Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers

Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by ryandrake on Monday June 25, 2018 @07:07PM (#17396594)

I’m surprised that you are 50+ and are saying 15-20% “has always” been the standard for sit down full service. I am 40+ and distinctly remember when it was 10%. Then little by little it seemed to morph into 10-15%, then 10%ers were seen as cheap and it was 15%. Then some restaurants would “suggest” 15-18%. Now, just yesterday I was in a restaurant where they pre-calculated 18%, 19%, and 20%. It’s been inflating all my life, for no logical, discernible reason.

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by Felz on Monday June 25, 2018 @07:30PM (#17396713)

I assume it's a convenient form of the holy grail of suppliers everywhere: price discrimination.

If you can afford a big tip, and social mechanisms shame you into giving it, then great! The restaurant makes a lot of profit.

If you can't, then the restaurant can still make a small profit off serving you anyway.

As for why it'd increase over time... maybe that's just an effect of people getting a bit richer, but the marginal cost of serving a meal not so much?

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by baby on Monday June 25, 2018 @07:21PM (#17396655)

Simpler: never tip a percentage. Tip a fixed amount. It makes no sense to me to pay more because I ordered a more expensive dish.

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by paulddraper on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @01:03AM (#17397980)

That's like saying a real estate agent should make $8k regardless of what property they sell.

You could argue that, but only by ignoring practical matters of effort/level of service/value that attends a different price.

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by Latteland on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @05:54PM (#17404292)

The fact that real estate agents are paid by percentage is the most ridiculous thing ever. I'm done with that. Pay 60k commission sales fee on your million dollar house? Houses sell in one week or less where I live. There's literally no reason to pay that money.

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by Retra on Monday June 25, 2018 @11:18PM (#17397636)

It's not really about how expensive of a dish you order, but about how fancy the restaurant is and how many people you bring with you.

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by baby on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @04:55AM (#17398904)

You’re tipping the waiter so that he can make a decent wage, you’re not tipping the waiter so that he can make a fancy wage because his fancy restAurant doesn’t pay him/her. The number of people should also not influence your individual tip.

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by GauntletWizard on Monday June 25, 2018 @07:23PM (#17396669)

The logical-but-not-discernable reason is that the cost of food has gone down as a percentage of income, but the cost of labor has not, and restaurants have used guilt as a tactic to push more and more of those labor costs onto the consumer.

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by dragonwriter on Monday June 25, 2018 @08:05PM (#17396915)

> I’m surprised that you are 50+ and are saying 15-20% “has always” been the standard for sit down full service. I am 40+ and distinctly remember when it was 10%.

I'm 40+, and when I was in elementary school, pretty much every source I encountered was consistent with 15% as the norm, 20% as a reward for exceptional service, 10% as a signal for tolerable but substandard service, and anything lower as a signal of “abysmal service and I'm only tipping to let you know that I did not forget about the tip to avoid ambiguity.”

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by NoGravitas on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @09:27AM (#17407919)

Yes, this is consistent with my memories as well.

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Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers by s73v3r_ on Monday June 25, 2018 @07:28PM (#17396705)

Likely because cost of living has been inflating, and yet the restaurants aren't raising the wages of their workers.

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