Mel Nichols, a 37-year-old bartender in Phoenix, Arizona, takes home anywhere from $30 to $50 an hour with tips included. But the uncertainty of how much she’s going to make on a daily basis is a constant source of stress.
“For every good day, there’s three bad days,” said Nichols, who has been in the service industry since she was a teenager. “You have no security when it comes to knowing how much you’re going to make.”
The amount tipped workers make varies by state. Fourteen states pay the federal minimum, or just above $2 an hour for tipped workers and $7 an hour for non-tipped workers.
A tip should be a reward for higher quality work, not asking your customers to subsidize your workers because you’re too cheap.
A higher minimum wage for restaurant staff is going straight onto the menu prices anyway. But then customers weary of expensive restaurant food stop showing up.
Restaurants are pretty much the toughest industry to be in. The vast majority of them fail. And the ones that really succeed (fast food) don’t have tipping anyway.
The ones who are making all the money are the landlords who own the land the restaurants lease from. They don’t care if 7 tenants restaurants go out of business in 5 years. They can always find more.
Thing is, the price is clearly going up whether or not the wages do… so… Moot point
The prices are going up now because all of the following are getting more expensive:
- ingredients
- energy
- rent
- delivery fees (for delivery of ingredients to the restaurant)
- laundry
- maintenance
Raising the wages of staff is another expense to add on. To the list.
Restaurants are not a lucrative business. Most barely break even or lose money. They can’t afford to pay staff more without raising prices.
The McDonald’s business model is to own all the land their restaurants are on. Real estate!
Not so sure, more and more people fed up with greedy price gouging seem to be cutting back on tipping. You see it in business rags trying to sell it as “are consumers getting more stingy?”
Tips go away, tipped workers go away, tip-model businesses then have to adapt or die. (While whining that nobody wants to work, I’m sure.)
