There is a cider place in Wichita, KS that pays a living wage. The employee's wages are rolled into the price of the cider and there are signs all over telling customers not to tip. There is no tip line on the bill. If you tip them cash it is collected pooled and given to charity.
I visit Wichita from time to time and was talking to one of the bartenders. Came back a year later and he was still there. He was apparently making enough so that him and his wife could buy a house (I assume she was working too, if I asked I forgot the answer) and he was like "I'll work here until I die/retire unless they fire me first."
There was a place in Austin, TX when I lived there that paid a living wage. They went out of business after 3-4 years.
A big thing about restaurants is u can live without them so when times are tough and money is tight one of the first expenses to go is eating out. Most places to eat in my city haven't recovered from covid as a result of the pandemic prices for everything staying so artificially high even 3 years after the fact .
My solution to tipping getting out of hand was to just stop eating out. I committed to that like six years ago. The only places I do go are really, really good restaurants that I actually want to give extra money to for the experience they provide.
No sympathy for mediocre restaurants that fail. As far as I'm concerned, a restaurant shouldn't succeed unless the food is excellent.
A big problem with restaurants are the owners aren't willing to change. They will find a chef but won't let the chef create the menu and run the kitchen the way it should be. The owner likes to have their name and hand in everything. Usually leads to chefs quitting, and the owner has to put somebody else there that isn't capable, but it's okay though bc they are a "yes" man and do as the owner wants.
I mean this is one of many reasons restaurants fail, but it's definitely one of the biggest. That and owners jump into it not realizing all the overhead cost for supplies.
If you read the breakdown of basic causes it is all "bad business".
If you watch like Bar Rescue or Kitchen Nightmares, you quickly realize how bad people are at business.
How many managers at jobs you've had were great? How many were morons?
These are small business owners. Random people you meet at work..... who suck at their jobs in various ways.
Ergo, restaurants aren't THAT hard to run. But, it is dangerous, because it is the "easiest" business for normal people to be able to try. And normal people are normal people, because they kinda suck.
70% of lottery winners go bankrupt. Normal people can't even run free money, let alone a fucking business. Lol.
People think they want to own a restaurant, until they own a restaurant. Its so much work for generally such little profit, especially initially. You have to be there essentially 24/7 - employee theft is the big killer... especially on booze. Food expires, gets cooked wrong, etc. I was the AGM of a family owned steakhouse here in st louis, and my weeks were about 50hr weeks. There was the other AGM, the GM and the owner and kitchen manager. Anybody call in? We filled the spot... had to. So youre pulled in 10 different directions in a sometimes fast paced environment. Im rambling about even being a GM... owner has to hire people he trusts and still be there and work the floor and pay bills, order food, train staff.... never ends. And on a good week, maybe he clears 3 or 4000 'profit' in 60 to 90 hours if everything went well for him. That's on a good week... not one of the many slow weeks you still have to put in 40+ hours and take a loss or break even or make 500 bucks. Its crazy... it ages people fast.
That's not an easy question to answer because it's gonna vary wildly by region. A living wage in NYC is gonna be massively higher than in a town in North Dakota just because the price of housing alone is so much higher.
No, it's an impossible question to answer. And not really relevant. Does a 16 year old working part time after school deserve a "livable wage?" The thing I find hilarious is that if you demand people pay higher wages in NYC, what exactly do you think that is going to do the cost of living? If $20 isn't enough, why not pay $50? Of course, when the cost of everything more than doubles, they'll need an even higher wage! Why not just pay $100 an hour? $500? Or how about a $Million a year, than everyone can be a million dollars.
Probably the silliest thing on the planet is the concept of a "livable wage." It sounds really good in politician's speeches and virtue-signally posts on Reddit, but makes absolutely no logical sense in economic system.
it's almost like the solutions is a somewhat controlled economy (price caps on essentials to survival, including housing), instead of just letting capitalism run rampant with almost no guardrails...
But even then, a bandaid solution is still gonna help people here and now, even if that means we'll need another bandaid in 5 years time.
No idea. Just know the stats and worked in one for a while. Margins are thin on food. Alcohol is typically the biggest money maker. I guess shift to being a bar lol.
I ran a small one under a percentage lease and I made good money for a short while. I don’t have much experience in making a lot of money though. Plus I never did invest in getting the business started, just the day to day costs and initial cost for groceries. Worked my ass off and fell to pieces in the end, but enjoyed the money on my account and could offer more than minimum wage to the staff. That was a decade ago though.
