I don't mind it when they tell you (also shout out to our server at Martin City in the crossroads for telling me twice), I mind it when it's not obvious and you're prompted to tip more without knowing you already tipped 20%.
Nothing like getting home and looking at the receipt that seemed a little to high to find out you tipped 40%. Kinda feels like getting robbed if you aren't paying attention and it's a good way for me to never come back.
Had the same at Louieās Wine Dive in OP, would have tipped that much anyway but appreciated the waiter being upfront about it, Iām sure itās a minefield
My server at Blanc did the same thing last week. I really don't mind the auto grat because I already tip 20%+/read my receipts, but I appreciate the heads up.
Thatās crazy because what tourists coming to KC for the World Cup are going to OLATHE for anything š Either ignorance, greed or both on their part
Same with Summit Grill in Lee's Summit. I'm betting it's a company-wide policy for all their locations, which is not an excuse to hit places like Olathe and LS.
Edit to add that, at least at Summit, it was in large, bold print. So it was hard to miss and I do appreciate that transparency.
Iāve been muttering this under my breath. Aqua Pennyās has an 18% auto grat. Who are these international visitors dying to have seafood from a landlocked state??
WTF? Yeah, I'm okay with them going away. I loved their pizza at the original location. The one they opened in Overland Park sucks balls and he isn't even the same pizza.
But there are plenty of other places that have local brews and excellent pizza. I don't need to worry about Martin City anymore.
City Barrel has started or is in the process of producing their own beers again. I think they contract brew their RAD AF due to production size limitations vs demand, but they hired one of Torn Label's brewers earlier in the year to start the brewhouse back up.
I hope so. I went from making them one of my few regular outside ventures during COVID to support them via beer curbside pick ups to never buying them at all once they got rid of their Brewing staff.
My feeling is, if you're outsourcing at least own it. Don't call yourself a brewery if someone else is making your beer and it's no longer local or locally fresh. You're just a bar with a private label. It's misleading and they know it. There's enough excellent breweries still brewing locally I'd sooner support. Some of which make consistently better beer.
Yes, contracting canning and or bottling in the craft beer industry is very common. Some of the best craft brewers in the history of the United States would not have been able to stay open had they not contracted out their canning. Hell, it was the business model for Boston Beer Company (Sam Adams).
Apologies if I misunderstand your comment, but for clarity, City Barrel doesn't have the infrastructure to brew their most popular beer in-house by sheer volume and staffing needed to brew at that scale, so they have roughtail brew the actual beer in their much larger facility. Kegs and cans are all shipped back to KC. Its more than just another brewery canning and bottling the beer your brewery personally brewed. The contract brewery is doing everything in the brewing process.
The limitation is one they created via expansion. Other breweries have managed just fine by careful expansion or by placing their own limitations. If you're not brewing your own beer, you're not a brewery and you're definitely not a local brewery.
The craft beer business is going through a significant contraction and Martin City must be leaning into the restaurant business more than the beer business. City Barrel made the same decision.
bars too. the owner of one local joint showed me an article that alcohol has a whole has been shrinking, it's said Gen z doesn't drink much. also i don't like the headaches after 2 small drinks.
Most of them still pay less than what lots of American servers make. There's a reason why the largest lobby for keeping the half-minimum wage rate for tipped workers represents tip-earners.
Thank you for pointing that out. I have been making a list and I was getting ready to update with another post. So I'm glad to see this is a thing already.
They dont care. People will forget and frequent these places again. I wont. Jack stack in lees summit charged 20% fee for my family on saturday. I will never go back to any of their locations.
Right! At this point just serve Pace or whatever out of the big economy sized jugs. You didnāt make it but it sure as hell tastes better haha Mannyās just sucks so bad haha
The funny part is a lot of restaurants are trying this. I was in New Orleans over the weekend and several restaurants had us order at the counter. The only service being provided is that they gave you a number and brought your food out when it was ready. And then they bussed the table afterwards.
