Danny Meyer (one of NYCs most famous restaurateurs and founder of shake shack) tried this at his restaurants but ultimately pulled out of it during the pandemic and returned to the tipping model due to the instability it put on his restaurants. Interestingly, the larger reason for him spearheading this in the beginning wasn’t solely removing friction for diners and giving his waitstaff a stable wage, but to better allow the back of his house employees to earn more (cooks, dishwashers, etc) that don’t typically receive much of the tips in the first place. Raise prices and redistribute more fairly with no variables from diners … sounded nice.
To be fair to the theory, COVID was a really shotty time for restaurants and probably not ideal conditions for this test.
I worked at a, let’s call it manufacturing facility, that attempted a 4x10 schedule for the entire large facility. The 4 days 10 hour experiment wrapped up several months later with an announcement that they would return to 5x8s because the loss of productivity was too great. The fact that a major hurricane had hit early in the study destroying much of the region and majorly impacting operations, not to mention destroying the homes of many of the workers, was barely mentioned.
It’s incredibly difficult to draw good conclusions when the environment drastically changes during a study. I think the same can be said for the non-tipping restaurant during COVID.
I find Americans quite funny when they come to Australia and expect to get “tipping service” when in fact servers here will tell you to get fucked if you’re being an asshole.
It’s nice knowing you’re getting paid a living wage regardless of whether or not the person eating is in a good mood.
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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '24 edited Aug 28 '24
I genuinely feel like moving to the US just to open a restaurant and pay my staff a living wage
Edit: This is probably the most controversial comment I ever posted.