TIPS ARE ʻRACISMʼ
Restaurant titan Danny Meyer — who famously ditched gratuities at several of his New York eateries — says tipping is rooted in racial discrimination and called the practice “one of the biggest hoaxes ever pulled on an entire culture.”
The Shake Shack founder and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group explained that tipping began in the United States just after the Civil War ended as a way to get around the abolition of slavery.
“The restaurant industry, as well as the Pullman train-car industry, successfully petitioned the United States government to make a dis- pensation for our industries that we would not pay our servers,” he said this month on WNYC’s “The Sporkful” podcast.
“But it wasn’t considered slavery because we would ask our customers to pay tips and, therefore, no one could say they were being enslaved.
“And, no surprise, most of the people who were working in service professional jobs and restaurants and in Pullman train cars were African-American.”
He pointed out that people living in Asia and most European countries don’t typically leave gratuities in restaurants.
“[Tipping] created a completely false economy so that when you see a menu price at a restaurant, you know and I know that it includes the cost of the food, the cost of the linen, the rent, but it doesn’t include the service,” Meyer explained. “And here’s what finally moved me to my own tipping point a year ago.”
In October 2015, Meyer announced he was beginning to phase out tipping by raising menu prices at his USHG eateries, starting with The Modern inside the Museum of Modern Art.
“We will now have the ability to compensate all of our employees equitably, competitively, and professionally,” he wrote at the time.
Since then, Meyer has also eliminated gratuities at the Michelinstarred Gramercy Tavern and the recently reopened Union Square Cafe. Shake Shack, which isn’t part of USHG, wasn’t affected by the move.
Meyer has said the changes would also benefit back-of-thehouse workers, ensuring they make no less than $11 an hour.
“Tipped employees, happily for them, are making about 300 percent of what they were 31 years ago,” he said on the podcast.
“During that same period, everyone in the kitchen — the dishwasher, non-tip-eligible employees — have seen their hourly income go up about 20 percent.”