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Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

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Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#61

Post by moltar »

playeren wrote: post #57
moltar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People normally pay tips for a good service. Making tips mandatory provides no incentive to provide a quality service. If the service quality drops - customers will go elsewhere.

>If the service quality drops - customers will go elsewhere. Wouldn't that be incentive to provide good service? I ask because some of the best restaurants in the world do not expect you to tip - ie. Danish restaurants Noma and Alchemist.

I was talking about the North American model where staff are paid basically nothing and they live off of tips.

Europe is another story. Tipping there is not expected. And staff are probably decently paid.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#62

Post by Accacin »

tptacek wrote: post #43
Accacin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read, that's not true at all. I'd imagine a whole lot of waiters and waitresses are earning a lot less than you imagine. £10/hour seems more reasonable, but our minimum wage keeps going up and includes holidays, etc. and we do not need to pay health insurance either.

Oh, lots of servers are earning less than that, but in the UK, if there's no tipping norm, and people are generally paid a $14/hr minimum wage instead, then fine dining servers in the US are substantially out-earning those in the UK.

> then fine dining servers in the US are substantially out-earning those in the UK

You keep moving the goalposts. Now fine-dining? People here can tip too, it's just that companies are required to give them a basic standard. At a fine dining restaurant they'd be earning more than minimum wage generally.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#63

Post by tsherr »

lostgame wrote: post #3

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.

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.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#64

Post by sudeepj »

Accacin wrote: post #30
sudeepj wrote: post #8

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 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 p…

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 h…

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.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#65

Post by petre »

moltar wrote: post #61
playeren wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the service quality drops - customers will go elsewhere. Wouldn't that be incentive to provide good service? I ask because some of the best restaurants in the world do not expect you to tip - ie. Danish restaurants Noma and Alchemist.

I was talking about the North American model where staff are paid basically nothing and they live off of tips. Europe is another story. Tipping there is not expected. And staff are probably decently paid.

It really depends which part of Europe you are talking about. In Eastern Europe and South Eastern Europe one is expected to tip and tips are typically 10-15% of the bill. In Greece you might also get rewarded if you visit the same joint more than a couple of times and tip. In Nothern Europe and Western Europe it's a different story, but meals are also considerably more expensive. In Central Europe and Southern Europe the staff doesn't expect tips but they will be quite grateful if you do tip them. Some places have a fixed service tax as it's the case with Hungary some have a sit down charge as in Italy (< 3 euros) but it's nowhere near 18%. Some enable you to tip a variable amount using the POS such as it's the case in the Czech Republic.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#66

Post by kasey_junk »

Accacin wrote: post #62
tptacek wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, lots of servers are earning less than that, but in the UK, if there's no tipping norm, and people are generally paid a $14/hr minimum wage instead, then fine dining servers in the US are substantially out-earning those in the UK.

> then fine dining servers in the US are substantially out-earning those in the UK You keep moving the goalposts. Now fine-dining? People here can tip too, it's just that companies are required to give them a basic standard. At a fine dining restaurant they'd be earning more than minimum wage generally.

Service workers are required to receive a basic standard in the US as well, it’s just that tips are counted towards the minimum wage.

The reason fine dining is interesting is that’s where the no tipping movement is most prevalent in the US. Also note that fine dining serving staff is generally pro the current status quo because they believe they make more money under the current arrangement than they would under the alternative.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#67

Post by jbob2000 »

bronson wrote: post #9
smnrchrds wrote: post #2

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 pretendi…

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.

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.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#68

Post by silicon2401 »

wenc wrote: post #10

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 wa…

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

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#69

Post by blaser-waffle »

Jedd wrote: post #58
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that horrendous? (I get "annoying"). It's the restaurant sharing the cost of labor with the diner, which you're doing one way or the other, but tips have less price stickiness than list prices. There's certainly a "pretense" of tipping as an incentive, and you can treat it that way if you want to (to a point; you can't reasonably tip much below 15%). But you should ignore the pretense; it's not worth the psych…

> Why is that horrendous? Hmm. Imagine that you never had to consider any kind of unstated, fuzzy mathematical wrangling at restaurants, hairdressers, hotels, in taxis, at stores, etc - your entire life every financial transaction was straightforward. If you came from that environment, this arrangement would seem horrendous (and annoying). I understand that there's some cultural exceptionalism involved - there always…

Calculating 10% ain't that hard killer -- just move the decimal point over. 36.22 becomes 3.6. Multiply that by 2, round up/down as you feel is warranted, and go with it. Plenty of the card readers even offer pre-calculated options when paying with debit/credit (usually 15%, 18%, and 20%).

If that's too difficult, horrendous, and annoying to do then chances are you shouldn't be eating out in the first place.

Re: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

#70

Post by skj »

Pfhreak wrote: post #39
skj wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

That's fair. To be clear, I wasn't denying the claim, just asking for your thoughts around it.

I tip 20% rounded up to the nearest dollar every time, unless I'm really disappointed with the service which is quite rare.

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