I’m happy to announce that, starting Thursday, 16 November 2006, The Linkery will be a “no tipping” restaurant. Undoubtedly this will generate a lot of questions. So, without further ado, our “TIP-FREE RESTAURANT Q&A“.
How will this work?
We’ve decided to join the rest of American retail business and charge a set amount for our products and services. We now include the cost of table service for dining-in guests on each check at 18%. And we do not accept tips.
This enables us to serve you with a more professional, team-oriented environment, and to maintain our quality of cuisine while keeping our prices neighborhood friendly.
If you’d like to express extra gratitude at the end of your meal, leave some cash to be donated to our charity of the month.
Why are you doing this?
Changing from tips to a service charge helps us provide you the best and most consistent food, beverage and service possible.
Providing table service costs money; like any sensible business, we simply charge for things we do that incur costs. As long as we do a good job, it’s a good deal for everyone. At the same time, we don’t take tips, because we don’t expect any more than what we charge, and we don’t want to be bribed to do our jobs.
We no longer work to get tips from our guests, we instead work to provide both excellent food and professional service, because that is our business.
This also helps us become a better restuarant because revenue from billing for service can be split among everyone who works here (which isn’t allowed with tips). It’s us living the truth that everybody at the Linkery is fully responsible for the quality of your experience, and that we all work together to give you the best food, drink and service we can.
Lastly, this change also has the benefit that every guest pays a set price for our products and services, which brings us in line with the vast majority of US retail businesses, except, perhaps, car dealerships and guitar stores.
I thought tips are my payment to the server, not for you to distribute amongst your staff.
Tips are an extra amount paid by guests which covers the cost of table service (which is why tipping is not customarily required for to-go or counter service). Although individual guests may tip differently, the overall tips in a restaurant are very stable as a percentage of sales.
While the cost of table service is borne, at least in part, by everyone at the restaurant, tips by law cannot be distributed among the whole staff. Many restaurants adapt to this circumstance by raising their prices enough to cover the remaining table service costs. Another option is to replace tipping with a set fee for table service and allocate that revenue fairly. That’s what we’re choosing to do.
Does any other sit-down restaurant do this?
After a fair amount of Googling, I could find only two other restaurants in the U.S. that have replaced tipping with a service line item. One is The French Laundry and the other is Chez Panisse. Admittedly, we don’t want to limit ourselves by aspiring to be only as good as those two places, but it’s respectable company.
Seriously, seeing that Thomas Keller and Alice Waters have taken this course suggests to us that perhaps it helps a restaurant be excellent. Given our goal of developing a world-class neighborhood restaurant, we’ll follow.
UPDATE (15 Nov): add to the list Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, Per Se in New York, and Moosewood in Ithica, New York.
But aren’t tips my way to insure that I get prompt service?
Actually, it turns out that tips and quality of service are usually very loosely correlated, at most (see “Tip Levels and Service: An Update, Extension and Reconciliation” by Michael Lynn of Cornell University, 2003, and “Incentives and Service Quality in the Restaurant Industry: The Tipping – Service Puzzle”, by Ofer H. Azar of Ben-Gurion University, 2007). People generally just tip what they tip. It’s a pretty unusual occasion where quality of service affects the amount of the tip much.
Interestingly, however, female servers drawing smiley faces on the check has been shown to increase tips by 18% (Rind & Bordia 1996).
What if my service is bad – why should I have to pay 18% in that case?
As with anything we do here, food or service, we ask that you bring to our attention any errors that affect the quality of your experience. We’ll do our best to correct them, and, when appropriate, adjust the bill accordingly.
I don’t tip 18%. I tip 15%. Why should I suddenly have to tip more?
The best thing is, at the Linkery you don’t tip at all.
Really, guest tips cover the cost of table service and, as a whole, they’re pretty predictable. For everyone who tips only 15%, there’s someone who always tips 20% or more. Our method just incorporates this payment into the check, and makes it the same for everyone. We think that’s really fair.
This is all great for your restaurant, but how does this benefit me?
Two ways:
1. It’s a more efficient way of running our restaurant. Running our restaurant efficiently means that we will be better able to provide great food and great service at a moderate cost. In other words, we won’t have to raise our prices to cover inefficiencies in our operation. That’s good for everyone.
