I love Blue Smoke, and can't wait to eat there and not tip.
This is potentially big news: New York restaurateur
Danny Meyer is eliminating tipping at the restaurants in his Union Square Hospitality Group. Meyer is taking the simplest, least confusing path: Customers will get a bill with one total, and no line for tipping.
Meyer's restaurants include Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe, Blue Smoke, and more. These eateries have the potential to start to shift expectations about dining out in New York City. And while Union Square Hospitality Group has long been a "high road" employer, according to the Restaurant Opportunities Centers' dining guide, this is a particularly noteworthy step ... and one that's being taken as a fairly direct result of worker organizing:
The Modern will be the pilot restaurant, Mr. Meyer said, because its chef, Abram Bissell, has been agitating for higher pay to attract skilled cooks. The average hourly wage for kitchen employees at the restaurant is expected to rise to $15.25 from $11.75. Mr. Meyer said that restaurants such as his needed to stay competitive as the state moved to a $15 minimum wage for fast-food workers. [...]
By increasing prices and ending tips, Mr. Meyer said he hoped to be able to raise pay for junior dining room managers and for cooks, dishwashers and other kitchen workers. Compensation would remain roughly the same for servers, who currently get most of their income from tips. Under federal labor laws, pooled tips can be distributed only to customer service workers who typically receive gratuities, and cannot be shared with the kitchen staff or managers.
So the effects of fast food worker organizing are spreading beyond fast food into fine dining. Celebrity (and actual) chef Tom Colicchio, another high road employer, is also experimenting with a no-tip model, including a service charge with lunch at his Craft restaurant. But he clearly has his eye on what happens at Meyer's restaurants:
“Danny has a lot of trust out there with his customer base,” the chef and restaurateur Tom Colicchio said, “and if they’re willing to pay higher prices, it’s going to make it easier for everybody else. That’s still my biggest concern: whether the dining public is up for it.”
One key thing people have to understand, of course, is that if your actual dining cost goes up, it's because you were undertipping. Good tips that servers can live on are part of the cost of dining out.