Comment on 5 Bay Area restaurants taking tips off table, adding surcharge

Thanks to widening staff salary discrepancies and increasing minimum wage requirements, local restaurants are taking tips off the table — literally. Instead of expecting diners to leave a tip, the restaurants will automatically add a 20 percent service charge to all bills — and not accept any additional gratuity beyond the service charge. Thanks to tips, service staff can take home as much as twice the pay of their kitchen counterparts, despite similar base salaries. The timing of this overhaul is largely motivated by increased state and local minimum wage levels. “We had our $1 minimum wage increase, and it affected our business immediately, really powerfully,” said chef Russell Moore, who owns Camino with his wife, Allison Hopelain. Moore, who cooked for 20 years at Chez Panisse, has felt firsthand the benefit that a service charge can have for cooks and understands how kitchen workers can benefit from the service charge policy. When Chez Panisse moved from a tipped system to its existing service charge model during his tenure there, it created a “real job atmosphere” that bred career restaurant workers — and paid him well. [...] cash tips have a tendency to go unreported among restaurant servers. While tradition dictates that diners reward or punish waiters through tipping, and thus encourage good service (in theory), Hopelain feels otherwise. [...] the restaurateurs say, their incentivized, merit-based compensation system will allow for the best servers to elevate on the pay scale. To ensure that there is no confusion with guests, servers at the restaurants will explain the new policy throughout the meal.