2. This will eliminate a troublesome system where members of our service teamhas a financial incentive to disrupt the restaurant’s operation, and adversely impact the quality of our work. How does this occur? Here’s a theoretical example. Let’s say a person comes in when we’re super busy, places an order for a steak, and asks that it be done as quickly as possible. The server, believing that her compensation will reflect how well she accomplishes this task, will try to make this happen. Of course, during the rush, there’s a good chance that if the kitchen attempts to accommodate this request and rearrange its work flow, this will mean that several tables’ food will not come out on time or as good. It would be in the best interest of the guests in general for the server to decline to honor the request. Under the new system, where any individual tip is not essential, it will be easier for servers to make the decision to honor the majority of guests rather than any specific one.
Tips motivate good service. Doesn’t this mean that your service won’t be as good?
Maybe at first. This is new ground for all of us, so there are bound to be some challenges. Some of us may discover that this kind of system isn’t a good fit, so we may have some new people or people in new roles. That’s all pretty normal stuff that comes along with change and improvement.
Ultimately, though, we’ll be able to provide better service that would be possible with the old system. Because everyone’s interests are now aligned – yours, the service staff, the kitchen staff, and the restaurant as a business – we will all be able to work as a team to give you a great dining experience at a moderate price.
What if my service is great? I’d like to reward that.
Most importantly, giving great service is its own reward.
But if you’d like to recognize us, the best thing is to let everyone know – both in the restaurant and out. Tell your friends, post it on your website, or wear a sandwich board at work that says “The Linkery Rocks!”
If a particular person or people is doing a great job, tell us. Tell the bartender, or send an email to Jay, or post it in the comments in our blog. We’ll all get to hear about it, and we’ll appreciate the great work of our colleagues.
Also, we encourage guests who want to express gratitude to leave a little extra cash behind, which we’ll donate to our charity of the month. The current month’s charity is always listed on the bottom of the menu.
Is there a service charge for to-go orders?
No, the charge is for table or bar service only. Our food does taste better right off the grill, so we encourage you to eat here when possible. Plus, it’s fun.
I know that while you pretend to be a nice, honest person, you are actually a evil mastermind bent on world domination through misinformation and subterfuge. What’s your hidden agenda?
You caught me. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for these meddling kids.
Hey, there’s a whole field of study as to how servers can increase their tips by doing such things as touching guests on the shoulder, or predicting that the next day’s weather will be sunny. Check out Mega Tips from Cornell University.
We don’t want to be in the business of figuring out how to get you to give us a few percentage points more in tips. We want to be in the business of giving you great food and beverages at a moderate price, of bringing you closer to the people who make your food, and in providing a great community. By eliminating the tipping transaction, we’re making another step in that direction.
Now I’m going back to my volcanic lair.
UPDATE (15 Nov): I found several interesting articles on-line about this subject:
- This installment of Ask a Waiter provides the most thoughtful and detailed analysis of the subject I’ve read. I disagree with the writer on one point: he argues that tipping (as opposed to service charge or including service in item prices) financially benefits the restaurant owner at the expense of employee relations. My experience is that tipping and service charge are basically financially neutral to the owner, but that tipping both fosters disincentives to teamwork and creates operational inefficiencies which have to be made up with higher prices or poorer execution. I like the proposal of this article that the cost of service be included in the cost of each item, I can definitely see us moving there eventually.
- The New York Times provides a pretty accurate overview of the state of tipping.
- Here’s an article from the Chicago Tribune explaining why eliminating tipping won’t work at restaurants such as ours, even though “the idea has merit”.
- Finally, a blogger’s well-written reaction to the Chicago Tribune article above.
(Edited 19 November: minor changes to the first couple paragraphs to clarify that we are charging for table service for dining guests.)
(Update 18 December: Thanks everyone for discussing this with us the last month, it really helped us focus our goals and be the best restaurant we can. I’m closing comments now so we don’t build up spam and trolls at the end of the discussion thread, but if you have questions or concerns about this topic please email me directly and I’ll address them personally.)
