Having friends who own/owned bars and restaurants, I generally tip 20% for good service ~ so a 15% increase in price, with no tip, would benefit me ~ and while the 15% increase in price might cover a big chunk of the wages/benefits increases, I'm thinking it's also a big chunk of CASH for the staff to lose ~ I'm curious if the staff is happy with this ~ Sooz

Tuesday, Jun 11, 2013 04:28 PM CDT
New York restaurant bans tips — for wait staff’s own good
Sushi Yasuda is providing its servers with livable wages, vacation days, sick leave and health insurance instead.
By Liz Fields

If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant — and nearly half of all adults have at least once during their life — you’re probably familiar with stingy bosses who pay less per hour than the price of the subway ride to work. But in a volatile industry, where servers experience triple the poverty rate of the whole workforce, one restaurant in New York seeks to stamp out unlivable wages and exploitation — by getting rid of tips.

This may sound counterintuitive until you learn that Sushi Yasuda, an upscale joint in midtown Manhattan, has opted to provide its staff with a decent salary and benefits package that includes vacation days, sick leave and health insurance. Instead of a tip line, the restaurant notifies their patrons at the bottom of the check:

“Following the custom in Japan, Sushi Yasuda’s service staff are fully compensated by their salary. Therefore gratuities are not accepted.”

Any tips they do receive go straight to the house, rather than staff. Food prices have been raised an extra 15 percent to compensate wages, but there’s been no apparent change in customer volume.

Sushi Yasuda’s Co-owner, Scott Rosenberg, told The Price Hike:

“The risk is that your prices appear to be high on the menu. But if you have faith in what you’re serving, and how you’re serving it, you know that when your customers have a good meal and look at their final tally it’s going to be around the same.”

By law, employers are only required to pay staff $2.13 an hour, and only have to make up the difference if customer tips don’t cover the federal minimum wage. Even then, restaurants often skimp out on that requirement.

Sushi Yasuda’s new policy seems to be in line with restaurant industries elsewhere in the world like Europe and Australia that actually pay their staff a livable wage. Let’s hope the trend continues to spread across America.


http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/new_york_restaurant_bans_tips_for_wait_staffs_own_good/

I think this is terrific and wish all restaurants would do this. Servers in restaurants don't always get to keep all their tips - in many instances, they have to share them with the busboys and bartenders (if alcohol is served).

What a great way to cheat the staff.
They'll also have to pay income tax on the tips since there will be a paper trail.

?

The employees have to pay taxes on their tips now anyway. They are required to keep track and report tips received so their employers can withhold the tax. Failing that, as I understand it, restaurants have to estimate minimum tips received and pay taxes on them, regardless of whether the employee actually received that amount. The way the tax regs for restaurants are now, it's hard to get an accurate accounting of what should be withheld.

So an employee of a restaurant that doesn't allow tipping and whose income is from wages alone, would be better off tax-wise since the bookkeeping would less complicated for the employer and more accurate to boot.

By law, employers are only required to pay staff $2.13 an hour I didn't know that.

This may sound counterintuitive until you learn that Sushi Yasuda, an upscale joint in midtown Manhattan, has opted to provide its staff with a decent salary and benefits package that includes vacation days, sick leave and health insurance.

I hope that includes busboys, cooks and dishwashers too. Otherwise, they are screwed if they shared in the tips before. The only downside I can see is for long term, excellent wait staff. They generally get larger tips, especially from regulars. Also, that means that a lousy server gets the same benefits and has no incentive to be better unless the owners are prepared to take action. Most of the time a lousy server will quit on their own because they don't make enough in tips.