No-tipping restaurants are a concept that's gaining steam, as some restaurant owners decide they can just pay their workers a decent wage and not rely on customers to provide workers' wages directly. Bryce Covert interviews the owners of Girard Brasserie and Bruncherie, a restaurant opening soon in Philadelphia where there won't be tipping and workers will be paid
an average of $13 an hour with paid time off and benefits:
“We’ve worked in those positions and relied on those tips,” [co-owner Brian] Oliveira said, experiencing “slower nights and bad sections or getting stiffed.” The two had also heard of some of the other restaurants that have gone the route of paying higher wages and banning tips. “That really is what inspired us,” he said. [...]
But the two don’t just expect the plan to benefit the employees. It will also benefit the restaurant. It will result in “less turnover, more knowledgeable staff,” Oliveira said, which will “result in a better product and better service.”
They’ve already been able to attract a different set of applicants. “In the restaurant industry, you never know how much you’re going to make,” Mora said. But at Girard, “you know how much you’re going to make, it’s more like other professions. So it’s attracted more stable people, so I think we’re going to have more stability in our staff.” That should lower turnover, which “in restaurants is one of the highest unspoken costs,” he added.
Compare this approach to the New Jersey restaurant owners
whining to the Heritage Foundation about a possible minimum wage increase for tipped workers. These poor creatures face the prospect of their state's tipped minimum wage, which has been $2.13 an hour for two decades, going to $3.39 this year and all the way to $5.93 in 2016. The whiny restaurant owners say things like "the price of doing business keeps going up, and it makes New Jersey less competitive than it should be with neighboring states." Interestingly enough, though, the sponsor of the bill to raise the tipped worker minimum wage points out that neighboring states are already above $2.13 an hour, with New York at $5. So who exactly are these restaurants trying to compete with?
Good bosses like the owners of Girard Brasserie and Bruncherie are important, but these New Jersey restaurant owners show why it's important that workers be protected in the law—there's always going to be someone who'll fight paying their workers more than $2.13 an hour. As for them, they should rest easy—it's a pretty safe bet that if a bill raising the tipped worker minimum wage gets to Gov. Chris Christie's desk, he'll veto it.
Chris Christie may not be up for re-election this year, but lots of anti-worker governors are. Please chip in $3 to help defeat them.