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What about the novel idea of incentivizing the restaurant to provide excellent experiences through charging a fair market rate for a reliably excellent experien

by Vraxx 10y ago

What about the novel idea of incentivizing the restaurant to provide excellent experiences through charging a fair market rate for a reliably excellent experience? You can show your support for this restaurant by being a repeat customer because you think the value proposition that they provide is one that meets your standards.

Alupis 10y ago
This idea has some merit. However, it's not the restaurant that's providing the experience, it's whoever your particular server happens to be. By paying a "fair" wage to the server, you do remove some problems, but you may introduce others. When I was younger and worked as a server, it was commonplace for fellow servers to end the night with $150-$200 in tips (in addition to minimum wage, as this was California), which is decidedly above a "fair" wage for maybe 4-5 hours of work. It was a bad night if you didn't break $100 in tips. Changing to a salary system, for some, would mean a net pay decrease (or far more expensive food, which may decrease patronage). In addition, many feel a salary system would remove any incentive to deliver excellent experiences above the bare minimum. If you're a server, and you know no matter what happens on the floor tonight, you get paid exactly the same... perhaps you don't refill drinks quite as often... or you don't put on your best friendly face when taking orders... because it doesn't matter (think of your Fast Food experiences, where employees don't really care about quality in any regard, food, service, cleanliness, etc). We worked hard for those tips, because it produced immediate, tangible results. I know this is partly anecdotal, but for me back then as a server, I prefer tips over salary.
- Vraxx 10y ago
  If you increased the price of the food to include the average tip and distributed that increased price among your workers you've just provided that same incentive (a wage decidedly above "fair") to your servers and the experience remains constant for your customers. Now if the servers decide that means they can slack because the "tips" are guaranteed, they can find another place to work for those kinds of wages. Especially with feedback systems being easier to implement through recent mobile technology, the problems are not intractable.
  - Alupis 10y ago
    I kind of agree, but high wages does not imply good service. Also, in California, servers must be paid the state's minimum wage - this is not the case everywhere in the country. Many states have an alternate minimum wage for the service industry. If food prices were increased to compensate every wait staff say, $30k a year, food prices in these areas wouldn't be going up only $5-$10... in those cases, food prices may double or triple in order to support this significant wage increase. This will undoubtedly cause a reduction in patronage, which ultimately means fewer staffers on payroll. This brings up an interesting thought experiment, and is very relevant to the minimum wage issue in general: Is it better to have fewer people employed at a higher wage, or more people employed at a lesser wage? On one hand, a percentage of the workforce will enjoy a more comfortable living - on the other hand more people will be left with no living at all.
    - Vraxx 10y ago
      I don't get why raising the wages implies that food will go up more than the average amount of tipping (~10-20%). Currently, if it's legal for their wages to be lower granted that they are supplemented by tips, if we raised the price of food at establishments with waitstaff by the average tip amount, the amount of money that the customer pays for food would be exactly the same (on average) as it currently is. Now if that money was diverted directly the the waitstaff (as it currently is) then we would have higher wages being paid to the waitstaff. I recognize that some restaurants might raise prices by more than the average tip amount in order to increase profits, but that seems to be a separate concept from the one that I proposed. My proposition in no way requires that any restaurant raise the current cost that the customer pays (net money outflow from an average customer). As for high wages not implying good service, I agree, and it's also a core axiom of why I believe tipping is inefficient, outdated, and cumbersome. But if we operate on the assumption that a good server gives good service in order to earn higher wages through tipping, I think we can also assume that a good server will give good service in order to continue to make his wage and not be fired as a result of treating customers poorly out of laziness.

by Vraxx 10y ago

Alupis 10y ago

This idea has some merit. However, it's not the restaurant that's providing the experience, it's whoever your particular server happens to be. By paying a "fair" wage to the server, you do remove some problems, but you may introduce others. When I was younger and worked as a server, it was commonplace for fellow servers to end the night with $150-$200 in tips (in addition to minimum wage, as this was California), which is decidedly above a "fair" wage for maybe 4-5 hours of work. It was a bad night if you didn't break $100 in tips. Changing to a salary system, for some, would mean a net pay decrease (or far more expensive food, which may decrease patronage). In addition, many feel a salary system would remove any incentive to deliver excellent experiences above the bare minimum. If you're a server, and you know no matter what happens on the floor tonight, you get paid exactly the same... perhaps you don't refill drinks quite as often... or you don't put on your best friendly face when taking orders... because it doesn't matter (think of your Fast Food experiences, where employees don't really care about quality in any regard, food, service, cleanliness, etc). We worked hard for those tips, because it produced immediate, tangible results. I know this is partly anecdotal, but for me back then as a server, I prefer tips over salary.

Vraxx 10y ago
If you increased the price of the food to include the average tip and distributed that increased price among your workers you've just provided that same incentive (a wage decidedly above "fair") to your servers and the experience remains constant for your customers. Now if the servers decide that means they can slack because the "tips" are guaranteed, they can find another place to work for those kinds of wages. Especially with feedback systems being easier to implement through recent mobile technology, the problems are not intractable.
- Alupis 10y ago
  I kind of agree, but high wages does not imply good service. Also, in California, servers must be paid the state's minimum wage - this is not the case everywhere in the country. Many states have an alternate minimum wage for the service industry. If food prices were increased to compensate every wait staff say, $30k a year, food prices in these areas wouldn't be going up only $5-$10... in those cases, food prices may double or triple in order to support this significant wage increase. This will undoubtedly cause a reduction in patronage, which ultimately means fewer staffers on payroll. This brings up an interesting thought experiment, and is very relevant to the minimum wage issue in general: Is it better to have fewer people employed at a higher wage, or more people employed at a lesser wage? On one hand, a percentage of the workforce will enjoy a more comfortable living - on the other hand more people will be left with no living at all.
  - Vraxx 10y ago
    I don't get why raising the wages implies that food will go up more than the average amount of tipping (~10-20%). Currently, if it's legal for their wages to be lower granted that they are supplemented by tips, if we raised the price of food at establishments with waitstaff by the average tip amount, the amount of money that the customer pays for food would be exactly the same (on average) as it currently is. Now if that money was diverted directly the the waitstaff (as it currently is) then we would have higher wages being paid to the waitstaff. I recognize that some restaurants might raise prices by more than the average tip amount in order to increase profits, but that seems to be a separate concept from the one that I proposed. My proposition in no way requires that any restaurant raise the current cost that the customer pays (net money outflow from an average customer). As for high wages not implying good service, I agree, and it's also a core axiom of why I believe tipping is inefficient, outdated, and cumbersome. But if we operate on the assumption that a good server gives good service in order to earn higher wages through tipping, I think we can also assume that a good server will give good service in order to continue to make his wage and not be fired as a result of treating customers poorly out of laziness.