Dear Eric: We are seniors (ages 76 and 77) on a limited income. Our living expenses are high for medical reasons. As a result, we carefully plan our restaurant visits.
Although we do not and never have frequented very expensive restaurants, we do enjoy several in the $$ range, or an occasional $$$.
We all know prices have skyrocketed, but when we add the “recommended” 10 percent to 15 percent tip, restaurant dining becomes unaffordable.
On the other hand, many restaurants are struggling to keep customers and stay open! So, what is the better choice: tip less, or just not dine out and support these restaurants at all?
—Dining Dilemma
Dear Dining: I empathize with your concerns. The rising costs of food and overhead trickle down to the menu, making dining out a trickier enterprise, especially at a time when home budgets are shrinking. It makes for some difficult accounting.
However, the best solution is to treat yourself, while also not mistreating service staff. Consider your tip to be part of the cost of the meal and budget accordingly. This might mean that your total allowance for food goes down by 15 percent or 20 percent (the industry standard), which might translate to one less appetizer, one less drink, et cetera.
Tipping is a custom in America that has been built into the financial structure of the restaurant industry, which means that although it’s not required, to not tip means that someone else works for you for free.
Many diners complain that this isn’t something that they chose and if servers wanted to guarantee an income, they should choose another profession. What those diners fail to realize is that by choosing to go to a restaurant with tipped servers, they are choosing to be a part of this financial arrangement. If they didn’t want to be, they’d go to a buffet or a restaurant with no servers, or—the most ideal in my opinion—a restaurant that pays its servers a living wage and has built the costs of labor into their prices.
Most servers are being paid a rate of $2.83 an hour. More times than not, this gets completely eaten up by taxes, meaning that every time a server approaches your table, brings you food, explains the menu, makes a recommendation, prepares your cappuccino, or clears your plate, they are doing it for free. The same for the bartenders, whom the servers tip out, and the bussers. You deserve a nice night out, but they also deserve to pay their bills. You can budget in a way that serves both.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)
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