The Debate Wages On Over Restaurant Service Charges

The practice of tipping at Per Se is to be replaced with a European-style service charge on Sept. 1, which would be probably opposed by customers, servers and restaurateurs. The European menu prices are service comprised, representing actual totals, including the price of food, taxes and service. Thomas Keller, the owner of the restaurant, is right to move away from tipping and it's worth exploring why just about everyone else in the American restaurant world is wrong to stick with the practice. Customers believe that the quality of service is closely related to tipping. "They won't get paid if they don't do a good job," is how most advocates of the system (meaning most everybody in America) would put it. However, Michael Lynn, an associate professor of consumer behavior and marketing at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, has conducted dozens of studies of tipping and has concluded that consumers' assessments of the quality of service correlate weakly to the amount they tip. This conclusion is drawn according to three reasons. 1. Customers are likely to tip more when they like the server, not when the service is good. 2. Consumers seem to forget that the tipping increases the bill. Thus, the tipping system is an open invitation to what restaurant professionals call "upselling". Aggressive upselling and hustling for tips are often rewarded while low-key, quality service often goes unrecognized. 3. The practice of tip pooling has gutted whatever effect voting with your tip might have had on an individual waiter. Indeed, there appears to be little connection between tipping and good service. The best service in the Western world is at the Michelin three-star restaurants of Europe, where a service charge replaces tipping. With the announcement of abolishing the old tipping practice, Keller has sent a signal to his culinary colleagues that there just might be a better way. How to keep waiter’s loyalty to the restaurant is the issue the business should concern more. As in any service-oriented business, waiters loyal to the restaurant will perform better and make customers happier than waiters loyal only to themselves. http://www.nrn.com/story