipping**

Tipping was created as a racist practice 

Tipping was born in the Jim Crow south to control the economic opportunities of black folks. 

After emancipation, white people did not want to pay actual wages for the labor of black workers. It was offensive to people who were accustomed to the free labor of slaves. Additionally, jobs available to former slaves were few and far between. Service industry jobs - (bathroom attendant, say, or bellhop) that white men did not want were some of the only jobs a black man could get. 

But what to do here? People wanted someone to carry their bags and hand them towels and eventually bring them food and take away dirty plates, so white business owners wanted people to do these jobs, but did not did not want to pay a black person to do them.

The solution was tipping.

Tipping allowed folks to be hired, without paying them a wage, to do service industry jobs that involved interacting with customers who would them pay them if they felt like it. This forced employees to do jobs with no guarantee of payment. What payment did come was not from the business, but was entirely at the whim of the customer. The employee was essentially working for the customer, with no guarantee of payment upon completion of work. The founding idea of tipping is that there is no guarantee of payment, even if the work gets done.

The customer controlled the ENTIRE income of the human interacting with them. Customers did not have to tip at all. Of course this perverse economic control led to outrageous behavior and behavioral control. Service industry workers dealt with an astonishing amount of physical and verbal abuse, while being forced to simultaneously “perform” for their wage; NOT do their job, but to “perform” for their money in addition to doing their job. To behave and speak or not speak and use body language and facial expressions to encourage people to pay them.

As an added layer of complexity, this meant that whether you got paid for doing your job depended not just on your behavior, your expressions, your words, but on what a white person THOUGHT about your behavior, your expressions, your words. Maybe that guy had a shitty day. And maybe he felt like taking it out on you by being critical and not tipping. Or maybe one person liked chatty bellhops, and another person like’s silent bellhops.  Or maybe somebody just didn’t feel like parting with their money. So they didn’t give you money for the job you did because they didn’t have to. Smile all you want. It isn’t up to you.

The founding idea of tipping is that there is no guarantee of payment, even if the work gets done. And because the employee has no guarantee, there is enormous control from the people who tip and enormous control from the people who hire.

Does this not seem fundamentally barbaric?

Tipped minimum wage is a compromise rising from racism

Creating a federal minimum wage was a part of the FDR proposed New Deal. Initial versions of the new deal recognized the absurdity of doing a job for no guaranteed income and tips only and tried to eliminate it, as a part of the attempt to create a federal minimum wage.  

In the fight to pass the new deal, southern politicians (yes, “democrats” but who cares) would not help FDR push the New Deal & the federal minimum wage through unless tipping was allowed to continue. The compromise was the tipped minimum wage. Human beings in service industry jobs were no longer forced to work ONLY for tips, but business owners did not have to pay them the full minimum wage.  

This changed very little, since the gap between minimum wage and tipped minimum wage is massive. Now people didn’t need to perform to get paid, they only needed to perform to get a fair wage. 

From this angle, doesn’t it still seem Barbaric?