
Clients and companies alike have been yelling at one another about tipping practices for what looks as if a millennium. However with their new restaurant buy, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of “South Park” and “The Guide of Mormon,” have determined to choose out as soon as and for all.
The pair are taking a brand new and progressive method to tipping at their new Denver restaurant that’s completely groundbreaking — for America, anyway. However whereas most individuals are applauding them, some aren’t fairly so certain concerning the modifications they’re making.
The ‘South Park’ creators have determined to ban tipping altogether after buying the long-lasting Denver Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita.
Ask anybody who’s lived in Colorado, and even simply many individuals who’ve handed by way of Denver, and they’ll let you know that Casa Bonita is a landmark and an icon. Typically known as “the Disneyland of Mexican eating places,” it is the type of kitsch vacation spot they only do not make anymore. Who does not need to watch indoor cliff divers whereas sipping a margarita?
So when the beloved spot closed in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Colorado’s two most well-known residents, who’ve featured the restaurant on “South Park” up to now, stepped in and purchased the place.
Persons are thrilled that the beloved spot will reside on after practically a half-century as a Denver mainstay. However with new possession at all times comes modifications, even to a beloved previous place like Casa Bonita, and Parker and Stone are utilizing it as a possibility to interrupt new floor in terms of the American restaurant trade by shaking up the best way Casa Bonita approaches tipping.
First, Parker and Stone introduced in January 2023 that Casa Bonita would pay an hourly wage plus suggestions, with charges rising above Colorado’s state minimal wage of $13.65.
Servers have been slated to make $14.27 per hour plus suggestions, whereas bartenders would get an additional greenback per hour plus suggestions for slinging all these margaritas.
That is a far cry from the pay charges of most eating places in america, the place enterprise house owners in most states are allowed to pay tipped staff like servers as little as $2.13 per hour, in accordance with federal regulation. Even with suggestions added on, that always makes tipped jobs like serving in eating places insufficient to make ends meet —the typical server takes dwelling simply $13.95 per hour together with suggestions, in accordance with the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Picture: TikTok / @paulywoggggg
Parker and Stone modified their minds and determined to ban tipping and substitute it with an ordinary $30 per hour wage for all Casa Bonita staff. However not everyone seems to be completely satisfied about it.
Parker and Stone in the end determined they might do higher than $14.27 per hour plus suggestions. Days earlier than Casa Bonita’s June 2023 reopening, all staff have been introduced with contracts providing them the brand new hourly wage and stipulating that Casa Bonita can be a tip-free restaurant.
Staff got simply sooner or later to determine in the event that they have been prepared to signal on to the brand new association, which the restaurant’s administration stated will present a secure wage for workers even when the restaurant is just not full.
The wage can be a part of Parker and Stone’s new method to Casa Bonita, usually, treating it extra like an attraction for which diners might want to buy tickets moderately than merely coming in for dinner. Casa Bonita’s administration stated this was the rationale for the brand new pay scheme.
“Based mostly on the latest beta testing of our one-of-a-kind restaurant,” spokesperson Stefanie Jones instructed Axios Denver, “we’ve adjusted our compensation system for effectivity and equity.”
Picture: TikTok / @paulywoggggg
Which sounds excellent, proper? Anybody who’s waited tables has had the expertise of turning up for work solely to face a useless restaurant and a miserable take-home pay for the day.
However paperwork submitted to Axios by two staff reveal the brand new pay scheme constitutes an infinite pay minimize on days when Casa Bonita is definitely full — to the tune of lots of of {dollars} per shift. And the staff who’ve spoken to Axios are in no way completely satisfied about it.
Picture: TikTok / @paulywoggggg
Their hesitance concerning the new system is definitely comprehensible — a pay minimize is a pay minimize, after all. However many eating places function in a hierarchical construction in terms of doling out these super-lucrative shifts, with probably the most senior and seasoned workers getting the nice schedule slots, whereas the newbies must struggle it out in the course of the slower and lower-paying ones.
Casa Bonita’s administration is true — an ordinary hourly wage makes every thing truthful. And hey, it really works nice in Europe, the place practically all restaurant jobs are paid a livable hourly wage and that is that. It is a job like another, not a hustle.
However after all, America’s capitalist system and tipping tradition are a special breed, and it simply goes to point out how deeply entrenched that system is — even a whopping $30 an hour, greater than many individuals make at specialised jobs with a wage, is not sufficient to settle it.
John Sundholm is a information and leisure author who covers popular culture, social justice and human curiosity matters.