The march towards getting rid of tipping practices in favor of paying servers a fair wage continues, as a new restaurant in San Antonio, Texas* is donating all the tips they receive to charity.
Nick George, the owner of Oaks Crossing, which opened just over a week ago, is discouraging customers from tipping. When they do tip, however (the restaurant collected $600 in its first week), he’s decided to donate the money to the local library, which is actually pretty cool, since God knows libraries need all the help they can get.
As for the servers, a spokesman for the restaurant said they pay “a competitive wage,” although the fact that they didn’t give specifics is where I start to throw a little side-eye. What exactly constitutes “a competitive wage?” Because if you’re just paying servers an hourly rather than a percentage of sales like Packhouse Meats in Kentucky, that better be a hell of an hourly. In other words, it should be something more than $10, which isn’t competitive by any stretch of the imagination. Even at Packhouse, the $10 hourly was more of a bailout wage in case the servers had a truly horrible day, with most saying they almost never took it.
Regardless, it’s nice to see a small business owner actually donating back to the community, so good for Oaks Crossing. Further, the more America moves away from the tipping model towards the “compensate servers fairly” model employed by nearly every other country on the planet, the better off we’ll be.
*As opposed to San Antonio, Poland.
Image via Jo Ann Snover/Shutterstock.