As of this past Monday, two more of Andrew Tarlow’s six Brooklyn restaurants have made the switch to a gratuity free model.
Anyone who has traveled to Europe has likely seen a service charge added to their bill in place of a tip line. Over the past few years, America’s restaurant industry has slowly been following suit. Eliminating the tipping system and replacing it instead with standard wages for their wait staff.
While several high-end restaurants in NYC have already made the switch, more and more places within the service industry are switching to this method of payment. Since 2015, the movement for this European-style system has continued to gain traction in New York with big names backing it. Two of the larger names that have seen success with tip elimination as they make the new model standard across their empires are Danny Meyer and Andrew Tarlow.
On October 2 Andrew Tarlow finally made the change at two more of his popular Brooklyn locations: Marlow & Sons and Diner. Early last year the first restaurant in his empire to do away with tips was Roman’s.
Although there was some pushback at first, over time people have grown accustomed to the policy. In addition to a base wage, employees receive revenue shares “[equal to] what waiters would otherwise earn under a tipping system,” according to an Eater report.
However while many restaurants have seen success, a handful had to back out and revert to tipping because guests were unpleased. Customers were not satisfied with price increases and famous restaurateurs, such as Tom Colicchio and David Chang, had to reintroduce tipping in their restaurants.
Featured image source [Facebook/Marlow & Sons]