Hello Team Link,
Moosewood in Ithaca, NY is non-tipping/service line restaurant too….
and I just served beer to Josh and Byron…in PDX, bizarro
oh wow. everything in that Mega Tips booklet is my worst nightmare. thank you Linkery, for sparing us from random touching, smiley faces, squatting, and flair.
This is dumb
I read about this here: http://www.thepunkboard.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10490 and I must say, it makes no sense.
Just so you know, I usually tip 25% – 30% for good service. I now refuse to patronize your business.
Thank you,
James
Well, I’m encouraged that people feel passionately about this. It shows that we’re onto something: after all, if we’re trying to make the world better, it’s good to do it where it counts.
On the other hand, it’s a bummer that some folks are so upset. I’d love to engage in a discussion about this, and presumably learn something, if anyone who thinks this is bad would like to explain why and engage in dialogue.
Jay: Why don’t you discuss at the link above? Easier to quote and format looks like.
Good idea, will do. Thanks.
As a regular, I’m a little troubled by this. I always tip between 15 and 20%, but I always base my tip on how responsive the server is. And, frankly, I’ve experienced a great deal of variation in responsiveness at the Linkery. I’ve never had “bad” service, per se, but I’ve experienced poor follow-up (not checking on the water levels, not checking back during the meal) from both a few of your waitstaff (not all and I’m not naming names) and also during particularly busy times (Friday or Saturday night). In other words, I like having the discretion to tip 15% when I don’t feel the service is as good as usual and 20% when the service is excellent.
Also, someone else brought up the subject of tipping at the bar. If I order a drink at the bar instead of at a table, are your service costs the same? Would it be reasonable to charge a lower percentage for bar service, given the drawbacks to eating at the bar?
I’ll probably still patronize the Linkery; the food is excellent, the service is good, and I support your food goals, but I will probably only do so on nights other than Friday and Saturday now.
Hi Ray,
I totally respect your decision. We’re doing this to as a means to improve our execution throughout the restaurant, because we are aware (at least to some degree) of the inconsistencies you cite.
The hard thing for me to learn was that variations in tipping are, at least here and from my research pretty much everywhere, ineffective in changing the quality of service. In fact, the variations between guests tips is so great that servers don’t really know if the tip reflects their attentiveness or just how people tip.
Beyond that, people who do adjust their tip often do so on things more or less beyond the server’s control, like food times or preparations. And, it turns out, whether the server draws a smiley face on the check (though presumably the change in tip is unconcious).
As a result, tipping has proven to be ineffective in motivating better service, and a hindrance to us improving the restaurant in general. This is why we’re eliminating it. We’ll just charge for table service, which is where other restaurants apply the revenue generated by tips, and focus on working on improving our consistency and performance throughout the restaurant.
I hope that, over time, you and everyone else see the results.
Best,
Jay
Oh, but one thing…”the drawbacks of eating at the bar”!!!! I’m crushed! I’ll assume you mean when someone else is working.
Seriously, bar and table service cost about the same for us — if anything bar service costs more because a single bartender can serve fewer people than a floor server can. Some people perfer to eat at the bar where they can discuss the food with the bartender, some prefer tables where they can chat more or less undisturbed with each other. So it seems fair to us to charge the same amount for service at either place.
How about just building the tip into the prices? That will feel much nicer and match what other countries do, like Australia,
Then you can claim you already pay your staff well and no tips are necessary.
And, of course, staff would refuse any tips offered. And the credit card receipt wouldn’t have a line to add tips.
Most of those things we’re already doing.
We’re refusing all tips, and the credit card receipts have no tip line. We pay fairly well for a startup, and we do have revenue sharing, profit sharing, and employer-subsidized health insurance.
I’d rather build the cost of table service into the prices, but we decided against it for two reasons. 1) For those who weren’t yet aware of our no tipping policy, it would seem as though our markups were higher than they are, compared to other restuarants, which is ineffective communication; and 2) takeaway orders would have to pay for table service, too, which didn’t seem quite right.
In the future, though, I’d like us to move to such a system, if we can get past those obstacles.
In response to Jay’s 6.58pm letter to Mikemee’s excellent suggestion about absorbing the 18% into the food prices:
You don’t have a problem explaining yourselves and your philosophy at length on the last page of your menu, why not use that as a tool to clarify your agenda.
