What Can I Get You Folks? - The Case for Pre-tipping

by Hanna Raskin, Posted Jul 15th 2009 @ 4:00PM

A receipt. Photo: Rick, Flickr

Hanna Raskin's first waitressing job was at a small Greek diner in Michigan. In the 15 years since, she's worked at a chop suey joint in Mississippi, an exclusive Arizonan country club, a vegetarian eatery and an Irish pub. She currently picks up odd shifts at a seafood eatery in the North Carolina mountains, where she cracks crab legs for helpless tourists. This is the fourth in a series of posts.

"Writers of almost all the nations in the world have denounced the custom, but there will never be any change, for the reason that there is not enough profit in the restaurant business to allow paying the waiters good living wages," wrote bartender extraordinaire Harry Johnson in 1882.

In the eyes of many, the practice of tipping is inequitable but unavoidable. Some even find the custom downright strange: Outside of restaurants, it's pretty much impossible to procure any goods or services without first committing to pay a certain price. For example, try paying for your next movie ticket after the film.

If a restaurant patron bolts without paying his bill, he's committed a crime. Even if he thinks his steak was overcooked and his salad was soggy, protocol calls for him to ante up for whatever he ordered (unless he's sent it back). But if he stiffs his server, he's exercised his prerogative.

So here's a radical suggestion: Why not make service a menu item?

Many American restaurant-goers still flinch at the thought of what in France is called a servis compris system, in which a gratuity -- usually 20 percent -- is automatically added to a bill. This is perhaps because it violates our national "earn your keep" ethic (or because it's sometimes exercised in a sneaky fashion). Particularly in this economy, it's hard to fault the consumer for blanching. Diners are looking for a way to stay in the driver's seat, so what if we considered the opposite of servis compris -- pre-tipping.

Pre-tipping would require diners to commit to a certain tip percentage up front, as in "I'll have a glass of Pinot Grigio, the chicken Caesar and 20 percent worth of service." While the advantage for servers is obvious (they know how much time to devote to a table), such a system would also create tremendous flexibility for eaters, especially those on a budget, by allowing them to save money on tips.

In an ideal scenario, the diner could tip, say, 5 percent so long as she was willing to do things like fetch her own water pitcher and wait longer for plates to be cleared. On the flip side, she could ensure a more special evening by pledging a 30 percent tip. (Of course, this would require a good leap of faith on the part of the diner that the server would come through).

It's a fairly out-there idea. What do you think? If you're someone who always leaves 20 percent, would it trouble you to announce your intentions before the meal? Do you think this would cause the caliber of service to decline, or could pre-tipping help mitigate the sometimes testy relationships between servers and customers?

Would you support pre-tipping?
Yes	87 (16.9%)
No	372 (72.1%)
Depends (Tell us more in comments)	57 (11.0%)

Filed Under: Chefs & Restaurants, Restaurants
Tags: hanna raskin, HannaRaskin, poll, restaurants, service, service industry, ServiceIndustry, servis compris, ServisCompris, tipping, what can i get you folks, WhatCanIGetYouFolks

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Reader comments (Page 2 of 2)

7-16-2009 @6:21PM Matt said... There's no requirement in this idea that the 20% money actually GO to the servers. The restaurant just adds it to your bill, and the idea is that the servers get it later, but what if they decide to keep a quarter of it (5% of the bill) and say it was for "improvements" that benefit all the servers?

This is an industry that, in most states, has managed to ram through a separate minimum wage for servers that's anywhere from 50% to 20% of the standard minimum wage because "people will leave money on the tables for them, so we don't need to pay them the same." Pre-tipping, especially with variable rates and absolutely no way to know for sure who gets the money (or what "15%" gets you compared to "20%"), is just another way to pour more money into a system that's broken for servers and customers alike.

