Tipping’s racist origins still on display

“Tipping is actually one of the biggest hoaxes ever pulled on an entire culture,” restaurateur Danny Meyer told Dan Pashman on WNYC’s The Sporkful podcast. In 2015, Meyer made headlines when he rolled out a plan to eliminate tipping in his restaurants, which include burger chain Shake Shack and New York City’s high-end Union Square Cafe.

The practice of tipping started in the U.S. immediately following the Civil War, Meyer explained, when the restaurant and Pullman train car industries successfully petitioned the government to allow them to not pay servers. “It wasn’t considered slavery because we would ask our customers to pay tips, and therefore no one could say that they were being enslaved,” Meyer said. “And no surprise, but most of the people who were working in service professional jobs in restaurants and Pullman train cars were African-American.”

Pashman pointed out racial disparity continues to the present, with people of colour being tipped less. A 2014 study in Sociological Inquiry found restaurant customers, both African-American and white, were discriminatory in tipping. “There’s just nothing good about (the tip system),” Meyer said.

Tipping created a false economy, Meyers added, as menu prices include the cost of food, tableware and linens, and rent, but not service. What moved him to make a change in his restaurants was the realization that over his 31-year career, tipped employees “are making about 300 per cent of what they were making 31 years ago.” Whereas dishwashers and other kitchen staff that aren’t eligible for tips “have seen their hourly income go up about 20 per cent.”