The secret at the heart of restaurant tipping

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Posted by: Economist.com | LONDON
Categories: Restaurants Tipping
WHO should benefit from tips given for service in a restaurant? Earlier this year Pizza Express became the target of a campaign by Unite, the largest union in Britain, after a waiter was sacked for apparently speaking out about the way restaurant managers were taking a share of tips. And now a more upmarket name has joined the pizza chain in the tipping dock. According to a report by BBC London last week, the Dorchester hotel has been using tips earned in its banqueting halls to pep up managers’ monthly bonuses. The report suggests that managers culled a share from the tips paid to waiting staff without those staff knowing.

I am not a fan of tipping. I do it in British restaurants, American bars, etc, because the economics of the wage systems requires me to do so. But I dislike the seemingly arbitrary fact that waiting staff are deemed to be performing a service which demands tipping, yet staff in shops and a thousand other public-serving industries are not.

The situation at the Dorchester merely highlights the absurd uncertainty that lies at the heart of the practice. I don't think customers nowadays expect their tips to go directly and solely into the pockets of their particular server; they know that monies will be shared out, so as to avoid the lottery where one waiter benefits from one particularly high-spending table. The question is: how far does this sharing go? Does the dish-washer benefit? The chef? The restaurant manager? The hotel owner? All these people were in some way involved in the dining experience: should all benefit from the tip?

I don't mind if all the restaurant's workers benefit, so long as that is made clear. If we accept, through gritted teeth, that we are stuck with tipping, then restaurants should formulate their own definitive tipping policies—and inform staff and customers alike. Such openness may not immediately be to managers' advantage—customers will invariably tip less generously if they know the boss will share the money along with the waiters—but clarity is needed in this murky part of the restaurant world. If the managers are not prepared to reveal what portion of the tips they are taking for themselves, they should leave them alone.

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