I opened a new restaurant recently, and there were a few things that bugged me about current restaurant habits. For example I can give you 15 recent articles on “tipping fatigue” and how much Americans start to dislike the new constant tipping mentality on everything. So we decided to be different. We've been pushing the German way of “we pay a living wage so our employees don't need to solicit tips”. Every time I speak to people they love to hear that. Our lowest paid employee makes more than the GM at KFC next door (I know because her son worked for us and got 20 USD/h for dish washing).
However, our staff has not reciprocated our well-intentioned endeavors. Instead we have people – like our cashier (who get 20 USD/h + bonus) – who tell the customers that we “do not allow the employees to accept tips”. Consequently we get a completely different response from the customers and they think we rob the employees of their “well-earned tips”. At worst we get bad reviews from this and at best the customers won't come back because they don't want to support “bad management”. Even after speaking to the cashiers, they still solicit tips, because they think they deserve it somehow. They completely disregard the fact that they and every other staff member is compensated for tips by virtue of getting much higher base pay. And to be clear: It's not like we keep tips or anything, so the only one losing out is us, both with regards to angry customers and higher wages for staff.
After running my restaurant like this for 2 months and seeing zero improvement by my employees, and having many angry customers, because they're misinformed, I'm thinking of going back to minimum wage + tips. It just doesn't work. We get hurt double at the moment because the staff doesn't care about relaying the right message. It's not just one person. It's basically the entire staff having the mentality of deserving tips. I don't think that firing anyone will make this situation better if anyone is gonna suggest that. It seems the tipping culture is too ingrained in hospitality workers.
I will make a decision by tonight. Please give me pros and cons, and try to understand my perspective as well.
Thank you all