It is my understanding that in the US, you're not paid minimum wage. Waiters are paid mostly by tips.
Some may have no wage! Tips only.
Where I live, this is illegal, and I suspect in Europe too, and this is where the lack of understanding comes from.
Now, coffee shops? People behind counters are not waiters, so I am unsure of wage issues, in the US.
By trying to eliminate tipping, you are working against the interest of waiters since they naturally want to maximize their income. You may not like tipping but it is economically optimal in many contexts. Businesses need to compete for employees and tipping maximizes employee income relative to revenue.
Where I live, most of the bartenders and waiters I know personally earn on the order of $80k/year if they do it full-time, and not at high-end establishments. Not an ostentatious lifestyle but definitely middle class.
It's a grey pattern to offer your product at 1 rate but implicitly you impose an additional 12-20% . Just pay them more, and charge more for the product, the end result is the same from the consumer. If the workers are no longer satisfied, there are other sales and marketing jobs that offer real salaries plus bonuses/commissions as mentioned above.
There is not an infinite supply of students who have the time to do that job. Our son worked at a coffee shop. Until the manager started pressuring him to work more hours than he had time for.
Some people think other people's jobs are bullshit. And then you end up with a shortage of competent workers. Every job should be lucrative.
Sounds like a false dichotomy. Why is the only other option still an imposed cost on the customer? Wouldn't it be nice if the bad servers just got fired like any other profession and the good servers got a bonus or something from the business owner?
Maybe people shouldn't "aspire" to be cafe baristas and chain restaurant wait staff. There are plenty of students and elderly that could handle the job and also handle the minimum wage. There's no reason those jobs should be lucrative, unless the business owners (rightly) realize those staff are the face of their operations, but in that case, again, the business owner should "invest" in their higher salaries to hopefully bring in business. None of this should be imposed on customers. Just my opinion.