For chefs and servers, minimum wage hike changes tipping

Star Tribune reports:

Facing a big rise in labor costs from a city-mandated minimum wage, chefs in the Twin Cities are tinkering with new ways to run a full-service restaurant. So far, the experiments have failed.

Minneapolis passed a $15 wage last year that does not count tips as wages, despite pleas from restaurant owners and servers to allow lower wages for wait staff who earn most of their living in tips. Now St. Paul is preparing to pass its own minimum wage, and Mayor Melvin Carter has gone so far as to sing his opposition to a “tip credit.”

“We’re going to raise the wages. Tell them I said it,” he sang to the tune of “Brown-Eyed Girl” at MinnRoast in April. “And so we’re on the same pages. I’m not for a tip — penalty.”

The minimum wage for small businesses will rise from $7.87 to $10.50 per hour in Minneapolis on July 1 and nearly double, to $15, in six years. Restaurateurs say that will force them either to do away with wait staff or eliminate tipping in an industry that employs roughly 44,000 servers and bartenders across the Twin Cities.

Counter-service restaurants that eliminate waiters are on the rise, but a tip-free experience has fallen flat at table-service restaurants.

Minimum wages do effect behavior.