Kosher Food and Drink

Note: this article reflects the views of its author, and only its author. It does not necessarily reflect the views of other authors and contributors on Kosher Epicurean Society.

I think it is reasonable to say that Americans generally think the tipping situation as it exists today is neither desirable nor sustainable.

Just to put it up front: I do tip, generally at an 18%-20% rate. That’s not because I’ve usually found the service to be worth an extra 20% on top of my order. I think there are ethical considerations in a decision to not tip that outweigh my distaste for the culture built around it, at least for now. In theory, I could tip as I felt like, and the restaurant would have to make up the difference to normal minimum wage, but I know the truth, which is that a lot of restaurants make that as difficult a process as possible for the staff.

That said, what I really don’t appreciate is restaurants treating generous tips like they’re obligatory under all circumstances, and then staffing their front end to abuse that. I’ve noticed more and more that restaurants will under-staff and under-train the front-end, deliver sub-par service, and then pretend like that’s worth a 20% tip in any meaningful way. I don’t blame the servers entirely for that (albeit some could put in more effort). It’s also restaurant owners responding to perverse incentives (“these customers will tip no matter what”) and acting accordingly.

Thus, I have some recommendations:

First, tipped minimum wage and extra “service charges” need to be legislatively abolished, and I’d encourage my readers to support such efforts. It may have made sense at some point, but it’s clear that it’s now creating perverse incentives, including under-staffed/under-trained front-ends and outright tax fraud by the workers in this system under-reporting tips. Servers need to be paid at a negotiated market wage, and not rely on the whims of customers to make up their salary. Decoupling the direct relationship of wage to menu pricing will go pretty far in encouraging restaurants to pay servers what they’re truly worth. If that means menu prices go up, I’d prefer that over the current situation.

Second, modern poskim need to properly address the intersection of the laws of lashon hara weighed against restaurants using it as a shield against legitimate criticism of their business practices. Even the Chofetz Chaim provided a mechanism for legitimately sharing negative feedback, and a re-examination of what is permissible in a review of a for-profit business is becoming increasingly important in the Internet age.

I freely admit that I try to couch negative feedback in reviews in the softest way possible while not losing the essence of my complaints. I’m not going to lie about what happened; I will try to present legitimate reasons I could be wrong or maybe the situation is a one-off. But the cost of dining out at kosher restaurants has escalated wildly over the past few years, and the amount of money at stake deserves higher scrutiny of service practices.

Third, and most importantly: business owners need to get their houses in order. The number of borderline (or otherwise) unethical practices I see are embarrassing for business owners who claim to cling to Jewish values:

1. Service charges need to be disclosed prominently in the menu, and they need to be verbally described up front in the ordering process. It also needs to be crystal clear whether they are directly disbursed to employees (as a tip) or are going to the business. Frankly, owners shouldn’t be using service charges at all; price the menu accordingly.
2. If there are mandatory gratuities, they need to be disclosed prominently, both in the menu and when the check is presented. There was an interesting discussion recently on GKRF about someone who inadvertently double-tipped when their server neglected (intentionally or not) to mention a mandatory gratuity. As far as I’m concerned, this is a serious halachic problem if it is a regular practice (invalid contract). It’s also indicative of poorly-trained (or unethical?) staff.
3. If you are asking customers to tip at 18-20%, you should deliver service which is worth 18-20%. Two or three brief interactions (ordering, food delivery, and check) is not worth 18-20%. And, even more so, if I order and pay at a counter, your wage model should not revolve around tips. If that means the service model becomes “order at the counter and bus your own table”, that’s absolutely fine with me.
4. Train your employees to not demand tips, and instead focus on delivering better service (as discussed above) in order to earn them. Demanding tips (before or after the transaction) is a massive turn-off to your customers. There are definitely businesses I will no longer go to because their employees were absurdly aggressive about advocating for tips.

Finally, know where you are when dining out. In seven states (Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington), there’s no tipped minimum wage. I wouldn’t stiff your server on a tip just because of that, but there’s simply no ethical reason at that point that it needs to be 18-20%. The European range of 5-10% is certainly within reason for average service, especially if the service wasn’t anything special or personal. If it’s genuinely great service? Tip over 10%, by all means. Don’t be intimidated by people who demand 20% at all times; it’s your money, not theirs, and change has to start somewhere.

I encourage everyone to approach this issue with empathy, and to understand that a successful resolution may not mean customers spending less money, but instead having a more transparent relationship between restaurants, servers, and customers. This sort of change is the nature of things in a free market; realtors recently began going through this sort of change when a ruling against anti-competitive practices forced a rethink of just how compensation in that market works.

One critique I’ve heard is that if we move to a more wage-centric tipping model, servers will quit in the short-term because they can’t support themselves on reduced wages. That’s fine and expected. The restaurant market will need to figure out what menu pricing can support paying staff adequately for retention. It may not be a smooth transition as owners figure out what those numbers look like.

I can’t promise it will result in better service (albeit, it would be hard to get worse in some cases). My gut feeling is that it will, as flipping tables and being nice is still more money with even smaller tips, so long as they don’t totally disappear. It’s just that, when we move to a tips model that actually rewards good service vs the current obligatory model, one would think there’d be more incentive to deliver good service.

Of course, I counter-balance that assumption with how restaurant service in Europe is notoriously slow and impersonal because the wages are essentially hourly, and there’s very little tipping. I think the question is whether European-style service is a product of European cultural norms or whether the European tipping practices promote it. I personally suspect it’s both.

I know all of this is controversial. Servers like tips because of the “tax advantages” with cash, and because they can sometimes really add up. Employers like them because it’s a clever way to keep menu prices low and have more cash flow (because they’re not paying servers as much out of pocket). But for the actual customers, the current situation doesn’t seem to be very beneficial, and it’s time to change.