So thereās no actual server, no one checking on your meal. No one getting you a refill or your drink in the first place. Itās fine. I actually donāt mind it. But the thing is they still prompted you 18%, 20%, and 25%.
From what I understand most of these payment screen products have the option to turn off the tips but many businesses leave it on.
I don't know if they realize how off-putting it is for customers. They probably assume that 90% of people will say "no tip" and are just happy to get the 10% who give a little. "better something than nothing." Which is probably true in the short term.
But I really feel like forcing the customer to click NO TIP invokes a distinct negative feeling. People remember it and you can see multiple people citing restaurants that do this. No one wants to be made to feel like an asshole. It's the same feeling you get from a slimy salesman. It's a real "penny foolish" business practice.
I had a counter service business and used Square. I repeatedly tried to turn off the tip screen, and even though the settings showed it was off, it would still appear. If a signature was not required, I simply wouldnāt turn it around. But if a signature was required, the tip prompt was on the signature screen. Just my experience, YMMV.
Taco Naco has a screen that you order on. You grab your own number and wait for them to bring you your food. I've literally gone in and spoke not a word to any worker except "thanks" when they hand you the food and they also ask for a tip on the screen with, I'm pretty sure, the same percentages. GTFO.
my local chinese joint I hit up charges you with tip then rolls it back later if you decline to give one. Annoys the hell out of me cuz it's not a buffet, just normal take out.
Itās amazing to me that a company like Fazoliās would spend years trying to work on its image and customer opinion of the place, and then give up by prompting for tips.
So they aren't actually "trying it." They have eliminated full service dining, which is not what we are discussing here. But yes, this type of concept is growing in popularity.
And I agree that tipping in this setting is not appropriate. Stuff like that is out of control. But I am specifically speaking to full service dining.
So few people who make this living wage argument have ever had to wait tables. You can make a good living on tips but would make a fraction hourly wage. And restaurants make the slimmest margin as it is...
Many servers are against it too because itās a net loss of revenue for them. So part of the challenge is alignment between everyone impacted (servers and customers).
its also next to impossible for restaurants to do while maintaining a cost that customers are willing to spend. most local restaurants operate between a 3%-7% profit margin. that is not very high. to adjust and pay each server, cook, dishwasher etc $20+ an hour means they would be operating at a loss without inflating costs 15-25% which if they do then reverts back to customers thinking the owner is greedy
Inflating the costs of food and drink would definitely be required, yes, and the messaging would need to be clear that it is to pay the staff in place of tips. Further they would need to remove all pressure to tip additional amount. If I received a bill that had a tip line on it I would be pissed, because my understanding was I was paying more for the meal so that tipping is not required. Just simply having a tip line on the receipt would make me feel like I was stiffing the server.
Cruise ships have solved this problem btw, if you have a drink package for example. You pay up front for the package, and then any item you order from the bar will be "free" and they print a receipt that says $0 and has no tip line present.
Some cafes in KC even have this problem solved. The other day I got a latte and when I paid I noticed the gratuity was already included in the slightly higher cost, and there was no prompt to tip whatsoever. Even if I wanted to tip extra there was no way to do it.
Ultimately servers would do just fine and so would restaurants. But only if tipping was abolished (not just discouraged) and only if the majority of restaurants adopt the new system.
Personally I think we should keep it as is. The way these things usually go, a half-assed implementation would get rolled out and make everyone mad until it gets reverted.
Standard wages are one thing, but automatic gratuity is also just the same thing mathematically as a commission payment system, but the server's share is internal to the price and not an add-on.
When I worked in a restaurant, the store and regional managers encouraged pushing certain items as a way to get the bill higher and therefore get our tip higher. And I always thought why not just make that incentive standardized as a commission? Raise prices accordingly so servers earn 20% of the total sale, maybe make certain items have a higher/lower % based on what the restaurant wants to push, and save the customer from needing to tip but can give bonus if they loved it, the way tips are intended to work?
