My nearby dining pub seems to operate two systems. A “tronc” for credit card payments. And a share of cash tips. They have current vacancies,as this link, and it seems that almost all staff will have a share - including a deputy manager position, front of house crew, chef de partie and kitchen porter. But, a surprise to me, not the cleaner
Thank you!
What is very dated? Everything in the Rick Steves article? Where did the part about tipped wage being $4.75 come from?
Husband said " Holy sh**!" when i read that to him, and he doesn’t curse much!
We always do 20% in in our SF Bay area, but never got the impression it was the minimum. I don’t recall being "encouraged " to do 30%. As I’ve said above I see endless added fees.
Minimum wage here in California is about $15, although some cities pay more. It will be $15.50 next year.
Minimum wage for tipped employees by state
CNBC in January
Another opinion about what goes on in the US, care of
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At EF Education First, we believe that the world is better when people try to understand one another. Since 1965, EF has helped millions of people see new places, experience new cultures, and learn new things about the world and about themselves. ( I think exchange students).
I have never had a server chase me, but a toll both worker once did. Actually she just yelled loud enough for us to hear her, as we drove away. I stll hear her evertime I cross that bridge, even though the toll takers are long gone. One once told me whatever they are short comes out of their paycheck.
That’s right; the subject is Europe.
I’m glad we are keeping this civil!
Thank you! Very interesting. Are they all in a similar market with similar wages and benefits? I usually end up in Napa and San Francisco, and I think it’s a world away from nearby Sacramento. They are not near each other but they are all nearby to me.
I thought I have replied, but I don’t seem find it.
‘Good’ — my reply
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Another big difference I’ve been told from an American is that in the US the salary for a waiter is so low, that they simply need the tips to be able to survive.
It’s almost mandatory in the US to tip the waiter.
Not so in Europe, or at least in Denmark (where I’m from)
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Once. On our first night in Washington DC, a goodly number of years back. But not over tipping - I always try and understand the tipping culture of a country I’m visiting. However…
We’d had a nice meal. Asked for the bill. It came. We offered a credit card. It’s taken away and brought back. Just as it would be in the UK. We left. Server legs it after us - “You’ve havent signed. You havent signed”.
FFS. It’d been years since we’d had to sign a card slip in the UK.
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I’ve never really done a study so am not sure. There will be common issues across the sector. We have a national minimum wage (which excludes tips/service charge) and all employees have benefits - National Insurance health cover, a right to paid holidays, sick pay, etc).
But, if I had to speculate, I’d suggest there’s a difference between urban and rural areas. It’s going to relate to employee supply and demand. So, it may well be that a small village bistro may have to pay more to attract a chef, than might be the case in a city. On the other hand, the limited employment options might mean that an employee can find local workers relatively cheaply, whereas the competition is much greater in the city. It used to be the case that I could say, with some confidence, that servers in a rural area would be local (by their accents), whereas hospitality in my nearby city was very dependent on labour from other European countries. That source of workers has considerably reduced since Brexit and is causing many urban restaurants considerable difficulty, that is only partially being met by wage increases.
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I’ve been in the habit of tipping around 10 -15 percent in the UK. Not unsuspecting- just grateful for good service and aware costs are going up for everyone.
I tip 18 to 20 percent in Canada and the States, unless the service sucks. If the service sucks, I tip 10 to 12 %. Minimum wage for servers and bartenders is lower than minimum wage for non-servers and non-bartenders in Canada. It is understood by the tax authorities that people serving or bartending will have tips. If the food sucks but the service is good, I probably would tip around 15 %. Many North American restaurants have organized tipping pools, where the servers pool their tips, and 1 or 2 % of a server or bartenders’ tips go to the host/hostess, dishwashers, bar backs, etc.
I know it might seem extravagant to people who are used to not tipping at all or giving a round up pourboire or trinkgeld. I feel better leaving a nice tip to show appreciation- even while travelling.
I went to Marta (NYC), one of Danny Meyer’s restaurants, where staff are paid a living wage and tipping isn’t allowed. Prices are slightly higher to allow for this. The service was horrible. Attitude, hard to flag down the server, etc. Maybe it was just our luck. I think tipping is more of a motivator for good service in North America.
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Just to clarify my earlier statement. It is legal for the restaurant not to pass on any of a service charge, paid by credit card. to their employees, although there would be few who take that route. Not least as they’d quickly earn a reputation amongst potential employees. More common, is for a restaurant to retain a small percentage of the service charge, representing the card issuer’s “merchant fee”. As a diner, it’s not something
I fuss about one way or the other. If a restaurant levies a service charge then I pay, just as, if they don’t, I’d leave the usual 10% cash tip. It’s just an integral part of the cost of having a meal. Although, I do wish the UK would move to the no/low tip situation of some other European countries (bearing in mind “proper” tipping is common in some countries). There isn’t a continent wide single practice here.
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10% is what you’ll find is the “going rate” for service charges in most of the UK. It’s based on our traditional rate for cash tips which we’ve had ever since I started eating out getting on for 50 years back. London is different… There, you’ll find the going rate to be 12.5% in the central areas (but still 10% in the outer boroughs). Increasingly, you find very high end places in other parts of the UK are adopting the 12.5% for their service charge.
