Danny Meyer Restaurants to Eliminate Tipping
By PETE WELLS

In a sweeping change to how most of its 1,800 employees are paid, the Union Square Hospitality Group will eliminate tipping at Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe and its 11 other restaurants by the end of next year, the company’s chief executive, Danny Meyer, said on Wednesday.

The move will affect New York City businesses that serve 40,000 to 50,000 meals a week and range from simple museum cafes to some of the most popular and acclaimed restaurants in the country. The first will be the Modern, inside the Museum of Modern Art, starting next month. The others will gradually follow.

A small number of restaurants around the country have reduced or eliminated tipping in the last several years. Some, like Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, put a surcharge on the bill, allowing the restaurants to set the pay for all their employees. Others, including Bruno Pizza, a new restaurant in the East Village, factor the cost of an hourly wage for servers into their menu prices.

Union Square Hospitality Group will do the latter. Menus will explain that prices include “hospitality,” and checks will not provide blank lines for a tip. “There will be one total, as if you were buying a sweater at Brooks Brothers,” Mr. Meyer said.

The Modern will be the pilot restaurant, Mr. Meyer said, because its chef, Abram Bissell, has been agitating for higher pay to attract skilled cooks. The average hourly wage for kitchen employees at the restaurant is expected to rise to $15.25 from $11.75. Mr. Meyer said that restaurants such as his needed to stay competitive as the state moved to a $15 minimum wage for fast-food workers.

If cooks’ wages do not keep pace with the cost of living, he said, “it’s not going to be sustainable to attract the culinary talent that the city needs to keep its edge.”

Other restaurateurs will be watching closely to see whether Mr. Meyer can change the deeply ingrained culture of tipping and still make a profit.

“Danny has a lot of trust out there with his customer base,” the chef and restaurateur Tom Colicchio said, “and if they’re willing to pay higher prices, it’s going to make it easier for everybody else. That’s still my biggest concern: whether the dining public is up for it.”

Mr. Colicchio said that the success of the car service Uber, whose fee includes service, “is making it possible at least for younger generations to swallow this.”

His flagship restaurant in Manhattan, Craft, began serving lunch last month with service included in the price; tips are strongly discouraged. Mr. Colicchio said that he planned to decide soon whether to do the same at dinner and at some of his other restaurants. “None of the waiters has quit yet, so that’s a good sign,” he said.

By increasing prices and ending tips, Mr. Meyer said he hoped to be able to raise pay for junior dining room managers and for cooks, dishwashers and other kitchen workers. Compensation would remain roughly the same for servers, who currently get most of their income from tips. Under federal labor laws, pooled tips can be distributed only to customer service workers who typically receive gratuities, and cannot be shared with the kitchen staff or managers.

“The gap between what the kitchen and dining room workers make has grown by leaps and bounds,” Mr. Meyer said. During his 30 years in the business, he said, “kitchen income has gone up no more than 25 percent. Meanwhile, dining room pay has gone up 200 percent.”

The wage gap is one of several issues cited by restaurateurs who have deleted the tip line from checks. Some believe it is unfair for servers’ pay to be affected by their race and age, their customer’s moods, the weather and other factors that have nothing to do with performance. A rash of class-action lawsuits over tipping irregularities, many of which have been settled for millions of dollars, is a mounting worry.

Scott Rosenberg, an owner of Sushi Yasuda in Manhattan, said in an interview in 2013 that he had eliminated tipping so his restaurant could more closely follow the customs of Japan, where tipping is rare. He said he also hoped his customers would enjoy leaving the table without having to solve a math problem.

But restaurants that pay servers a straight salary give up a sizable tax credit on tipped income. The Union Square Hospitality Group expects to lose from $1 million to $1.5 million — “real money,” as Mr. Meyer puts it — on the tax credit alone.

Drew Nieporent, who owns nine restaurants in New York City and one in London, said he doubted the average diner would accept an increase in prices that he estimated at “20-plus percent” to make up for the tax credit and lost tips.

“Tipping is a way of life in this country,” he said. “It may not be the perfect system, but it’s our system. It’s an American system.”

Many customers remain deeply attached to the right to reward attentive service, or to withhold that reward. And servers often say that the bonanzas they take home after busy nights far outweigh the risk of getting nothing once in a while.

In a series of meetings with servers and other staff members about the Union Square Hospitality Group’s new policy, “we got zero pushback,” Mr. Meyer said. “We’ve had lots and lots of tough questions, lots of thoughtful and provocative questions. But 100 percent of them, once they understand why, they all want to do the right thing for their team.”

紐約餐飲龍頭 不收小費了

在紐約擁有米其林星級等十多家餐廳、共雇用一千八百人的「聯合廣場餐飲集團」（Union Square Hospitality Group）宣布，下個月起將停止向客人收取小費。這個消息震動美國餐飲界，紐約時報、華爾街日報和華盛頓郵報全都報導，因為如此大型餐飲集團登高一呼，有可能帶動風潮改變美國餐廳的小費文化。

在美國，到餐廳用餐慣例是在酒菜錢以外再給百分之十五到百分之廿小費，但有人抱怨酒足飯飽還要看著帳單練算數，有的外國遊客不知道規矩鬧出不愉快，而且這些小費廚房人員一毛都拿不到，很不公平。

美國已有少數餐廳實驗性的改變小費制度，但聯合廣場餐飲集團如此大張旗鼓的宣布不收小費，根據紐約州餐廳協會會長傅萊許特的說法，可能成為「改變遊戲規則」之舉。

不過，不收小費後餐點將全面漲價至少兩成，所以其實是將小費從外加變內含。影響所及，該集團設在紐約現代美術館的米其林二星餐廳「the Modern」，「主廚特選套餐」將從約台幣四千四百元漲至五千四百元。

集團聲明表示，「經過深思熟慮與全公司內部討論後，」決定採取新措施，原因之一是小費制度不公平，幾乎都被侍者拿去，有些侍者加上小費的收入是廚師的3倍，而廚師和洗碗工對客人同樣貢獻良多，卻無法雨露均霑。這是因為美國聯邦勞動法規定，只有「外場」侍者才能分小費，經理和廚房人員都沒份。

小費不僅對餐廳員工不公平，對侍者也不公平。侍者看見小費大戶上門，搶服務也搶得很凶。難搞的客人、少數族群或外國客人，侍者紛紛走避，因為有的侍者認為這群客人小費給得少。林恩的研究發現，侍者提供最佳服務的動力並非來自小費數額，而是當晚能夠服務的桌數。

林恩比較邁阿密餐廳，有的收小費，有的明訂服務費，發現用餐者感覺收小費的餐廳服務較優。

「聯合廣場餐飲集團」老闆梅爾表示，將讓制度透明，侍者薪資不變甚至更高，廚師也能加薪。但許多資深侍者擔心收入因此減少。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/dining/danny-meyer-restaurants-no-tips.html

2015-10-16．聯合報．A17．國際．編譯張佑生