The tipping point?
The debate over gratuities continues
Tipping has long been a subject of much discussion across the restaurant industry — and the focus of much debate.
This week, two popular Canadian restaurants — Burdock, the dining arm of the Toronto brewery, and Ten, the fine-dining Toronto establishment known for its extremely limited seating — made the decision to eliminate tipping.
In this they join Richmond Station in Toronto’s business district, whose owners announced in late July that they would move to a “hospitality included” model, raising prices across the board by 18 per cent, and increasing wages for their serving staff commensurately.
Burdock is raising prices, while Ten is adding an automatic 18 per cent surcharge to bills; both restaurants aim to better compensate their employees and provide, as Burdock put it in a statement, “a predictable living wage for our servers and kitchen staff during these unpredictable times.”
Tipping has long been a subject of much discussion across the restaurant industry — and the focus of much debate. In North America, tipping is a well-established custom, while in Asia and in much of Europe, tipping is seldom practiced, if at all. Studies have shown that the prospect of a gratuity can be wielded by diners to bullying, predatory or prejudiced effect, and several high-profile restaurants, identifying tips as an ongoing problem for staff, have introduced rules barring the practice altogether.
The results of these experiments have been decidedly mixed. Last week in New York City, the Union Square Hospitality Group announced it would reintroduce tipping, five years after phasing tipping out; for them, the idea was admirable in theory, but difficult to execute in practice.
But in light of changes due to COVID and widespread anti-racism initiatives, an era without tipping may be on the horizon once again.
The case against tipping rests on inequity. Although socially we are conditioned to tip between 15-20 per cent of the cost of the meal, some diners may elect to punish service they perceive to be lacking with a lower tip, and that latitude, consciously or unconsciously, can result in biased tipping.
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, writing in the opinion pages of the Globe and Mail earlier this week, points out that tipping “promotes bias based on age, race, and gender,” and that it can make female servers in particular “more vulnerable to sexual harassment from customers,” who may feel entitled to a certain level of attention in exchange for the gratuity they have the power to give or not give.
“Tipping is a problematic practice,” says Ariel Coplan, the executive chef at Toronto’s Green Wood restaurant and one of the co-owners of Grand Cru Deli. “There is often a correlation between race and gender and tips earned.”