Commie No-Tip Restaurants Are Thriving

Huh.  Treat your employees with dignity and respect, let them share in the product of their labor, and you succeed.  Who'd a thunk?

Think Progress:

William Street Common has been open for less than two weeks in Philadelphia, but owner Avram Hornik says it’s already hitting its numbers even with a totally different business model than most restaurants.

The “indoor beer garden,” as he calls it, which serves up comfort food and craft beer at communal tables, pays all of its employees, from the servers to the dishwashers, at least $15 an hour plus paid sick leave and health insurance benefits. The customer experience is unique as well: tips aren’t mandatory and all the prices for different beers are the same. So every drink costs $6: $5 for the drink itself plus a 20 percent service charge.

“We wanted people to compare apples to apples,” he said. “Instead of charging $6 and no tip, we wanted the customers to understand that the staff is being taken care of.”

The service charge also doesn’t go straight to the individual server. It goes into a pot that’s used to make sure everyone is making that $15 wage, although management will make up the difference if what they make in revenue falls short. If there’s money left over at the end of a pay period, employees divide it up based on a point system related to experience and other factors. “We’re projecting, based on our budgeting and depending on the employee, between three to ten dollars an hour in addition from that bonus pool,” he said. On top of that, 5 percent of gross sales gets put in a different pot to pay for paid sick leave and health insurance for full-time employees, but any extra after that will be put toward whatever uses a committee of workers wants.