Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers
by Kalium on Monday June 25, 2018 @07:46PM
(#17396825)
If 50%-200% becomes The New Normal and what was be a $8 sandwich becomes a $30 meal (taxes, tip, Healthy SF)... then I'm afraid I'm just not going to eat out at all.
That'll help a struggling service industry worker make ends meet, right?
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Realistically, odds are our hypothetical service industry worker isn't paying a market rate for a studio in the Mission. It's much more likely they're rooming with others in some fashion, and their monthly rent is at most half of $3600. And likely doing the traditional thing and under-reporting cash tip income by a non-trivial margin.
Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers
by intended on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @12:36AM
(#17397887)
The point is that the rational worker would have left anyway - anything below the lower level to fund existence means it’s already a losing job.
You pay higher to have waiters in the first place.
Essentially, the story of SF is the story of no high density housing.
Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers
by eanzenberg on Monday June 25, 2018 @08:14PM
(#17396969)
I dont agree that servers deserve that much above the median pay for this area.
Re:Restaurants are figuring out how to do without servers
by timcederman on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @02:38AM
(#17398379)
Waiters in SF get paid minimum wage in addition to tips.
I pay $3600/month in rent for a studio. So you need like $120/day post-tax in order to just make rent (and 2-3x that to qualify for the lease in the first place). So let's say you need $300/day in tips to live here. (That works out to about 109.5k/year -- a respectable entry-level tech salary, but that would be just above the poverty line in SF if you were trying to support a family of four on it.)
Suppose that you have a ramen restaurant that's only open for dinner, seats 29, always has a line out the door, has a cycle time of half an hour, is open for 6 hours a night, and has three servers. Assuming 100% of seats are full (let's say you're the best ramen place in town), that means that each server will get tips from 116 customers a night on a $14 bowl of ramen. To make $300/day, you need an average $2.59 tip on the $14 bowl of ramen for the server alone (never mind any haircut for back staff/tip sharing/the owner takes some to cover fixed costs of the restaurant). $2.59/$14 works out to 18.5%.
In a world where entire apartments in the Mission cost $500/month, sure, you can tip 10% on a meal. But given market rate rents in SF now, the math of a 10% tip just doesn't add up.