Three restaurant owners break down their take on fees, tipping and transparency.
Whether it's the 3 percent Dumpling Chef Appreciation Fee at Nana's Dim Sum & Dumplings, the 4 percent Wellness Fee at Bodega, or the 22 percent Creating Happy People fee at Bonanno Concepts restaurants, surcharges of all kinds are a common addition to restaurant receipts these days. A lot of diners hate them, and even more don't understand them.If diners are confused, the path isn't much clearer for restaurateurs.
But the fee is also intended to make pay more equitable among front-of-house staff."You need servers to open for lunch. That's not the most lucrative period. You need servers to work the back station that may only get five tables and end up running food for the station that's the busiest," Frank points out."What we thought is that we would really like to see a more team environment going on.
For servers, not getting the full 22 percent fee isn't much different than the way traditional tips were distributed, Frank notes."People always think if I give a server $20, they get to keep that $20. ... In almost every restaurant, that server was still tipping out the bar 3 to 4 percent, 1 or 2 percent to food runners, 1 or 2 percent to bussers and in recent years, you could tip out the host 1 percent." In addition, the average tip was lower, around 17 to 18 percent.
"We're revisiting it every quarter," Jacqueline adds."We look at it squarely in the face. We have the uncomfortable conversation. At some point, we may truly decide it's not serving us. It's not serving us emotionally, it's not serving us financially. But right now, it is. It's serving everyone, and it's pretty great."Juan Padró is the founder and CEO of Culinary Creative Group , which has grown rapidly since the pandemic.
But Padró notes that"this concept, this idea that COVID ended two years ago is just absolutely insane. The repercussions of COVID, we're not even in the middle of it." On the flip side,"If you're not claiming your tips and you're showing $20,000 in income so you don't have to pay taxes, is that really good for society?" Padró asks.
CCG uses a tiered system to distribute the fee based on"job performance outside of sales," Padró says, such as side work and menu knowledge."The other component is the split between front and back of the house. This year, we decided to take the tip credit," which is a change from recent years. Although the fee replaces the need to tip, CCG does still have a tip line on its receipts."I think the fact that we leave the tip line in causes more confusion. But we do it because it allows our people to make more money," Padró notes. Any tips that are left are pooled and distributed daily."Typically, people don't really blink or have an issue at an A5 or a Kumoya or Forget Me Not. In fact, they prefer that kind of thing — at least the guests do," he says.
It has always operated with a tip pool system and moved to a whole house tip share about four years ago, once that became legal in Colorado.
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