That means you can absorb your 18% gratuity into the prices of food served at the restaurant, then give take-out orders an 18% discount. This seems like a more effective strategy, psychologically speaking. I don’t mind leaving a 18% tip, and I understand that you feel your service should merit a fixed amount of money, but you shouldn’t need to remind us on every bill you hand us.
Bottom line: If you say you are getting rid of tips, then truly get rid of tips.
I’d still love to eat at your restaurant, but I think there are still a lot of holes in your strategy. I’d definitely give it some more critical thought.
David,
I see your points and don’t disagree with them. As I mentioned earlier, we spent a lot of time deciding between the two approaches, and it wasn’t (and still isn’t) obvious to us which is better.
I note that it’s possible Thomas Keller had similar issues when deciding how to implement a similar policy at his restaurants — French Laundry has a service charge (the way we’re doing it), and Per Se is “service compris” (the way you and Michael suggest).
I do think it’s important to emphasize that we really are getting rid of tips. It’s confusing at first, because restaurants for so long have used tip revenue to pay the costs of table service. They usually do this by paying servers minimum wage and also encouraging them (or legally/illegally forcing them) to tip out, thus shifting the tip revenue throughout the restaurant, albeit inefficiently.
Because restaurants use tips to pay the costs of table service, people have come to think that a charge for table service is a mandatory tip. It’s not, it’s the cost of providing table service, passed on to the guest. We’re just charging for table service, and in order to make sure that’s all we’re doing (as opposed to boosting revenue), we put it as a line item and ask people not to tip.
In fact, we don’t take tips at all — anything extra you leave here just gets donated to charity (this month, it’s the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy).
I do appreciate your feedback, and I hope you find our new system as fair and helpful as we believe it will be.
We’ve been debating doing this for a long time and it’s interesting to see how riled up people get about leaving a tip. For those of you who claim you tip 20-25% and now won’t patronize this restaurant, grow up. Tipping should not be a point of pride. There are few other business which require their customers to participate in this song and dance.
Waiting tables is a difficult, demanding profession which receives little respect in our culture. Moving beyond the tipped realm might be one way to help eradicate the stigma.
As a side note, since waiter’s wages are going up in a month and half with the increase in the minimum wage law we may see more establishments going this way.
David and Michael,
I’d like to amend my earlier comments about your suggestion that we go “service included” in every menu item. After further reflection and discussion, I now am convinced that a separate charge for table service — the way we ultimately decided to go — is definitely fairer, clearer and generally preferable.
Consider that most other retail businesses do the same thing, for the same reason. If you go to a CD store and buy a CD, you pay the price of the CD. If you call them and have them mail it to you, you pay the price of the CD plus another amount to cover the cost the business incurs to package and ship the CD (usually called “shipping and handling”).
If the CD store raised the prices of the CD to cover the shipping costs for mal orders, that would seem unfair. If they then turned around and gave discounts for instore purchases, that would be confusing and perhaps silly.
This is the same way we’re approaching it — the food items have a price, and if you choose to enjoy table service then those costs are added to your tab as well.
Haddock,
Thanks for your thoughts. Your blog is interesting, it looks like y’all are roughly the same volume we are, and I look forward to reading more. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot.
To clarify, for others, a couple points in Haddock’s post. The “we” in her comment is her restaurant, not the Linkery. Also, the reason other restaurants may go tipless when the minimum wage raises is this: since most tipped servers make minimum wage, the law will increase the cost of table service. Most restaurants recoup those costs through tips, but this is very inefficient. It\’s inefficient because — at small to medium size restaurants, anyway — the costs of table service are borne by everyone in the restaurant (those costs would otherwise be available for wages for everyone in the business), but tip money can’t legally be distributed across the whole house. As a result, when the cost of table service rises, restaurants that pay those costs with tips become more inefficient, and have to raise their markups to make ends meet. Restaurants that charge for table service instead of taking tips remain very efficient, and can then keep their prices the same.
Also, haddock, I read on your blog that you are looking into offering health insurance to your staff. We’ve been doing that for about nine months now and I\’d be happy to share our experiences.
