What’s on menu: No-tipping, but fat bills

Seattle: As if picking up the tab after a sumptuous meal in a posh restaurant was not annoying enough, the bills are all set to go  up further, all thanks to a gradual change in the tipping policy. Though it is yet to become a world-wide phenomenon, several restaurant chains in the US and the UK have already shifted to a ‘no-tipping policy’. 

 

In other words, though the  patrons would not have to pay any tip to the servers, their bills would substantially go up. According to a New York Times, one of the major reasons for this change is that the tips were not being shared with those preparing the food by those serving it resulting in a huge disparity in staffers’s pay.  In Seattle, where the first stage of a $15-an-hour minimum wage law took effect in April, Ivar’s seafood restaurants switched to an all-inclusive menu. By raising prices 21 percent and ending tipping, Bob C. Donegan, the co-owner, calculated he could increase everyone’s wages.

 

“We saw there was a fundamental inequity in our restaurants where the people who worked in the kitchen were paid about half as much as the people who worked with customers in front of the house,” Mr. Donegan said. Several also cited research showing that diners tend to tip black servers less and that system can encourage sexual harassment of women.

 

Still, many fear a backlash from their customers and servers, the report added. 

 

Although mandatory service charges are common around the globe, restaurant tipping is ingrained in the American psyche.  Owners worry that potential diners will see significantly higher prices without realising that they include gratuities.  Although the no-tipping idea is generating a lot of discussion, the number of restaurants that have signed on is still tiny, and they tend to cluster near the higher end of the price spectrum.