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This depends on the agreements within the restaurant. So, can be both ways. An example.
A server may have served ten tables over the night, making a revenue of say 2000 euro. This is the sum of the actual bills. Now, he will calculate his cash balance. Say it is 2200 euro. The extra 200 euro is his tip. So, 10 percent tip on average on this evening. He can now keep this 200 euro, or be required to hand it over to the restaurant.
Who should the tip go to, the individual server or the restaurant who whill then divide it equally over all personnel? Many would prefer giving it directly to his/her server because that was the individual doing the actual service.
But it is not so straightforward. The restaurant I worked at was divided in groups of tables, let’s call them units. Any waiter would then be assigned a unit per night, of say 12 tables he could potentially serve.
The issue is that not all units are the same. We had a few units where people always wanted to sit, because they were near the windows with the best views over the harbour. So, on any given day, these were the most crowded units and hence got the most tip! So, that waiter may have collected 500 euro in tips that night, while someone else would have only made 200 euro.
To divide all the tips over all the waiters, bar tenders, and cleaners, can sometimes be more democratic.
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Not that I’ve seen (in Manhattan). 20% is the norm, not the minimum.
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It is, as of 2 years ago.
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It isn’t. Particularly in my experience in the UK, where generally you do not have a nominated single server but it is a team effort. For example, the city centre place where we had dinner this week has three front of house staff. During the course of the evening, all three attended to our table, as they were doing for every other table.
Also, I wonder just how much BOH gets from the tips. They work just as hard (if not harder) than FOH.
My minimum in the US is 20%. 25% or 30% for exceptional service, or at my regular watering holes.
In Germany, Italy, Spain, France, UK, it’s rounding up plus a couple € if I feel it’s warranted.
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Dunno. Earlier this afternoon, I did a bit of Googling to see if I could find any examples of how a tronc is divided, but without success. Assuming it’s a restaurant where all employees are getting a share, I assume it must be some ratio based on relative hourly pay rates.
One of our department store chains, John Lewis, and it’s supermarket arm, Waitrose, are both collectively owned by the staff (and have been since the 1920s. As it does not have shareholders in the traditional sense, its profit is distributed amongst the partners annually as a bonus. That’s based on the declaration of a percentage of salary that everyone will receive that year. That was 3% this year.
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one can google until the geese fall out of the sky and not find an answer.
US eateries can establish a ‘tip pool’ arrangement and include/exclude FOH/BOH/side of house to their whims. except “management” types may not be included.
except California (maybe others?) - which has laws making tips the sole property of the wait person - no tip pooling allowed. last SF visit there was a surcharge for environmental impact issues, another surcharge for employee medical benefits, not to mention a $15/hour cash wage from the employer + tips.
a very vocal poster on one of the Forums ranted on about ‘starving waitstaff’ and why you needed to tip 40-50-60% of the bill. later claiming their employer was cheating them out of tips put on credit cards, and thence later claiming they made so much money they didn’t care if they got cheated. you can’t make this stuff up . . .
as pointed out, a number of restos tried the 'living wage & benefits & no tips" routine and to my knowledge, all have reverted to tipped service. now - to be fair - they were mostly ‘high(er) end’ eateries where a 15% tip, times 8-10 tables/night - was a serious amount of dollars. the waitstaff quit because the new age socialist living wage & benefits was a measurable pay cut.
The manager of a place in San Francisco chased after us because of the tip. This was a large group, and we left a generous tip, but one of our group stole it off the table. We restored the tip, and confronted the thief later. I don’t recall whether they paid it back.
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I recall in NY it is illegal for BOH employees to share in the tip pool. This results in some pretty egregious difference in pay between the FOH and BOH in high end restaurants. The FOH can be making nearly 6 figure pay when a meal costs $500 to a $1000 per couple and the cook who made your meal is being paid $20k a year. That was one of the things Danny Meyers was trying to address when he went no tip and higher prices.
I vacation regularly in Europe and also go at least once a year to the French Caribbean. The laws of mainland France apply and workers are all paid wages without the need for tips. There have been raging similar discussions about tipping on a forum I frequent for the island. Many of the North Americans show up and try to tip their standard 15-20% but there is no line for tipping on the credit card machines. The local staff have figured out a workaround. If you go to a restaurant that is frequented by Americans and the staff hear you speaking English, its not uncommon for you to be asked at the end of the meal how much you want to tip and then they include it in the overall charge. The staff would never do that with a local or someone from L’Hexagone. You realize after you talk to some locals how much American tourists are being taken advantage of. One of the reasons we go to smaller less hip local places. The staff treat us well, serve us great food and never ask for anything other than we pay our bill. Never a mention of a tip.
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indeed. Geegly does not include local laws for every city/township/county/state in the union…
the inequities of FOH tips to BOH wages is one of the driving forces to mega-tips.
one should feel free to question why the BOH is so poorly paid…(?) but should that financial issue appear in the tip column or the menu price? the BOH people are not considered tipped employees, at least in Federal law…
in ‘not big places’ Europe, most of the eateries are family businesses - and again, depending on geo-coordinates, , , how much you kid gets paid to wait tables may or may not be subject to government regulation.
last week - - - our local most excellent fish monger was relating - the inflation thing - that they would have closed if it were not a family business, and they had to pay everyone the state minimum wage…
