Editorial: Abandoning tips not an industry-friendly move

From the moment you sit down at a restaurant, you take mental notes on your server’s behavior. Is your server friendly? Does he or she refill your drink often? Did he or she give you the check in a reasonable amount of time?

As a customer, you have the power to decide the answers to these questions and take action accordingly. Tipping your server is a crucial part of the American dining experience. But a local restaurant will soon eliminate this consumer’s power.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Bar Marco, a restaurant and bar located in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, will soon abandon the classic tip method. Instead, Bar Marco will pay their servers $35,000 a year for a 40-hour work week, plus health care and profit shares of the restaurant.

How will they fund this move? To subsidize these costs, the restaurant will increase menu prices, and the restaurant’s wineroom will change from two seatings a night to open reservations. 

The move by Bar Marco to step away from the traditional tip system follows other restaurants across the country, including Girard Brasserie and Bruncherie in Philadelphia. 

Supporters of the new system, including Robert Fry, co-owner of Bar Marco, insist that shifting from tips to salaries “helps people see restaurant work as a profession.” But as much as servers deserve respect and dignity, many restaurants could not adopt Bar Marco’s new policy without hurting young workers. Businesses are certainly not going to hire high school or even college students for $35,000 per year. Thus, fewer food industry positions will be available for young adults working to pay their way through school. 

Additionally, as laudable as Fry’s intentions are, abandoning the tip system undermines the incentive-driven motivation behind good service. It’s human nature. If every server were making the same amount of money regardless of performance, what incentive would there be to perform at a high quality? Why would each server strive to ensure the customer has an enjoyable experience? There is little doubt that some altruistically would, but to think they all would is wishful thinking.

Reward should reflect service, and tips incentivize servers to work hard by being rewarded by  their customers. Additionally, there is little chance that smaller eateries could afford to pay relatively high salaries to each server while remaining solvent. Thus, smaller restaurants could not compete at the level of larger ones, resulting in fewer jobs and entrepreneurial opportunity in the food industry.

Business owners and policymakers should always work to increase financial security for lower income workers. However, the way to do so is through natural processes such as tipping, allowing an individual to be rewarded by another in a capitalist fashion. In fact, more industries should consider adopting such a model based on merit. The Post-Gazette says other local servers agree, taking to social media to criticize the details of the Bar Marco plan, specifically citing a low salary they say would rob motivation.

Although Bar Marco and Girard are trying a new approach to compensate servers, let’s hope we still will have the option to reward our servers as we see fit in the future, and that such a trend does not become the norm.