Restaurants in the USA Against Tipping: "Pay Only the Price That Appears"

The issue of tipping in restaurants across the USA has recently started making headlines. This is because, beyond the tax added to the bill at the end of the meal, the digital option for leaving tips by percentage has skyrocketed, reaching 18 and even 22 percent of the bill amount. Now, more and more restaurants in the country have begun to forgo the practice and not ask for tip payments from diners.

In one restaurant in San Francisco, a wine server earns 40 dollars (119 shekels) per hour without receiving any tips at all — twice the city average. This is because the restaurant where she works decided to raise menu prices and determined that no additional payment would be added to them:

"What you see is what you pay. We do not accept tips, your kind words and repeat visits will suffice."

When that same server was asked in a media interview if she didn't prefer to work with tips, she said it is good not to be dependent on the generosity of strangers to pay the bills anymore:

"Most servers arrive at the restaurant two hours before service begins, and at least another hour during closing time after the guests have left; during this time elsewhere I would be earning minimum wage."

In another restaurant, located near the city of Boston, they introduced a "no-tip" model to specifically reward kitchen staff:

"The people who break their backs and brains in the kitchen are often the least visible and least appreciated. Along with the lack of appreciation, at the end of the day they take home only a small fraction of the amount that the service staff earned from tips — for the same hours of work."

To pay kitchen staff more without hurting the wages of service providers, this restaurant also raised menu prices — but also declared that it does not accept any additional payment on these prices: "This is the deal, and I stand behind it," said the restaurant owner.

However, not every restaurant that switched to a no-tip model has succeeded, as sometimes customers do not appreciate the higher menu prices. Another restaurant from the Boston area abolished tips in 2020, so it could pay staff more equitably — only to return to the previous model in September of last year:

"We tried to maintain the no-tip model simply by raising menu prices by 23%, but we only managed to maintain this during the winter months," says the co-owner.

The reason for the failure is that in the USA, tips are still not considered part of the restaurant's income, a law that was recently changed in Israel. Therefore, the tax paid by these restaurants is higher than that of restaurants that take tips — and thus profits are reduced accordingly.

Although this concerns a minimal percentage of restaurants operating this way, it is still a trend that is expanding every day. Ultimately, the American public will have to answer the important question on the subject: does it prefer to receive the full price at the beginning without change, or is the tipping system where the final price is unknown preferred?