Sharing tips with the kitchen

[san]

i have read that restaurants like french laundry, per se, and charlie trotter's have systems in place where tips are pooled and then reallocated so that the kitchen talent can be compensated more from gratuities. does anyone know exactly how these systems work? i believe that servers (and the rest of staff) get a regular paycheck rather than getting paid each shift, but how is what they get paid determined? are they paid a salary based on their previous experience, or a specific percentage of tips or sales, or a combination of both? how about kitchen staff? IMO this is a much more fair and effective way to handle paying a talented staff fairly, but it seems to be perhaps a bit more complicated than the current system most restaurants use. would love to hear input from people with experience at these or similar restaurants......

[Fat Guy]

Just a point of nomenclature: the restaurants you've listed have service charges, not tips or gratuities. You pay a set charge, agreed upon in advance. For example, at Charlie Trotter's it says on the menu, "An 18% Service Charge is Added to Each Dinner Check." At Thomas Keller's restaurants, the service charge is factored into the menu prices. But in neither case is it a tip or gratuity -- those terms imply a voluntary, discretionary amount.

[san]

right. i guess what i am confused about is the fact that there is no real way to determine how much the restaurant will take in in service charges as it is a percentage (even though there may be only one food option, wine selections obviously vary greatly in price). so is it just a very complicated point system with all staff involved or does everyone just have a set salary? if it is the latter than what happens if the service charges are more or less than what was originally budgeted for?

[fiftydollars]

In California it is actually illegal to share gratuities with owners/management and/or anyone that does not provide direct table service. However, as Fat Guy pointed out above, some restaurants, perhaps most famously The French Laundry, have a service charge and that can be used by management in any way they like. Also, as Fat Guy pointed out, the difference between a service charge and a gratuity is an important distinction. The service charge must be required and the customer must have no discretion in whether or not they pay it in full otherwise it is a gratuity and sharing it with anyone not providing direct table service is a violation of CA law. Some shadier restaurant owners here in San Francisco use this distinction as a means of keeping what some ill-informed customers think will be going to the serving staff. Not only can a service charge be used to provide enhanced benefits to the FOH staff and some added compensation to the BOH, like I assume The French Laundry to do, but it can also be used to bolster the owner's income and keep servers from earning any gratuity at all.

[Qwerty]

right.  i guess what i am confused about is the fact that there is no real way to determine how much the restaurant will take in in service charges as it is a percentage (even though there may be only one food option, wine selections obviously vary greatly in price).  so is it just a very complicated point system with all staff involved or does everyone just have a set salary?  if it is the latter than what happens if the service charges are more or less than what was originally budgeted for?

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Keep in mind that most of the places doing this have a set price menu, as well as a set number of seating per night. So it's probably pretty easy (and very accurate) to calculate the amount.

The only variable I can think of is the wine, and I'm not sure how that is worked out.

[Gabe D.]

Some shadier restaurant owners here in San Francisco use this distinction as a means of keeping what some ill-informed customers think will be going to the serving staff. Not only can a service charge be used to provide enhanced benefits to the FOH staff and some added compensation to the BOH, like I assume The French Laundry to do, but it can also be used to bolster the owner's income and keep servers from earning any gratuity at all.

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Isn't this a problem that solves itself? How does a restaurant that keeps its waitstaff from getting any gratuity manage to maintain a staff, and thereby, stay in business for very long. Surely, the waitstaff knows that they're getting screwed, and that they could avoid the screwing by working somewhere else.

[Mikeb19]

Isn't this a problem that solves itself?  How does a restaurant that keeps its waitstaff from getting any gratuity manage to maintain a staff, and thereby, stay in business for very long.  Surely, the waitstaff knows that they're getting screwed, and that they could avoid the screwing by working somewhere else.

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It is assumed that without gratuities, the waitstaff will be making a salary that's actually half decent. The only reason gratuities ever existed in the first place, is so that restaurant owners wouldn't have to pay the servers a wage....

The IDEA behind the French Laundry's system is to pay everyone in the restaurant a decent wage, so gratuities aren't required for anyone to pay their bills.

Anyhow, the disparity between what a cook earns and what a server earns (in a high-end restaurant) can be absolutely staggering. I once worked at a restaurant (a very high end one), where I was making 400 dollars a week, working 60-70 hours per week. I was having a beer with one of the servers, and inquired into how much he made. He told me he worked several restaurants, added up to around 50 hours a week, and he made $100,000+...(BTW, that was more than the executive chef) Alot of servers are content making a mere 60,000/year income working only 25-30 hour weeks. For comparison, that's more than double what your average fine-dining cook earns, in about half the hours worked...

It's also why there are plenty of restaurants suffering from a lack of cooks (some being forced to close altogether), and theres never any shortage of serving staff. Serving is probably one of the easiest ways to make money, and if you're actually good at it, make ALOT of money...

Set service charges are designed to fix the system, so cooks can make a livable wage, and servers can make a consistent (albeit slightly lower) amount of money.

Edited November 13, 2007 by Mikeb19 (log)

[david coonce]

I worked in Chicago and while staging around the city ran into chefs and servers who had worked at Charlie Trotter's (and Moto and Alinea and Blackbird and Avenues, etc.. Take all these numbers with a grain of salt, since they are from people I worked with and certainly unverified. But this is what I was told:

Trotter's servers make around $100,000 a year. A couple servers told me that this was the wage agreed upon when CT began pooling tips as a "service charge." It was a good enough wage that the servers could agree to it, although supposedly some made more than that yearly under the previous system.

The cooks at Trotter's are evidently well-paid by Chicago line-cook standards. When I was working in Chicago, a line cook at a decent to good place made anywhere from $80-160 dollars a night. A sous-chef at a place like Blackbird might make 80 grand. (These are, again, all figures I was quoted, and I make no veracity for these numbers, although I worked plenty of places where I made $80 a night and some where I made 120. Mid-level places) Cooks at Trotters told me that while the job was demanding it was very rewarding as well, with some claiming that some of CT's cooks make 1000/week. There seemed to be mostly good things to be said about working at Charlie Trotter's, at least financially. Although I heard plenty of complaints about certain famous Chicago chefs, I never heard a cross word about Trotter from anyone who had ever worked there, which I take as a pretty positive sign, because in the world of the itinerant line-cook, everybody has something to say about a bad experience.