On another note, one thing that’s really struck me is how ingrained this idea is in all of us that, as diners, we’re influencing the server and the world with our tipping decision. I suddenly realized that before I got into this business I thought the same thing. As someone who’s comparatively new to table service, I clearly remember the misapprehensions I had, that my experience in the industry has clarified.
Please let me share what I’ve learned about tipping.
When you leave your tip, the server — at any restaurant — does one of two things, depending on his/her personality. 1) ignore it and lump it with all the others; or 2) note that you are a person who tips x percent. The server never takes the tip as an evaluation of her performance, because she’s learned that, unless she spills wine on the guest or something, tips correlate more strongly to the nature of the guest than to the servers’ performance.
A guest to whom she gives great service is just as likely to tip low as high, and a guest to whom she gives lousy service (and the server knows when she’s doing a lousy job!) is just as likely to tip high as low.
As a result, the amount you tip has no effect on the server other than how much money she leaves with. Just like every other profession I’ve worked in, the people who do a good job do it because it\’s in their character; the people who do a lousy job do so because they don’t care. Some people go back and forth between the two. But their tip percentages don’t change who they are.
Engaging in this discussion, and seeing the confusion out there about how tips work and what people are paying for at restaurants, I’m happier than ever that we’re leaving the whole system behind. It’s unfair and dishonest. And it also perpetuates an Eliza Doolittle myth which isn’t helpful in developing either great cuisine or great community.
Two things:
One, To go orders take time and quality service also. It slows the kitchen down when they have to put sauces in side dishes, get a lid and make sure it is sealed, bread needs to be wrapped, utensils need to be placed. Someone spends time on the phone taking the order and maybe more time than at a table to ask questions like “how many sets of utensils?” I think the service charge should be added to the bill.
Two, using retail as an example is very good. In a clothing store a service oriented employee is going to help the customer, get them different sizes to try, show them alternatives to sold out items, gift wrap nicely with a bow and pay attention to the customer. The customer is not going to tip but they get good service. Why should it be different when they are buying food instead of clothes?
jsp,
Thanks for commenting. Obviously, you’re right about to-go orders taking time and service. We thought about having a different, separate service charge (say, 5%) for to-go orders, but after we talked about it for a while we agreed that filling a to-go order is more or less the baseline operation that the house can accomplish — communicating with the orderer, preparing the food, plating/packaging it, and handing it over. Therefore, we decided that that work should be included in the cost of each item. Table service involves those things and much more, so that’s where the table service line charge occurs.
As for the retail example, I think we’re agreeing. We don’t expect the guest to tip — in fact, we refuse it — but we endeavor to provide good service as part of our operations. Just like the store.
I guess you could say there are lots of different kinds of clothing stores, some that offer more service and some that offer less service, and they all build that into their prices. We’re choosing a different model, since we know we want to offer great, personal service, not discount service. To make that clear, we’re itemizing that service separately for those who choose to enjoy it.
Another point of clarification. Haddock isn’t a she. The GM, she’s a she.
I’d love to hear about your health insurance experiences.
Sorry about that! Poor reading comprehension. I’ll email you…
Hi Jay,
I must admit, when my husband told me about this, I was a little bonkers. I am one of the “rare” people who uses a tip to indicate my pleasure or displeasure with the quality of service. Several times the service at the Linkery has been under par, and I have tipped accordingly. The rest of the time, 20% is about right.
I think I was mostly upset with the “control” being taken away. You know, over the last couple of decades good service has become “nice to have”, but doesn’t seem a requirement in a lot of retail places. I didn’t want to feel obligated to reward poor service. (For example, “back in the day” in Seattle, I made coffee and got nothing for tips. Now, you go into a cafe, get the stink-eye from the overly trendy person at the counter, and they expect a buck or two. No thanks!
BUT THEN I READ YOUR Q and A. You make excellent points and I hope that people read your well-written responses to the questions.
Also, as a former waitress who was grossed out by some of my coworkers–who wrote smiley faces, wore low-cut blouses and leaned in on the male customers, and overall acted as prostitutes for extra tips–this gives women a chance to be nice, pleasant, flirtatious (if they want), and give good service without degrading themselves. It’s also a great thing for all the guys and gals behind the scenes, who make being a waitress a little bit easier.