Raise the price of the food by 10% and offer all servers a decent wage instead, and let tipping be a gratuity and not an expectation for server survival.
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7-17-2009 @7:22PM Matthew said... I think the idea of pre-tipping is pretty crass. Service in the US tends to be more personable than elsewhere--back home in Korea and Japan, many diners would blanch at the idea of a server making conversation--so to put that 'companionship' or 'personality' on the menu kind of feels sleazy.

Moreover, what assurances does the diner have that he or she will receive good service? It's not like you can send it back like an overcooked steak. Finally, like I said before, service in the US is personality-driven, so how does the diner know that his or her idea of good service will be the service received? Some prefer the fawning, over-attentive type, while others like their service to be fast, silent, and invisible.

I also believe that the idea of adding the service charge on top of the food charge wouldn't work in the US because we our culture doesn't support it. Diners would tip anyway, and grumble about the high price of the food. If you did disclose on the menu that '10% is added for gratuity', then you'd run into the problem of being 'forced' to pay, something that I've noticed that Americans hate.

I honestly see nothing wrong with the system we have right now. My waitstaff very rarely gets stiffed, and if they do, it's generally by those intractable types who never tip as a rule. Hell, I have servers who make more than I do because they do their job so well. Even on the rare night that we in the kitchen have trouble getting the food out (it happens), we have comping measures in place so that the servers' bottom line is generally unaffected. Being a server tends to be no different than working most other jobs where your pay is linked to performance--it's just more prone to fluctuation in both directions.
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7-18-2009 @8:08PM Megan said... "Pre-tipping would require diners to commit to a certain tip percentage up front, as in "I'll have a glass of Pinot Grigio, the chicken Caesar and 20 percent worth of service."

Here's my problem with that. In your previous columns, you lamented how it's such a burden to bring refills to customers & ensure they're not served food they're allergic to (which a waitress has committed herself to do by taking the job). And yet you expect a customer to definitely commit to a certain amount of tip before the service ? Heck no.
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7-20-2009 @10:25AM Numb said... I think this pre-tipping concept is TERRIBLE! That being said, as a former long-time waiter, I do support the idea of having a servis compris styled system in which a waiter is paid a more respectable wage and the idea of tipping becomes a completely optional gratutity. My reasoning however, has more to do with the restaurants themselves than the patrons. In one of the restaurants I worked at, the management had realized that servers were the cheapest labor in the restaurant, and therefore they could be used for any sort of manual-type labor... after our shifts we were expected to scrubs restrooms, clean kitchens, mobs floor, do dishes, etc... despite having janitorial employees, dishwashers, and busboys on staff who could never manage to pick up enough hours to substain themselves since the waiters were basically doing their jobs. A bit of "side work" in a restaurant is certainly acceptable - but it absolutely should not take more than an hour after your shift is technically over.

Side note, that restaurant didn't keep me for long - and while later restaurants had us server doing slightly similar tasks, they weren't nearly as bad about it.
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8-15-2009 @1:45AM Susan said... I wouldn't want it to be a requirement, but a few times when I have been time-stressed, I've tipped the 20-25% beforehand, telling the server that I had to be through by (whatever time). It's worked well for me/if they've been exceptional I make sure I tell them so and add on a bit...after all, they've alleviated my stress, why not pay them for it...in the greater scheme of things it' almost nothing and by being tipped beforehand, they're much more likely to put you at the top of the tables they pay real attention to. I do not like being forced to pay a certain percentage as a service charge unless it's a large party. There I can see the logic...some parties will tip less than 10% because they're stupid/cheapskates or can't do the math.
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8-20-2009 @8:54PM Ella said... Here's a novel idea! Charge your customers a price that allows you to pay your employees! Tipping is a scam. It scams the customer out of money that was not part of the price of the meal they ordered, and it scams servers out of ever being able to afford to eat at the restaurant where they work.
I wonder why, while everyone spending extra money on foods that support 'local' farmers or that are 'fair trade', we are forgetting the only people involved in the process of bringing that food to us with whom we have any contact.
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