this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Antiwork

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Why American Tipping Culture Is Broken (yewtu.be)
submitted 1 year ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/antiwork@lemmy.ml
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We dug into how American tipping culture got so broken, and the fight to fix it.

It turns out that your tips are subsidizing the payrolls of multi-billion dollar chains, while they pay their workers under minimum wage.

It's a system rooted in slavery, and pushed by a wealthy restaurant owners onto the rest of us.

But there's a growing movement to change it.

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[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yet, they shouldn’t raise their menu prices because they should have enough money to cover additional wages? With a 5% profit margin?

I'm not sure where are taking that 5% as it's around 15% in 2023 and double or triple that for franchises.

By your reckoning every restaurant in America should be out of business.

No, but they should re-evaluate their business if they can't afford to pay a fair wage for their employees like every other business on the planet. There are plenty of other sectors that operate on lower margines yet they manage to pair their employees fair wage without subsidizing it with tips.

Yet, you also want our restaurants to follow the European model which serve smaller portions at higher prices.

While it's true that our US portions are typically larger the prices are also a lot higher. The same type of dinner in Europe on average costs around 3 times less while being 30% smaller. So this argument is pure nonsense.

The ills of the US corporations can be laid at the feet of the consumer. CEOs get extremely large salaries and bonuses because they’re the scapegoat.

No I'll lay it where it belongs. At the feet of NRA and their lobbying. Like I mentioned previously, restaurants are the only sector that is exempt from the minimum wage laws. That is insane and it's nice to see it starting to get reversed in multiple states. By the way, the same CEOs privately admit that their profit margins increased in states where minimum wage requirements were introduced...

[–] darkseer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ok. Looks like you're using gross profit while I'm using net profit. And I'm not including franchises like McDonalds or Wendys because most of the profits are from franchise fees and the raw products that their franchisees have to buy at a markup. They also don't have employees that rely on tips and their portions tend to be smaller than a meal at, say, a Denny's which does use employees that rely on tips.

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm using net profit. Clearly you didn't even bother to check the source.

[–] darkseer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I did pull up the link and it only showed the profits from a single corporation that owns Burger King and Popeyes. Brinker who owns Chili's and Maggianos has a net profit of 2.48%, Denny's has a net profit of 8.25%, Dine Brands which owns Applebee's and IHOP has a net profit of 9.03%. And these are established restaurants that have been around a long time.