Restaurants and the problem of tips

The greatest paradox and also the most unnoticed in the gastronomic universe: if everything goes well at a dinner, we applaud the chef and not the service, even though this is an essential part of the experience. But if something goes wrong, even if it goes wrong only in the kitchen and not up to the waiter, we stop tipping. What makes this paradox possible?

The service not only carries dishes and keeps the table clean, it takes care of communicating them when the menu is not enough –which happens with overwhelming normality–, it acts as a mediator between the customer’s needs and the different possibilities of the experience –the wine, the coffee, the bar, the arrangement of the table, the solution of some eventuality – and it has the ability, in case of reacting in a sensible way, to solve a disastrous experience favorably. There have been cases in which an empathetic and attentive service can correct cooking errors of the worst kind, and it is not uncommon to hear that the service elevates the gastronomic experience of a mediocre kitchen, motivating the return of a customer because it is attended to in the best possible way. way.

Nonetheless, . The global culinary system – television programs, the press, critics, the majority of evaluators and prescribers – rises, for the most part, around the cult of the chef, and when the service is represented in the media, usually it is done by normalizing their mistreatment – as in Gordon Ramsay’s shows. Perhaps we deify cooks too much, and too easily overlook staff who show their faces for their dishes.

And the task is not easy, even though we tend to think otherwise. Service and sales are complex skills that require limited skills, such as empathy and sensitivity, attention to detail, openness of the ear – of mind -, openness of judgment and, when the standards are high, understanding of the entire restaurant operation. An optional 10% doesn’t sound like a consistent payoff.

“The Case Against Tipping” has been raised very rigorously in the international press, even in an article so literally titled, published some time ago in Eater. This text showed the data collected and categorized by the medium through surveys that indicated that the tips of white waiters were higher than those of non-white waiters; that the wage gap increased according to gender; that it encouraged sexist practices of clients, and that it fostered labor exploitation by conditioning part of the salary on tips, something that in Peru seems normalized, and about which complaints abound.

It’s not uncommon to hear that service elevates the dining experience of mediocre cuisine.

The experiment of eliminating them has been tried in the United States and France. In the first case, many North American ‘fine dining’ restaurants tried it without any regulation that forced them to do so, among them the group of the famous Danny Meyer. The formula was to raise the salaries of his work team by prohibiting tips, and charging the increases to the prices of the letter, but most businesses gradually returned to tips and even, in July of last year, Meyer himself announced that they would back down, in the face of a clear rejection of customers to pay higher prices than those of their competitors.

In France, since 1995, the law requires restaurants to add a service charge to the bill, with the idea of ​​making waiters less dependent on tips. The practice has progressively spread to different countries in Europe, but the custom of giving them persists, especially in establishments with the highest ticket. However, a change in behavior is observed: as reported by the BBC,. Most of them are young diners.

Is Peru ready to face the tip problem? As these things are not usually a priority for employers, less in critical times like these, I am not optimistic in this field. Perhaps the most reasonable thing is to assume that the majority of waiters in these times have the tip to live, and, as always in case of doubt between fairness and generosity, it is convenient to decide on the latter, even more so considering that what is truly optional is to go out to eat. Tim Ferris once told me that if I was not going to be able to leave the tip percentage in an establishment because the bills were higher than expected, I would prefer to go to another restaurant, because, finally, the service is not something optional, but something that one always receives. That is, he did not go to places whose tip he could not afford. Will we Limans be prepared to assume that maxim?

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