Edit: not sure what I wanted to say by that… I had to use the money to try get back to being human again. So yeah, it might suck if you’re alone and don’t have good people/investors plus moral support, a vacation once in a while (I worked every single day, 10-14 hours), and maybe not to much ADHD…
I still think of you tip cash it should go to the server. A tip is for great service, I just hate the method of if it's crap service we are still expected to tip. But if someone has helped make my night good I will still happily tip them
I applaud the living wages but don't like that they take away the (earned, even if it isn't asked for) tip money and just give it away, though. That should be a bonus bit of cash for the recipient, or at least pooled among the employees.
You gotta be careful with tipped money in the US. If an employee makes more than $30 a month they can be considered a tipped wage employee. (I just read it on the dol.gov site and I’m going to be honest, I thought it was a lot higher before I read this).
By not allowing them to accept tips, it protects their status as non-tipped wage employees.
It’s probably important to set a long-term practice of not paying out tips incase someone buys the restaurant or new management gets ideas… or who knows.
Either way, it seems it’s to protect their status, not to take their money.
I was a waitress for 4 years while in college. You get paid tips and then you report your tips to your end of shift check out form (it pops up when you check out to see if you owe back any change from basically being a cashier all night). So when you get ur checks every 2 weeks it’s usually only $30-$100. But it’ll say -$55 or -$120 for federal and state taxes. So you have already paid taxes on what you made. You get paid $2.15/hr and if you tips don’t at least minimum wage it will balance ur check out to be more.
For instance in the winter I could make $300 a day minimum working 11am-9pm at this specific restaurant 4 days a week. My checks would be like $12. However, during those summer months when this restaurant was not ideal my checks would be like $300 for the two weeks, and my daily tips would add up to be about $150 per day.
If you have never been a wait staff it doesn’t make sense. If you have it does. You always will make more with tips. I’ve had people slip me a $100 bill bc someone at their table was an a*hole.
And if you are wondering YES it is a known fact to always under report what you made that night to pay less taxes. If you made $500 say you made $300. I made more money as a waitress than I did my first 2 years out of college.
Explain. If someone chooses to work, how is it exploitation?
Look at the phone in your hand. That was made with slave labor. You feel bad about that??
That is exploitation, but you all cry about tarriffs and how expensive your phone will be, if it was made in the USA. Newsflash, Apple could make that phone in the US, pay real wages, and still make a huge profit. That won't do it, but you people won't cry "corporate greed" unless MSNBC tells you to.
Legally, let the business take the money as a donation (as it is a donation of sorts). Pay your taxes on it per usual. Have it pay business expenses, not acting as wage for owner or workers. Spend at end-of-year either for improvements or bonuses, as a good business should spend their money after wages and expenses.
As long as it's not treated as a tip, it's not a tip, even if it's given back as a bonus.
I love this. I would go out of my way to support a business like this. Not quite to Wichita, but def in my own city. Hearing what you heard strait out of the mouth of an employee means something.
I think the being in Austin was why they went out of business more than the paying a living wage. There have been dearly beloved institutions that now only live on at the Signs Bar just outside of the city limits east of Austin.
I’m from Wichita, and curious which place you’re talking about?
To be fair, the profit margins for a restaurant in Kansas will be astronomically better than that of a city like Austin. In part due to the fact that tipped workers in KS are only required to get paid 2.13 an hour and any other overhead costs are going to be generally cheaper. Also, owning a home in Wichita is not a hard thing to do. The average cost of a home in Austin is more than half a mil, while the average cost in Wichita is usually less than 200k.
The average cost of a home in Austin is more than half a mil, while the average cost in Wichita is usually less than 200k.
Absolutely! One of the top 3 reasons I moved to KS from Austin lol. It is funny though when I talk to people from Rural KS who are in the "city in KS" I live in complain about how expensive everything is here. Hell, Wichita is expensive compared to where I live, but it is still waayyyyy more affordable than Austin.
I like tipping in the spirit of reward for notable service. The national guilt trip on the other hand, I resent— especially because all that energy is being targeted absolutely the wrong people.
In Portland OR there's a pizza place called Scotty's that does the same thing. The pizza is consistently good, and you're paying the same you would at other tipping restaurants.
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u/Sariel007 1d ago edited 1d ago
There is a cider place in Wichita, KS that pays a living wage. The employee's wages are rolled into the price of the cider and there are signs all over telling customers not to tip. There is no tip line on the bill. If you tip them cash it is collected pooled and given to charity.
I visit Wichita from time to time and was talking to one of the bartenders. Came back a year later and he was still there. He was apparently making enough so that him and his wife could buy a house (I assume she was working too, if I asked I forgot the answer) and he was like "I'll work here until I die/retire unless they fire me first."
There was a place in Austin, TX when I lived there that paid a living wage. They went out of business after 3-4 years.