Share tips, but let diners have a say

By Kenneth Hines and Mary Lindsay, Las Vegas

Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Patricia Cohen’s article “As minimum wages rise, restaurants devise systems to replace tipping,” (Las Vegas Sun, Aug. 26) completely ignored two basic premises of paying employees for their contributions to a business.

First, the most equitable and efficient method of paying people for their work is to tie compensation to performance. Secondly, tips are a method devised by providers (wait staff) and consumers (diners) long ago to ensure proper care by servers and appropriate reward (compensation) by diners for this extra care. Both participants exercise control over the encounter — the server controls the quality of service and the diner controls the reward or punishment in recognition of the service provided. Presently, tips go to the server and the kitchen staff gets nothing.

The methods described in Cohen’s article remove these controls. If a restaurant adds a service fee to the meal or item price, the server has no incentive to provide good service; similarly, the diner has no method for rewarding good service or punishing lousy service or poor quality food.

A more equitable method would permit the wait staff and the diner to retain their respective control over the encounter while sharing tips with the kitchen staff. If the check provided a gratuity line for “kitchen” and one for “server,” the diner could apportion the check to provide an amount for food and preparation and an amount for service. The kitchen staff gets some extra money, the server may get less, and the diner still provides the tip but gets to reward or punish each component as he or she feels is appropriate. Wait staff won’t like this; kitchen staff will. But this lets participants retain control.