Check out Diane Gottesman’s 2023 Tipping Guide below!
At the New York City restaurant Dart Candy, Amanda Cohen and her staff spend their days chopping, rolling and frying vegetables. Cohen really likes vegetables: “You can be so creative and have so much fun with them. We’re like pioneers in the vegetable world. And it’s fun!”
He’s also a pioneer in another way: His restaurants have a no-tipping policy.
“What would you say is the biggest plus of having a no-tip system?” asked Giles.
“Actually there are quite a few,” Cohen responded. “One is that my guests don’t have to do the math at the end of the night – they can drink as much as they want and not have to worry! My staff are really happy. They all feel like they’re getting a fair wage.”
And have a happy staff. “Right now you hear about this revolving door at restaurants, and there’s not enough staff? I’m overstaffed,” Cohen said.
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Restaurateur Danny Meyer started a no-tipping policy at his restaurants in 2015. “It took a lot of explaining, because that’s not the normal way Americans go about eating,” he said “But at that point, consumers really got the program.”
Then, covid hit. The restaurant is closed. The job is gone. When they reopened, Meyer said, “New Yorkers were literally throwing dollar bills at our servers! We said we don’t take tips here. A week after that, I said to myself, This is crazy. How can I say that? I told our staff. stand by and not allow ourselves to benefit by putting ourselves on the frontline? And so, we reinstated tipping.”
For now, he says, he’ll have to live with it: “Unfortunately, if you’re going to stop tipping in your restaurant in this country and you realize that most other restaurants aren’t doing it, you put yourself at a certain disadvantage when it comes to people shopping menu prices. ,” he said. “I really respect these restaurants that have been able to stick with it. We couldn’t.”
But, he added, “If and when this country says we’re going to lay down our arms and stop tipping, we’re going to be at the front of the line!”
We’re used to tipping at restaurants. But now it seems, we are all being asked to tip for everything! Do you tip the barista who gives you your coffee? What about the person who gives you a muffin, or a bottle of water at the deli? And then there are gig workers, Uber and Lyft drivers, who deliver your meals, groceries and packages.
Nam Y. Huh/AP
And how much should we tip? And will the person who provided the service actually receive it?
Even for etiquette expert Diane Gottesman, it’s confusing: “We really want to do the right thing,” she said. “We want to tip, and tip appropriately, but sometimes we just don’t know.
“I went to the counter, I bought a mug from a diner. They flipped that little tip app around and it said, ‘Tip 20%, 25%, 30% …’ There’s a button that says, ‘No tip.’ ‘ and felt such discomfort. But for that quick exchange, it happened in less than six seconds? I don’t tip.”
“As long as we allow one industry to get away with it, more and more industries will want that boondoggle,” says Saru Jayaraman, founder of One Fair Wage.
Jayaraman said tips instead of wages started in the south after the civil war. “In America we have uniquely transformed tipping from an additional bonus on top of wages to a substitute for wages. It became law as part of the New Deal in 1938, when everyone was entitled to the federal minimum wage for the first time. , but tipped workers were excluded.”
Sher said his organization’s fight is “for everyone to get a full minimum wage, with tips on top. To make sure everyone gets a full wage from their employer, like every worker in any other industry, and let the tips be what they’ve always been. .”
As for Amanda Cohen, would she ever consider going back to the tip system? “Absolutely not,” he said. “I think this restaurant is on the right side of history.”
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Story by Mary Lou Till. Editor: Joseph Frandino.
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