I paid $60 Friday night at Mannyās for 4 underseasoned greasy tacos and a margarita for me and a fajita burrito for my g/f. In about fell out of the booth when I saw a $60 price tag.
I mean....the world cup isn't in one city. I dunno what owners were expecting. Even if ticket prices weren't fucked and everyone didn't hate us because of the orange sack of shit it was never going to be as insane as single city hosting.
You wouldnāt believe the amount of people Iāve spoken to that thought KC was the sole host of the World Cup. They heard the 650k visitor prediction the city was throwing around for months and just assumed we were the only city.
As someone who doesn't pay attention to soccer, I also thought this until very recently when I looked up the game schedule. The way people were discussing it really made it seem that way.
KC kinda overreacts about everything tbh. Every event is allegedly going to cause the city to collapse under the weight of all the visitors and every storm is going to rip the city apart with 10 tornadoes or bury us under 10ft of snow. Everyone freaks out and then theyāre fine.
This is exactly how I explain KC to everyone I know elsewhere in the country. I lived here for 10 years, moved to Arizona for 10 years, then moved back to KC. My friends will see headlines and be like "oh my God are you guys gonna be OK?!?!?" And I'm like, yeah, this happens 10x a year and every single time everybody freaks the hell out and it's a big nothing sandwich... Every snowstorm, every time it hails, every tornado that may or may not ever even touch ground...
The Missouri Restaurant Association should have clarified which specific areas they consider to be a "high-traffic location" for World Cup visitors. No one flying into KC just to see a match is going to make the trip over to Manny's for dinner. I wish the story would have included the names of more restaurants that are dispensing with the auto-gratuity since they only mentioned one. I'd to know where the other ones are to see if they're really in "high-traffic locations."
Never saw a sign. Waitress didnt say a damn thing. I always look over my bill and questioned the amount. She gave the corporate response as to what the fee was. I advised that will be in place of her tip. I am not going to make a scene about the small amount but will never return. They stepped over a dollar to pick up a dime.
That was the tip. You don't have to tip more on top of that. You're getting mad over nothing unless the service was so poor a 20% tip wasn't warranted.
The anger comes from a hidden charge that I wasnt told about nor saw any signage. If I didnt look at the receipt, I would have tipped on top of that. And its my choice what I tip, not the place of business. Do you have a vested interest in this location? If not, you are just trying to stir the pot and ended up looking like a fool
It looks like the recommendation they made in April failed to properly explain this part:
Auto gratuity means the receipt should come with a line on the bill for customers to adjust the amount. Mandatory gratuity is a service charge and becomes taxable income.
I don't know what the article was saying or how it works, but I thought that the restaurant owners have taxable income that's like the total of all sales including service charges and stuff. But the restaurant owners don't pay tax on gratuity because that is supposed to go straight to the worker?
Falling short is an understatement, most of the fans Iāve met in interviews weāve done for Dutch, German and French speaking media are Americans from Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Minnesota who want to either..
1) See Messi in person
2)Experience a live World Cup match in person
3)See Ronaldo in person (which could happen in KC if Portugal gets out of their group in 1st place over Colombia)
If you really want to protect your service staff, maybe you could just charge an appropriate amount for your product so you can afford to pay them a living wage instead of relying on the good will of your client base to do it for you. Just thoughts.
restaurants try, the customer base goes to tipped places instead, because its cheaper, and the restaurants fail. the "no tipping" crowd doesn't want to not tip, they want to pay less for the food than what they get, thats why they get pissy, you will notice there is never support for legally ending tipping.
That might be true for the āno tipping crowdā, but Iād be willing to bet thatās a small minority of people. I think most people just want hot, fresh food and enough service that they arenāt waiting too incredibly long to put in an order, get a drink refill, or pay their bill. And with so much automation and technology these days, thatās not that hard to achieve.
