re: What's behind racial differences in restaurant tipping?

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I'm all for the European model but you have to keep in mind that most servers like the current model. They can make more money that way.

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i know they do, but if their service is contingent upon the appearance of their table, it's creating a never ending cycle with negative consequences.

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i know they do, but if their service is contingent upon the appearance of their table, it's creating a never ending cycle with negative consequences.

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I think by and large people receive similar service. It's the servers that get the shaft with certain tables. It's not just black people, it's church people (on Sundays) and rednecks also.

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it's church people (on Sundays)

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Far and away the worst tippers im my experience.

The Economics of Tipping - Ludwig von Mises Institute

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My dinner companion sounded indignant. “It’s a shame we have to tip the waitress,” she said. “The restaurant owner ought to pay the staff enough to live on.”

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imagine that is a common attitude among those steeped in our current cultural climate of envy and dislike of economic success — the anti-capitalist mentality, as Mises put it. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we tip waiters out of sympathy, due to their misfortune of having to work in an industry full of greedy restaurant owners who won’t pay a “living wage.” In fact, tipping is an elegant market solution to a particular set of circumstances, often present in service jobs, that makes determining an appropriate wage extremely problematic. The practice of tipping used to be more common, applying to many more service positions than at present, when it is largely restricted to waitstaff and skycaps. Part of the reason for its partial demise is just the wandering course of economic change, but many jobs that used to be paid primarily by tips came to be covered by minimum wage legislation and simply disappeared.

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The employer wants happy customers, but he has a twofold information problem. As a practical matter it is difficult for him to observe interactions between waitstaff and customers. In addition, the customers’ expectations regarding the quality of service are impossible to observe. This is further complicated by the fact that staff members are heterogeneous; they are different in terms of skill levels, personalities, and other characteristics that affect the customer’s experience of quality service. Thus the employer doesn’t have the information he needs to arrive at an appropriate wage for each member of his staff. The customer, however, is a participant in these interactions and as such has as complete information as is humanly possible. If the customer pays the server directly for that aspect of the job, the decision of the appropriate pay is made by the person with the most information about job performance.

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Employers generally want their employees to give their best, and presumably are willing to pay for that. However, the aforementioned information problem inhibits his ability to do so. Ideally, tips make the server’s compensation directly proportional and immediately responsive to the quality of service provided. This aligns the employee’s incentives with the employer’s; both now want to provide high-quality service to the customer, each for their own benefit.

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Hiring a new employee entails risk. For the new employee, there is the risk that the job may not turn out as he had hoped. It could turn out to be a dead end with no future, or unsatisfactory in innumerable other ways. The employer, however, has a financial risk. The new employee’s skill set is unknown to the employer to at least some degree, regardless of how thorough the interview process might be. There is even more uncertainty with an inexperienced new hire; there is no history for the employer to work from. The employer has to pay the agreed upon wage, and if the new employee doesn’t perform as hoped he is losing money. If the new employee accepts a lower guaranteed wage and makes part of his compensation contingent on performance — the tip — this relieves risk in two ways. First, the employer is more willing to take a chance on a young, inexperienced worker. If the wage is lower, the minimum performance level needed to make the employee worth the wage is also lower. Second, since the employee can increase his earnings directly and immediately by improving his performance the job is not so much of a dead end. The low paying job becomes a valuable stepping stone, allowing the young, inexperienced employee to learn job skills, establish a performance record, and move on to something better. (It should be obvious that minimum wage legislation short-circuits this entire arrangement, making the employer much less willing to hire someone unless he is certain they are worth the higher wage. This is how lower-skilled individuals get shut out of the job market. But that’s the subject of another essay.)

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2) Black people get inferior service because they are black and there exists a stigma that they tip less

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In my experience it's because they run you all over the place

If you have 5 black tables to wait on vs 5 non black tables you might be in for a lot more work (especially if you're relatively new)

I had a a black female bartender at the Hilton tell me once that she purposely tried to avoid working during Essence Fest because as she said black people don't tip and especially black people from New Orleans don't tip

TD’s favorite topic. At least top 5.
I serve part time for the past 10+ years where I see people from all 50 states and many countries as well. So I get a pretty good perspective on tipping practices across the board. Race doesn’t play as much of a role as geography. A black person from NYC usually tips better than a white person from Georgia or Alabama. People from larger cities tip better than people from rural areas. Obviously people within the industry or industry related fields tip better than some other people. People who travel more or go out more frequently are better. There’s obviously some particular discrepancies to general blanket statements.
By and large regardless of race the people who live closest to I-95 between DC and Boston are the best tippers.

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You can put any name on it, but depending on the public to subsidize your business is corporate welfare.

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what

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WashingtonPost

Long story short:

1) Studies show that black people do indeed tip less

2) Black people get inferior service because they are black and there exists a stigma that they tip less

3) the Washington Post thinks that they tip less because they simply haven't been told they should tip more (than sometimes nothing at all)

4) Point #3 is based on a study that showed that white people on average think a suitable tip is 14.5% and black people on average believe that number to be 13.4%. That 1.1% difference in appropriate tipping expectations is supposed to explain the disparity

5) The solution is simply to get the word out that a tip should be more

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1 - racist wapo states the obvious but doesnt stop there

2 - racist wapo blames their poor tipping on white people (any percieved wrong by blacks is whiteys fault)

3 - racist wapo says all blacks are stupid and must be told how to think correctly

4 - racist wapo repeats by white splaining how stupid all blacks are

5 - racist wapo says frick it and just flat out says that blacks are stupid as fricking retards

i say wapo is full of shite and prefer to think of it as blacks are smart enough to have a better appreciation for the value of a hard earned dollar and so they choose not to over tip as though its some status symbol used to virtue signal

There was an article in the WSJ two days ago about Danny Meyer’s Restarant Group in NYC. He eliminated tipping in several of his high end restaurants mostly because servers were making 300% more than his best chefs. In an attempt to level the playing field he raised prices and created a pay scale. It’s sort of working, but it’s had its problems over the past few years. That’s some pretty high salaries each menu item has to cover.
At his places a server has to make very close to $100k with benefits.