I hope people will “git edjucatid” before writing you and the restaurant off, like Mr. Big Tipper.
I love that you are not just a restaurant owner, but a bit of a radical, too!
Good luck.
Kara
I enjoy tipping well for good and standard service, but having the option to tip poorly (even then i would always tip at least 10%). Whether I have “control” or not, I feel capable of expressing my opinion in a way that matters to the server.
I think your idea would be good if it weren’t so atypical for dining out. But here’s my answer:
Have the computer add a section on the receipt, probably right after where you would sign for a credit card, with three checkboxes:
I had excellent service – kudos to the server!
I had average service
I had poor service – something was not quite right!
Then instead of tipping, I would check the appropriate box, pay the 18% and move on in a nonconfrontational way. I would expect the management to notice any trends of “poor service” marks and deal with it. Plus, what happens when you get a bad server and you don’t have the tip market to make them quit? You would have a paper trail showing that they are doing a bad job. people should be rewarded for success and quality and penalized for failure and low quality – then market forces lead us towards success.
expecting me to complain if i have bad service will only make me feel uncomfortable and unlikely to want to return.
i like the contribution to charity thing. you could actually encourage addl. tips and show your “score” on the chalkboard along with the lucky charity’s name.
Kara, thanks for your thoughtful comments. I appreciate the kind words.
Tim, thanks for your interesting suggestion. I like that it replaces ineffective communication with communication that might be more effective. The old way is ineffective: varying one’s tip doesn’t communicate anything to the server, because due to experience servers assume that the tip is a reflection of how the person tips, not the servers’ quality of work.
A comment card, as you suggest, is an alternative which might be effective. I don’t think a comment card is the Linkery’s style, though — it’s so impersonal and corporate. But the idea that we should do things to foster communication with our guests is of course a good one.
One misunderstanding I’d like to clear up: the tip market is incapable of driving bad servers to quit. A terrible server working for tips at a casual mid-priced restaurant is still likely to make $20-30/hour, and much more if the server can take a lot of tables. The difference between 15% and 20% tips from the people who tip based on service isn’t enough to make much a difference in the servers’ income.
There aren’t many part-time jobs you can be really bad at and still make that kind of money. This is why tipping doesn’t contribute to good service.
Lastly, I would like to suggest that this idea, rather than being not good because it’s unusual, may be unusual because it is good. If we aspire to become the best neighborhood restaurant in the world — and that is our goal — then we’re going to have to do some things radically different than most other restaurants. Otherwise, we can be no better than the rest.
Jay , Amy and I have been eating at your joint since it opened and we come back because the food is good , the people who bring it to me are nice and friendly , excelent wine choises and there’s always good music on ! ( I’m going to make that CD one day I promise ! ! )
I don’t plan on changing my eating habits because the way we pay for the food is going to be slightly different than before .
I always tip well , wherever I go , but I’m certainly not offended if that changes with some ( obviously fairly well thought out ) reasoning ; and certanly not bothered enough to claim that I would stop patronizing you because of it . That’s just silly .
See you soon !
Wow, I wasn’t planning to comment on this because it is so OBVIOUSLY a good idea, but after reading people’s comments I see those in favor need another voice!
Tipping is so much of a hassle for everyone involved–WHY would you complain about not having to do a math problem after you just had a nice meal (and likely a nice glass of wine or something)?
Not to mention the degrading little power game it turns into.
I really appreciate this step and it would make me want to come to the Linkery even more except I already go there more than is probably good for me.
Mike and Jenne, Thanks both of you for commenting and for your kind words. With your support we’re going to make the Linkery into the best possible neighborhood restaurant.
Jay
We recently went to eat at the Linkery and were caught off guard by your new system. No where in your comments have you convinced me why it is a great thing. We will no longer be eating at the Linkery.
Britt,
Thanks for commenting.
Of course, I’m sorry to hear that you won’t be joining us any more. Fortunately there are lots of restaurants that do things the old way, so you should have plenty of options of places to go. And if you change your mind in the future we’ll welcome you back.
Jay