Restaurant owners that have tried to eliminate tipping find a) customers are uncomfortable and sometimes try to tip anyway and b) would be customers compare prices without taking into account the fact that tip is included.
The people I’ve talked to most inclined to support tipping culture are servers at mid to expensive restaurants and demanding foodies.
??? Tipping is not a "fixed percentage."
You may have a few edge cases here, but I have to push back on the idea that business owners don't like it. They get to pay their front house staff next to nothing, this money consistently goes untaxed, and it gives their employees incentive to work hard.
It also gives their front house the capability to make an income that the owner themselves would never dream of paying, meaning they can have talented employees just show up magically without having to alter their business in any way.
I have to agree that the people who like it THE MOST are the people also most likely to complain: the servers and bartenders. It only takes some basic math to identify that being a server is the highest paying entry level job in the United States simply because of tipping culture.
The real problem is that they are legally prohibited from using tip share to pay their back of house more.
This puts them in a situation where if they want to raise kitchen staff wages they have to raise prices and restaurant customers are extremely price sensitive.
Several high end restaurants (were presumably there would be less price sensitivity) have tried doing away with tips and raising their prices to pay all staff a more uniform wage. It’s largely failed. Customers don’t like higher prices and front if house staff largely prefer tips as they make more (at the cost of lower pay for their kitchen colleagues).
...if you get just the right job in just the right area. The exact same job—even at a chain—in two restaurants just a few miles apart could have massively different levels of tips.
This is almost certainly largely because of another of the incredibly frustrating aspects of tipping: it's entirely informal, with no way to tell what's expected of customers. The etiquette around it can be extremely confusing on both sides, too—I've heard stories of workers who are strictly forbidden from acknowledging tips to customers, so that if you asked, they would have to say "no, you don't need to tip", even though they're still considered tipped workers legally.
So unless there's explicit statements from the establishment of "we do not accept tips for our workers, because we make sure their wages are high enough not to need that", you can't take "you don't need to tip" at face value. Hell, even then you can't; I wouldn't be remotely surprised to see unscrupulous business owners put that even when they do not, in fact, pay their workers well, especially in areas near where other places say it truthfully.
Reducing fixed period costs (e.g. labor costs of servers, rent, IT hardware) to revenue based splits (e.g. tipping, hotdesks at coworking spaces, the cloud) is an excellent way to minimize risks and most businesses are willing to pay a premium for that.
I really wonder how many HN people have ever worked in a waitstaff role. As much as you might hate it, tips keeps you just above minimum wage 95% of the time. Its not some money fountain like some people here seem to thing it is.
People who want tips of course want it because it gives them money on top of minimum wage, why the hell would you expect someone to sabotage their own income stream?
But if you talk about getting rid of tipping and replacing it with a living age? Look at the comments from this Reddit discussion some years ago (so the numbers are even higher when you factor in inflation) discussing Joe's Crab Shack's interest in getting rid of tips[1]:
> But if you are doing good volume and the prices arent insanely cheap I cant see how youre only making $15 an hour. Are you in a poor section of town where people dont have much money? Do you get a lot of foreign tourists as clientele? I mean, $15 an hour I can make while asleep. But Im in Philly. Prices arent insane usually but they arent cheap. Plus its one of the best tipping cities in the country. Personally I wont take a shift if Im not confident Ill make at least $20 an hour. For me its not worth my time.
**
> This may or may not be close to the industry standard, but my last restaurant, I probably made somewhere around $25/hr (tips + wage). Restaurant before that was way more high volume, and even though we didn't really get paid an hourly wage, I would guess we made about $30/hr or so. On good nights and the bartenders? Probably even more.
**
> I was bored out of my mind all 6 hours of my shift tonight and made $14X, so call it $150, aka $25 an hour. Oh, and that's with a stiff on $120, and a $6 on $94
**
> Because serving tables isn't a job anyone would do for $7.75 an hour. It's not an easy job to excel at. I'll stay making my $25 an hour. Thanks.
**
> This is what people outside of the industry don't seem to get. Strong servers arn't going to stick around for anything less than $20 an hour.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/4iuy2q...
There are ways for unions to work around this, but the fact that some members see themselves as better than others in ways that are measurable make such unions weaker.
I like my student job since it's outdoors, and I have other revenue streams, but you don't get any tips. So my colleagues usually jump at the occasion to work in a restaurant whenever they can even if our workplace is extremely pleasant to work at.
They want to keep tips going because not because it allows them to barely reach the minimum but because it makes them way more money. Otherwise, they'd advocate for removing the different minimum wages.
I'm actually puzzled, and I'm wondering if you have ever worked in a waitstaff job because I've never ever met a waiter being against tips.
At least here in California, I’m pretty sure there’s no special tipped minimum wage, so what you’re saying doesn’t apply.
I used to know a waitress who was making just as much as her engineer husband. She looked good for 55, but 55 will never look good enough to draw in many high tips based on looks. (good lucks is a factor in service to a lot of people, but it didn't apply here)
The bad ones get bad tips and hate the system, but they should be fired anyway.
On the one hand I don't like having to figure tips. However a few times I've got bad service and at least I could do something about it.
Even if I had bad service, I am still giving 20%. That's the social contract I am stuck with fulfilling.
But also, it’s not just restaurant owners that like it. A lot of tipped workers make out really well with tips and prefer it that way.
I guess the only practical approach is to simultaneously keep tipping and push for your city/state/country to eliminate the tipped minimum wage loophole.