Tip free restaurants?
I think US tip culture is pretty arbitrary and stupid, but not tipping would be a dick move.
So with that said, are there any restaurants that are tip free/living wage? Can be anywhere in the city, and I'd be willing to go out of my way to support those places. I've seen them in other cities, and I tried searching if such options exist in Vegas but couldn't find anything.
EDIT 2: I've given up hope of getting any answers to my initial question because it seems like those places simply don't exist in Vegas. Instead, I'm hoping that people will take a look at the history of tipping and think about it's place in current society.
"Tipping encourages racism, sexism, harassment, and exploitation"
"Tipping continues to be the source of a power play between workers, employers, and diners. In 2015, Union Square Hospitality Group’s Danny Meyer began eliminating tipping at more than a dozen of his restaurants in favor of generally fixed hourly wages, paving the way for other restaurateurs to implement gratuity-free service, with varying degrees of success"
https://www.eater.com/a/case-against-tipping
"And when you give a tip, you establish a class system. By tipping somebody, you rendered him your inferior, your moral inferior, your class inferior, your social and economic inferior."
"Growing American middle class who wanted to travel now that the war was over, this was like a big thing for them to go by train and to have all their needs met. Because they couldn't afford to have a servant or staff in their house, but they had it on the train. And who did Pullman hire for his porters? Only Black men. And not just Black men, Southern Black men. Why? He says because the plantation, these are his words, 'has more or less trained them to be pleasing to the customer.' So they were paid a wage. They were paid $27.50 a month. Nobody could live on that wage - the rest of it was made up in tips "
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/22/980047710/the-land-of-the-fee
"Fox, like millions of waiters, bartenders and other workers across the country, isn’t subject to the minimum wage because she works for tips. Federal labor law allows such workers to be paid a lower wage as long as their total earnings, counting tips, add up to at least the minimum wage."
"The restaurant industry relentlessly opposes efforts to increase or eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. The National Restaurant Association, an industry advocacy group, argues that an increase is unnecessary because most waiters already earn well above the minimum wage once tips are factored in."
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-minimum-wage-movement-is-leaving-tipped-workers-behind/
"State requires employers to pay tipped employees full state minimum wage before tips" include Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
Minimum Cash Wage in NV: $10.50
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
"If the employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference. Many states, however, require higher direct wage amounts for tipped employees."
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips
EDIT: So to summarize, Vegas is truly unlike any other major US city where there are at least some options for tip free restaurants. Instead we should all be tipping for every single service (but there's really a bunch of exceptions like the people working at fast food chains, if the job pays above minimum wage, if they use their own vehicles, if they get other benefits, etc.). And that's just the way it is because culture. No need to find ways to improve the system (like living wages for all, raising the listed prices to cover said increases in wages).
Posted Jan 4, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC · edited