We are the only country that offloads the burden of paying food service employees living wages onto the customer. Other service workers don't have this – a car mechanic is paid their wages regardless of how many cars came in to get fixed. An IT employee's earnings for one day doesn't depend on the quantity and quality of issue fixes.
The alternative is to have the prices of food include the cost of paying the employees their wages, and have the employees earn an hourly wage that doesn't include tips. How do we get this to happen?
When employees don't make minimum wage from tips, owners have to make up the difference. If there are no tips, owners have to pay the entire wage. If there isn't enough revenue to cover that, prices must go up to compensate. So, I propose a tipping strike to move businesses towards tip-less pricing models.
Why not start July 4th?