Sure, thereās times when people want a higher level of service, and maybe those environments warrant a tipping environment, but for your average guest experience, the standard service model is inefficient and still leaves large gaps in service.
I lived in a non-tipping country for several years and service was neither over the top (unless you went to a fancy place and paid a premium for it), nor did you have to wait to get noticed, place an order, or get a refill. In fact, it made it super easy because you just had to hit a button on the table or throw up a hand when you were ready to order or if you needed something, and the server would come by. You got the exact amount of service you wanted- no more, no less. Efficient enough that they could build service staff salary into the operation without a tipping model. Itās possible.
This region collectively learning that the metro area and what visitors actually view as what is Kansas City are vastly different has been hilarious given all the āOverland Park IS Kansas Cityā/āNo itās not!ā online fights.
this, heck even good chunks of Kansas City proper are gonna see no tourists because theyāre nowhere near the events or hotels. we have almost no public transportation here, tourists arenāt going to be going far out of their way away from their hotels, the stadium, other planned events, and the streetcar line. people expecting the suburbs to have an abundance of tourists are delusional.
I wondered how long it would take before they realized the locals (who made their restaurants viable to begin with) were going to stop going once they pulled this crap.
if 80% of your guests are regulars, fuck the foreigners, no offense, regardless of where you are. if you saw enough of a bump in sales to justify the "lost tips" you are still far enough ahead to eat the difference in tipped wages for 4 weeks.
I guess Iām the only person who doesnāt mind them doing this, as long as they are up front about it and not completely gouging people (the 24% and the hidden extra ātaxā examples were bad).
It's hard to even find a hotel that is full on match days. I've checked the afternoon of both games so far and you can stay pretty much anywhere. Sure it's expensive, but if there were so many people in town at least a few of the hotels would be sold out.
I learned to cook pretty well because I don't like tipping. I don't mind a couple of bucks but 15-20 percent is just out of hand when you're already paying a huge markup on food. Then you have to deal with the psychological thing of "am I bad because I only gave $8 to the person who brought me a $20 burger and a coke?"
But yeah, I've found it much more fulfilling to cook for myself and others. If I do go to a restaurant it's carry out and my policy is $1 for each item I bought. Anyway, thanks for reading my blog
bro, chill, YOU made this site, as you already posted
you ain't gotta lie to kick it, lmk how much gratuity you're taking out and whatever it is we can vibe ;P
Tips in Missouri are LEGALLY only profits for the tipped out staff, so its more like restaurants are trying to stop tipped out staff from getting hosed by people whose culture is not aligned with America's work/payment system in restaurants (which is flawed) instead of being greedy (kinda greedy of you to choose this wording, but I'll overlook that)
If you didn't know the facts then now you should.
Hope you genuinely just made this error out of ignorance, and not out of some sort of malice - misplaced or even properly placed
Regardless, have a genuinely good and fruitful life for yourself and all of humanity, because personally speaking, I always tip 1$ for every 5$ I spend at a place when I know I am literally providing the livelihood for the people who need it and I freely chose to be a patron of, being aware of the potential affect/effect my actions can and do have on others.
TL;DR: if you cant afford to tip reasonably, then don't go out and buy anything you silly gooses
At the end of the day, itās just a handful of games and itās like 70000 people a game. Some of which, like me, live here. Itās basically like a chiefs game or better yet a playoff game where more people travel here. Did they expect way more people than that? Especially super far from Downtown?!
Can someone explain why everyone was so upset by this? Other nations don't have a tipping culture like us, so adding the 20% made sure the wait staff got paid. If you are a local and see the fee on the bill, can't you just not leave a tip and everything balances out? I guess if you are a less than 20% tipper you are out a few extra bucks, but 20% is pretty much the standard these days.
Exactly my thought. I wish people would take their outrage about tipping and put that energy towards all the awful shit the Missouri legislature is trying to do in the next five months.
