Influential restaurateur Danny Meyer, head of the Union Square Hospitality Group, has announced that he is ditching tipping at his full-service restaurants. The new no-tipping policy will commence in late November. While customers will no longer do any fuzzy math for tips, Meyer's initiative called "Hospitality Included" will increase menu prices 20 to 35 percent.
The Danny Meyer-initiated no tipping policy will also be carried out at all of his restaurants next year. However, his fast-food chain Shake Shack will remain unaffected by the change, The Washington Post reported.
As the restaurant industry starts to rethink the way its employees are compensated, Danny Meyer has eliminated tipping. However, he is not the first restaurateur who has ditched the dining practice. In fact, restaurants such as New York's Dirt Candy and Berkeley's Chez Panisse have also gotten rid of the old habit but have instituted service charges as a replacement, Reuters noted.
The primary reason why Meyer decided to eliminate tipping because of the fact that the dining practice is an unequal system by which servers can make more than three times what highly trained cooks preparing the food earn, even though a waiter's base minimum wage is less.
"We believe hospitality is a team sport, and that it takes an entire team to provide you with the experiences you have come to expect from us," Danny Meyer wrote in a letter posted online. "Unfortunately, many of our colleagues — our cooks, reservationists, and dishwashers to name a few — aren't able to share in our guests' generosity."
"By eliminating tipping, our employees who want to grow financially and professionally will be able to earn those opportunities based on the merit of their work," Meyer added, as per CNN Money.
Danny Meyer's way of eliminating the end of the usual dining ritual of trying to figure how much gratuity to leave has been attracting resistance. However, it still has a ways to go from being a common practice.
Meanwhile, compensation would remain roughly the same for servers, who currently get most of their income from tips. Under federal labor laws, The New York Times cited pooled tips can only be distributed to customer service workers who typically receive gratuities and cannot be shared with the kitchen staff or managers.
