Changing the face of the restaurant industry

There is a movement afoot in several major restaurant cities around the country, led by some of our most prominent restaurateurs, to get rid of tipping, thus leveling the financial playing field between the front and back of the house. This is a bold and risky move that will change the face of fine dining and upscale casual as well. Some say it is long overdue.

I have been following this conversation for a while, and now Danny Meyer, of the Union Square Hospitality Group and owner of 13 high-profile, very successful restaurants in New York City, will test the waters in November at his Michelin-starred restaurant, The Modern, located in The Museum of Modern Art.

Ironically a friend of mine, who in the past has worked in the front of the house at a fine dining restaurant in the Twin Cities, asked if it bothered me as a back of the house person when servers would walk out with pockets full of cash while we worked on. I can say it did aggravate the cooks at times and it didn’t seem fair, but for me I was passionate about my craft and I had tried front of the house on occasion for the experience but it wasn’t my cup of tea. It really begs the question: Is this a fair and equitable situation?

Diners in Europe haven’t been in the tipping business for years and service is included in your bill. Cities that receive well-heeled European travelers can be a bit of a curse for the poor server. Which brings us to one side of the equation. As a tipped employee you receive a low hourly wage and therefore rely on the good manners of your guests. In essence you have hundreds of employers (guests) paying a substantial portion of your yearly income. As a non-tipped employee you would have one employer (the owner) and therefore could be monitored and paid on a performance-based platform.

Another factor is that with the state and federal government establishing higher minimum wage standards (surprisingly the tipped employees base goes up by a higher percentage than back of the house employees) it will make it harder to retain an already dwindling workforce. You can go down the street and work at a fast food joint and make as much as a kitchen worker in a fine dining restaurant. By eliminating tipping, the front of the house employees might get rewarded through a sales incentive program, while the back of the house would get a raise so everyone is on the same level. That would be a game changer.

It all sounds good but it is much more complicated and the restaurant owner takes on a larger burden of financial responsibility. But the real question is, who is paying for all of this? That would be the customer. Menu prices would have to increase anywhere from 20 to 35 percent to cover the costs and to not overly impact the bottom line. But there are ways to do this that won’t make it a negative. Not every item would get raised, and with that point at the end of the day, the customer benefits by having a professional workforce taking care of them.

With Minneapolis being named one of the top food towns in the country this year, they get to join the short list of cool places to visit if you are a foodie, along with New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Houston. It will be interesting to see how long it takes this game changer to be adopted nationwide, if it does at all. Thank goodness Congress doesn’t have any involvement. I am sure there will be a lot of eyes on The Modern come November. I like Meyer’s moniker for the program as it will appear on guest checks: “Hospitality Included” -- that’s classy. So pay attention Fargo, as we are the center of the universe, you might be able to lose that “tip calculator app” on your cell phone in the relatively near future.