re: Joe's Crab Shack is now the first major restaurant chain to drop tipping

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Yeah I've never had a problem with tipping

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I never knew that people viewed it as a flawed system..... Well, flawed enough that they'd want to do away with it.

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It's really not. Even at a middle of the road place like Joe's (IHOP , Denny's , Applebees? etc. types would be the bottom), you would have $400-500 weeks on 30-35 hours on average. Not to mention the fact that about 5% of waiters actually claim the entire $500 (it's like getting paid $200 extra under the table tax free after claiming only $200-300). You also get supplemented the extra $2.13 or more. I regularly calculated making $16-20/hr per week. It would be a significant dip.

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So we are suppose to keep a broken system so waiters can cheat on their taxes?

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Yeah I've never had a problem with tipping

I never knew that people viewed it as a flawed system..... Well, flawed enough that they'd want to do away with it.

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I never had a problem with it until I moved to a country where tipping is not expected. That is when I realized just how stupid it was. Why should a customer have to pay more to get good service? A doctor does not get paid more if a he/she delivers good care, a police officer does not get paid more if he/she serves and protects well, so why should a waiter? They should deliver good service because that is there job. Then you get into the situation of taxes. Why does a restaurant get to pay an employee below min wage and pay a lower amount on payroll taxes than the gas station across the street? Why does a waiter get to decide how much of their income they are going to declare, but a cashier at a bank does not? There is nothing special about the food and/or food industry so why do they get special treatment?

It's interesting that our tipping custom apparently originated in Europe, which has since largely done away with it.

Here is an interesting article LINKthat points out the many ways the tipping system is flawed:

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When wealthy Americans brought home the practice of tipping from their European vacations in the late 19th century, their countrymen considered it bribery. State legislatures quickly banned the practice. But restaurateurs, giddy at the prospect of passing labor costs directly to customers, eventually convinced Americans to accept tipping.

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Tipping does not incentivize hard work. The factors that correlate most strongly to tip size have virtually nothing to do with the quality of service. Credit card tips are larger than cash tips. Large parties with sizable bills leave disproportionately small tips. We tip servers more if they tell us their names, touch us on the arm, or draw smiley faces on our checks. Quality of service has a laughably small impact on tip size. According to a 2000 study, a customer’s assessment of the server’s work only accounts for between 1 and 5 percent of the variation in tips at a restaurant.

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In another article, a restaurant owner who did away with tipping talked about how some customers wanted their power back, power they don't have over their doctor or shoe salesman. LINK But boy they want to be able to lord it over the college kid who refills their iced tea:

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Despite—or maybe because of—all the documented damage caused by tip culture, plenty of people are deeply, emotionally invested in keeping tipping propped up. When we abolished tipping at the Linkery, we met a few of these people. We would periodically hear guests express anger about not being able to choose the amount of their tip. Their refrain was, It's not about money ... I always tip more than 20 percent. These people were angry even though they had spent less than they otherwise would have, because they had been robbed of their perceived power over their server.

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It puts the burden on the consumer to pay for a restaurants employee wages

That should be all you need to know.

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You realize you are gonna pay them either way though right?

Of course, now the non-tippers will pay their share too, but service overall is likely to suffer

According to WAFB, Joes is rolling this out to only 18 stores for now, and BR isn't one of them.

I went to Joe's Crab Shack once....

With Joe's tacking on 15% to prices, if the service sucks can we negotiate a discount?

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McAlister's Deli has been like this for as long as I can remember, and they make great sandwiches.

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They are counter service, does not count.

Current tipping system is great for those like me that will not see the system as some sort of moral obligation and actually a system perpetuated by restaurant owners to push costs on to patrons.