EDITOR – Tipping or gratuity is an age old custom dating back 150 years since the late 19th century, when Gilded Age Aristocrats adopted the European practice to flaunt their status? in short money and control.
The amount we tip is ultimately tied to how much a meal costs and since prices have rising, tips gone up along with them – good news for the waiters, hosts and other staff members like baristas and bar tenders. Unfortunately the cook/chef who cooks the excellent plate of gourmet cuisine does not get a share of those handsome tips. At an high-end restaurant, a waiter can make six figures a year , R120 000 per annum but the line chef at the same restaurant is unlikely to earn more than R50 000 per annum.
There's talk in restaurant associations specifically and the hospitality industry generally, that ending tipping will let owners restore some pay balance between the two. The effort that goes into an amazing bowl of risotto should not be diminished next to the effort to pull a cork from a bottle.
The upshot of this thinking means that in order to achieve the balance of eliminating the tipping and making up for the lost revenue by raising prices or adopting a service-included charge. The responsibility of creating income should not fall on the whim of people who are patronising the restaurant but on the restaurateur.
Restaurants can better adjust to the new labour laws and expand paid sick leave and overtime eligibility along with minimum-wage increases, if they can use the money that had gone into the waiters pockets to cover some of their expenses. And not forgetting SARS which loses out on taxation on tips the income of which has gone unrecorded for many years.
Sicarios
Durban
