Service Appropriately Compensated

“We are seriously exploring collecting a service charge from our customers and paying our employees a weekly, merit-based salary,” said Jimmy Haber, managing partner of ESquared Hospitality, which owns the BLT restaurant empire. He estimates ESquared’s labor costs would increase by $1 million to $1.4 million a year if the current tip credit goes up to $7.50 or $8.50. Employers now can pay tipped workers $5 an hour as long as their tips make up the difference to equal the state’s minimum wage of $8.75.

It’s almost too tidy that a proposed wage increase for tipped workers in New York — to as much as eight dollars and fifty cents an hour — may be what finally provokes restaurants, en masse, to replace the barbaric practice of voluntary tipping with a flat service charge that provides both servers and kitchen staff with compensation that might begin to approach an approximate living wage in a mid-sized, reasonable affordable city. Unfortunately, if it passes, most of the workers who will immediately benefit live in New York City, but as we know all too well, restaurant trends move quicker than hot bone broth raging through one’s esophagus these days. (via)