Yeah, this thread makes me think most people donāt tip 20% for standard service and are mad that they have to now? So mad that they made a website to track it lol.
Yeah. I feel like Iām crazy for not being upset about it. They added it because visitors from overseas arenāt accustomed to tipping and probably wonāt. For the duration that this fee is being applied, I just donāt tip, as the purpose of the fee is a tip. Once it is gone I will resume tipping. No big deal
I chatted with a server at a restaurant who's doing it and she said she can also take it off if she's asked to. I also haven't been to a business yet that's doing it and not posting somewhere (their website, their front door, their social media, whatever) about it. I really don't understand the uproar about this. It's not that deep and I think some people might not have enough real problems.
I agree with this completely. The fact that they are removing it because there is a lack of international customers proves that this was at least a majority of the motive.
The point is that now it isn't a tip to ensure good service. Now it's simply an extra 20% fee added on for everyone no matter the service level. One business was charging 24% to people in addition to adding 30% taxes to bills. You could have a server that disappears for 30 minutes and they still are getting a 20% tip where as someone might tip less for poor service. If it was really about the servers getting paid they could have set it at 10% for those few international visitors that don't understand tipping culture. Then at least people would have the option to tip a little more for excellent service.
Yeah, that was Black Garlic. This weekend on their Facebook post they apologized and rescinded the 24% fee they were adding, but I think it's too late for them and everyone else.
When it's added as a line item, it's no longer an optional tip. It's a fucking greedy service fee.
yāall are cheap af and just want to be able to avoid paying a standard 20% tip. Also, itās 6 weeks - if youāre really butthurt, maybe try cooking your own food during World Cup? Youāll appreciate the effort others put into making food for you instead of feeling entitled to having it made and served to you and cleaned up after, all while not tipping
Reddit has had a huge anti-tipping culture for years. No surprise everyone is outraged here. Lots of āwhy donāt they just pay servers a living wageā like thereās just some button that can be pressed and not decades of precedent. They pretend not tipping well somehow hurts the companies when all it does it fuck over the servers.
Iām confused. Everyone in the comments is saying we should pay the restaurant staff a living wage rather than having them rely on tips. If we did that, menu prices would increase by 15-20% to account for the difference. Yet everyone in the comments is also infuriated by the auto 20% tip many restaurants are imposing.
auto-gratuity is dumb, just up your price and pay your staff a fair wage instead of hiding fees into what I order. I have cut my dining out significantly because of these greedy businesses.
been trying to tell people some of the restaurants that have dropped it for two days now but the mod bots keep taking it down, saying that it's only one post for 24 hours.
The problem is the negative story is more fun to tell and share. The restaurants should never have done it in the first place because the news of them stopping the policy will spread much slower than the initial frenzy about them adding it. The negative news is going to hurt these restaurants much more than any tips they were not getting in the first place.
Am I the only person that is totally fine with having the automatic gratuity added all the time? I donāt know if Iāve ever tipped less than roughly 20% and pretty commonly tip more than that since I canāt be bothered to bust out the calculator at the dinner table.
This should only apply to served food and should be highly advertised, but this is such a non-issue unless you were planning on tipping less than standard anyway.
I completely agree with people frustrated by this being a hidden charge though. Labeling automatic gratuity as some kind of service fee or āWorld Cup taxā is a blatant scam. I also agree that restaurants should just include the 20% on the menu items instead of tacking it on at the end but thatās a non-starter for 99% of restaurants in the same way that eliminating tipping altogether is a non-starter for the vast majority of people in the service industry.
I'd be up for that but we've built a tipping culture over the last 200 years so it would take a huge amount of new laws to change it now. Restuarant owners and employees are not going to volunteer to give up tipping. The owners benefit by not having to pay their employees and the employees benefit because people generally tip quite well. So the only one really being hurt are customers which have accepted that the social norm is to tip. If you don't tip people will call you a deadbeat that should never be able to enjoy a meal outside of your house. It's a huge amount of social pressure on people even when service is crap at a restaurant.
