Zuni Cafe will try notip model
When Zuni Cafe reopens for indoor dining in a few weeks, it’ll shift from a traditional tipping model to adding a 20% service charge to diners’ bills — a way to boost wages for the restaurant’s lowest wage workers. The San Francisco institution will join a long list of Bay Area restaurants that have switched to a service charge in the past several years, though some businesses have struggled to maintain a tipless model because of higher taxes and difficulty in retaining staff.
For Bay Area diners accustomed to tipping 20% on a meal, little will change: The service charge will automatically be added, with no requirement to tip on top of it.
But behind the scenes,
Zuni chef Nate Norris is hoping the swap will mean that kitchen staff can be paid more. The move comes as restaurant owners across the Bay Area are rethinking what equity means in the industry — and in many cases, are raising pay or changing their tipping systems to appeal to cooks and dishwashers amid a significant staffing shortage.
Earlier in the pandemic, other local restaurants have declared similar efforts: San Francisco fine dining spot Sons & Daughters announced it’d swap out tipping for a service charge to raise wages, and Menlo Park’s Flea Street added a service charge distributed equally to all workers. Cotogna, the esteemed San Francisco Italian restaurant, now has an added service charge, too.
This attempt to be more equitable isn’t universally appealing, though. Some former Zuni servers, laid off at the start of the pandemic, told The Chronicle they can’t afford to return to the restaurant under the changed system. They said a proposed pay rate of $24 per hour is about half what they were earning prepandemic and isn’t a living wage in San Francisco. The new system at Zuni, located at 1658 Market St. in Hayes Valley, was first reported by SFGate. (The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate are both owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another.)
Norris confirmed that $24 per hour is the starting rate being offered to frontofhouse staff but said some have negotiated for more. Line cooks will also start at $24 per hour. Across the board, Zuni employees who previously didn’t receive tips should see a 20%40% increase in wages.
Management started considering a major change to employees’ pay about six months ago in order to address the longstanding wage gap between frontofhouse employees, such as servers and bartenders, and backofhouse employees, such as dishwashers and line cooks.
“We need to create better, more fair compensation that people can live on and survive on and have only one job and make ends meet — that’s what our motivation is,” Norris said.
The pandemic provided an ideal transition point, as the restaurant has been open only for takeout and limited outdoor dining. During this time, the majority of Zuni’s employees have been back of house — so the restaurant switched to a pooled tip system, where all workers get a cut of gratuities. Cooks are now accustomed to getting paid more and it wouldn’t make sense to go backward, Norris said.
Norris didn’t want to move forward with a restructured tip pool because he believes it’s inherently inequitable and goes against efforts to dignify and professionalize the hospitality industry. Data has shown that tipping encourages racism, sexism and harassment.
“We don’t feel it’s fair to have customer discretion determine the value of labor,” he said. “I don’t think we have any critical mass of guests at Zuni who use racial animus, bias or abusive practices to determine how they tip our workers, but I’m 100% sure some do.”
But some servers say they feel like they deserve to earn their higher wages than backofhouse employees because they’re the ones representing the restaurant to diners. It’s also a physically demanding job, with servers constantly moving between three levels of the restaurant on concrete floors. Brenda Arellano, a former Zuni server who recently decided to move on from the restaurant industry, said the changes seem to go against Zuni’s proworker stance that’s displayed in the restaurant’s social media posts.
“I was surprised and confused to see this,” she said. “I appreciate that this is a real tricky time, but how is this helpful when you’re taking from one worker to pay another worker?”
One longtime server at Zuni said he’d consider returning if the restaurant bumped up the pay to $35 per hour. Alternatively, he’d return if the restaurant created a new tip pool so servers shared a percentage of tips with backofhouse employees. Prepandemic, servers only shared tips with frontofhouse staff like the host, bussers and bartenders.
“We’re just sad,” Arellano said. “I think people want to come back and be able to feel like they can take care of themselves.”
There are some positive consequences for turning a tipped minimum wage into an actual wage, though. Norris pointed out that under the new model, if a server is sick and shouldn’t come into work, they wouldn’t need to think about the potential lost tips. If they got injured at work, workers’ compensation insurance would pay them based on their higher wage.
The restaurant will soon join a long list of establishments in the Bay Area that have added a service charge to be able to pay their staff equitably, while not eliminating tips outright.
Previously, some major restaurants across the U.S. that moved to a notipping model reverted to accepting tips for a variety of reasons, including an increase in taxes and worker dissatisfaction. Perhaps most notably, New York restaurateur Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group and Thad Vogler’s nowclosed San Francisco establishments Trou Normand and Bar Agricole made the switch to notipping and then reverted. Vogler’s businesses employed a service charge, while Meyer’s did not.
Some diners also don’t like service charges because they want the power to leave less money if they feel they received poor service. In a 2018 Zagat survey, 33 percent of diners said they opposed tipless systems.
But many Bay Area restaurants have successfully maintained their service charge models, from casual brunch favorite Zazie to fine dining destination Lazy Bear.
It’s unclear exactly when Zuni will open indoors and the new pay structure will begin — in part because the restaurant will need to convince enough previously tipped frontofhouse staffers to come back first.
Norris acknowledged that he’ll likely lose some of Zuni’s great, experienced servers who earned the restaurant a James Beard Award for outstanding service because they’ll go to another restaurant that will pay them more. He’s hoping some will want to be part of the new Zuni.
“Wage compression is part of this: dishwashers’ and cooks’ and servers’ wages are all going to be closer together,” he said. “We’re trying to raise all these boats together.”
“We don’t feel it’s fair to have customer discretion determine the value of labor.” Nate Norris, Zuni Cafe chef