‘Tipping no longer accepted’ at some restaurants as staff to get bonuses instead
Woodhouse BBQ in North York, Ont., which serves traditional Chinese charcoal barbecue cuisine, has eliminated tipping as a way to thank customers who carried the establishment through the pandemic.
Instead of tips, the restaurant is moving to a profitsharing model with front and back of the house staff.
“Our staff will receive bonus from now on instead of tips,” the restaurant posted to their social media on Feb. 13. “Tipping is no longer accepted.”
As Canada grapples with a cost of living crisis, reaction to the announcement on social media has been positive, with commentators noting they will now be visiting the restaurant more often.
“We do bookkeeping every month, and we do our profit sharing every three months, and part of the net profit goes to our staff according to work hours,” Hong Dai told CTV on March 28.
The change hasn’t impacted menu prices, with meals like four BBQ lamb skewers going for $11.95.
On its website, the restaurant notes that customers who want to support it can leave a positive review and “spread the word.”
Dai also operates a nearby coffee shop, Another Land Coffee, which also doesn’t accept tips in favour of a profit-sharing model.
“We value connection over tips. Even before we announced the no-tipping policy, I always skipped the tipping option on the payment machine when I personally knew the customers and I always say, ‘You don’t need to tip your friends,’” Dai told CTV.
A number of restaurants have made similar moves in recent years, such as Then & Now, an Asian-fusion restaurant in Toronto’s Queen Street West neighbourhood, and Edulis, located at Niagara Street in Toronto, which creates Canadian dishes with wild and foraged foods and has been ranked among Canada’s best restaurants, including being named Canada’s No. 1 new restaurant in 2012 by Enroute Magazine.
In January, Edulis introduced a 20 per cent service charge on prepaid experiences “enabling us to provide a fair and stable wage to our team of outstanding hospitality professionals.”
Toronto’s Beast Pizza also has a no-tipping policy and is a Certified Ontario Living Wage Employer. Richmond Station in downtown Toronto is another establishment that forgoes tipping. Co-owned by “Top Chef Canada” winner Carl Heinrich, the restaurant eliminated tipping in 2020 after increasing menu prices by an average of 18 per cent.
Heinrich told the Toronto Star the decision was made to provide employees with a more consistent income and enhance their access to more comprehensive employment insurance benefits.
“As a system and a culture, when you look at it on a worldwide scale, tipping isn’t normal or expected in many parts of the world,” he said. “They don’t pay their staff less because they expect guests to pay their wages, which is what we have here. We have a system that seems normal, but just because we normalized it doesn’t mean it’s right.”
CANADIANS FORCED TO ‘GUILT-TIP’
With many establishments now routinely offering tip suggestions on payment terminals, some reaching as high as 30 per cent, a January survey found that a majority of people feel compelled to leave larger tips than they previously did, a practice some refer to as “guilt-tipping.”
The idea is that customers tip more than they normally would due to feeling obligated or pressured, not because the service was exceptional.
The survey, conducted by the budgeting application Hardbacon, polled 513 Canadians and found that 65 per cent of respondents, influenced by card payment terminals, felt compelled to leave a tip they otherwise wouldn’t have and 62 per cent reported leaving more substantial tips than usual due to the same technology.
Julien Brault, CEO and co-founder of Hardbacon, told Postmedia News that he noticed payment devices were programmed to suggest higher tip amounts and he wanted to see if this was shaping Canadian tipping behaviours or if the technology was nudging Canadians toward more frequent and increased spending.