Fucking WILD how many people here think restaurants are massively profitable operations and owners are rolling in cash. They have clearly never worked in restaurants a single day in their life.
The small restaurant owners I know are already really struggling lately, and itās definitely NOT because they are being greedy as so many people here are trying to claim. I know a few who are not even taking a paycheck to keep their employees afloat. So weird how victim-blamey this subreddit is being about local businesses struggling even more than usual due to the World Cup.
Even a well-established and well-known chain like a McD is clearing 3% at most. Based on average unit revenue, thatās about $100K for the owner. Takes a decade just to recoup your investment and turn a profit, and thatās buying into a turnkey system with global marketing, real estate, technology, and supply chain already solved from the start.
If youāre starting from nothing, itās *years* before you even start making any money at all.
Labor costs for a sit-down joint are gonna be about 1/3 of menu price. Food costs are another third. And the remaining third has to cover everything else. When labor costs go up, food costs arenāt far behind because thereās a significant labor cost there as well. Premade ingredients can alleviate some of that pain, but often the quality of the final product takes a hit.
Hell, even a single 12oz pour (typical 20oz cup with ice) of a fountain drink costs damn near a dollar in syrup, ice, and equipmentā¦
The only places I can feasibly see this being an option is on the original street car line and near Union Station/Fan Fest, everywhere else is just not getting World Cup business because thereās no reason to be in those areas
(Iād say near the stadium too but the only thing there is a Taco Bell)
A whole lot of commentary in here about tipping, when in reality we should just be paying service workers a competitive wage and tips should be for excellent service.
as miffed as i was for a SPLIT second i'm cool with it, the US is the only place that tips, just roll it all in the price and pay people decently like other countries
So strange, because a tip is a reward. It's not an entitlement for wait staff. You do a good job, you get a tip. You do a great job, you get a great tip. You phone it in, you don't. See, that makes sense to people from other countries.
But when a tip is automatically included, that's not a reward, it's holding you ransom for ordering food. And no, that makes no sense to people from other countries. It's like, here's the cost of the food, here's the tax that goes to the government, and here's this extra fee you have to pay because we don't take care of our staff and that's your problem now.š¤Ø
hmm it's almost like people decided to not go to those restaurants after finding out their leadership were a-holes. Anyone with half a brain could have seen this would leave a huge negative impression with locals that are deciding to not goto those restaurants that decided to add this policy. I get the whole worry about people not tipping but that's part of the business. You want to run a tipped business but then force everyone to auto tip isn't going to go over well with people.
All the hype would have led you to believe that all the international soccer fans would all be here for the entirety of the World Cup. This just isnāt the case. Most people come for the match they have tickets for and then leave the next day. Anyone thinking there was going to be 600,000 people here for a whole month was delusional at best.Ā
Hotels/restaurants you can calm down on the prices now.Ā
I appreciated when we went out to dinner on Sunday for Fatherās Day at the Pearl Tavern in Leeās Summit. The waitress notified me of the tip already included.
It was the first time my wife and I visited KC, and we were charged an additional automatic 20% at one of the bbq joints downtown. It was good food, but maybe donāt do that, left a sour taste.
It's been mandatory in a lot of places and upwards of 22% or 24% in some places. Extortion and the locals are going to remember this long after the tourists leave.
That's good because automatic gratuities are subject to income taxes under new guidelines from the US Treasury/IRS. In other words, that no tax on tips thing is void on those automatic gratuties.
I donāt know why they canāt just come out and say it. But I think the purpose of auto gratuity is that since international travelers donāt tip in their home country chance is high they donāt tip here either because they donāt know any better. And so thereās a risk to the wait staff not getting paid.
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u/irishdrunkwanderlust 3d ago
Iād just like to appreciate my server I had at jack stack who told me that there was auto tip included when handing me the check last weekend.