There has been so much tension about tips in delivery related apps it reminded me of a summer job as a “Horse Wrangler” where we were essentially only paid in tips, but the customers had no way of knowing this. I was only paid a salary of $400 a month – out of which they deducted $300 for housing and food. I worked 6 days a week from 5am to 5pm, often I had to work until 8pm because we took turns doing the dinner ride. This included 4 hours of chores in the morning to get prepared for the day before we opened where there was zero chance of getting tips. I only worked around 2-4 hours a day with clients that might tip me. I made an average of $500 a month in tips.
The customers were paying around $80 a person per hour to ride the horse, we had 8-14 customers on a ride with two wranglers. The main problem was that I often worked checking in customers, and so I made a sign that said something like “wranglers are only paid in tips, don't forget to tip” which my boss immediately told me to throw away. I also tried to tell customers that wranglers were only paid in tips, and this would often lead to parties giving $20 per hour on average to the wranglers. Everyone would have been happy with that. But I couldn't do it if my boss was in ear shot, and it felt really awkward to have to say anyways (note: I was only saying it to help other wranglers on their rides, I never said it about to my own clients because it introduced an awkward dynamic, and no one did this for me).
I also helped do the book keeping, and the place often made $10,000+ a day in gross sales. And part of why customers would get offended is because the price was extremely high and the wranglers doing all of the work should have actually been paid, or the price lower so tipping didn't seem so expensive to do on top. I did report it to the labor department and they ended up having to pay me over $14,000 (only 10k was considered backpay, the rest was like a fine). It wouldn't have been necessary if my boss wasn't so obsessed about not telling customers we were only being paid in tips in the first place. We all could have gotten paid well enough if they knew, but nobody told them.
The labor department case was just back pay for the “tipped minimum wages” and “over-time for tipped wages” (which is only like $5 an hour at that time in the state) not regular minimum wage, which is higher than a minimum tipped wage; they were legally allowed to pay us like waiters, despite the fact that the majority of the hours I worked hard labor with no chance of being tipped. They only had to retroactively pay me back at the tipped wage amount. Also I learned a lot about the business asking around or looking up publicly filed contracts. They don't pay any rent for the barns / pastures that houses the horses, the local resort provides the land/buildings/electricity/water free of charge because they just want an activity for their guests there to be available. They don't have to pay rent or a percentage of sales or anything to the resort.
In fact, the resort also provided the wranglers three meals a day for free. That's the industry standard for how dude ranches are operated. All they have to pay for was snacks/bills at the employee housing, and all the costs of caring for the horses. They had no other expenses, but still (supposedly) couldn't afford to actually pay us wages, despite charging the absolute maximum anyone was willing to pay to ride a horse.