(SAN FRANCISCO) Servers at the famous Zuni Cafe got some good news and some bad news this month. After more than a year with their dining room closed, the Californian restaurant on Market Street will reopen in the coming weeks, with one big change. No tips.
Management proposed to cut the server's tips for a 20 percent service charge that they say will help make wages more equitable between the front and back-of-house workers. This comes as a number of restaurants around the Bay Area have attempted to institute a service charge rather than allow workers to accept tips.
In one such instance, Comal, the chain of casual Mexican restaurants throughout the East Bay, announced a reversal from their original no-tip policy. Comal's owner, John Paluska, indicated that such a policy was untennable across multiple locations. Despite this, Paluska signaled that he felt the policy worked to even the pay amongst workers.
In early March, when word of the change came to servers, a number of them reached out to the SF Gate to respond to what they felt was a disturbing change.
“I was trying to crunch the numbers in my head and do the math because I was out on a trail [when I got the call] and it just didn't seem like it would possibly work,” said Marshall C., a former Zuni server who spoke to SF Gate on conditions of anonymity. “... I came back home and I did the actual math, and I would be going into debt if I accepted their offer. And I'm a single man, no children, no car payment, no student debt. I just need my rent, and my utilities and my food paid. I wasn't even able to get my rent necessities paid with what they were offering.”
The issue for a number of the servers, as reported by SF Gate, is that the take-home for most servers would be drastically less with a simple flat-rate pay. When Zuni servers would work 30-35 hours a week in the past, they would often clear $200 in tips each night, amounting to a rough average of $70,000 a year. In San Francisco, that is often the bare bones needed to survive in a two-income household.
Zuni reportedly reached out to longtime servers in early May about the change and were met with some degree of shock as a number of the servers indicated that such a change would amount to a nearly $30,000 pay cut.
SF Eater then reported that Zuni management returned to longtime servers with stratified offers.
"But this past week, Zuni confirmed for Eater SF that non-management employees will earn $19 to $35 per hour. So at the highest end, servers would make about $58,000 a year," Becky Duffett of Eater wrote.
Zuni management and Chef Nate Norris have framed this change as a way to make pay equitable across the front and back-of-house. While there is an argument to be made about equitable pay and distribution, such an attempt paints a misguided picture of the profit and how it's distributed.
Taking away tips from one group of workers to satisfy equity requirements for another is not equitable, it works contrary to any possible equity for service workers. For Zunni to truly offer equitable pay they would need to pay cooks and back-of-house workers more. The current change, as it is planned, only serves to infuriate workers and present the appearance of equity.
While Norris has become the recent public spokesperson for this push, owner Gilbert Pilgram will have the final say. Pilgram worked at Chez Pannise, another tip-free restaurant, for three decades before joining Zuni in 2006. Pilgram took sole ownership when his friend and business partner Judy Rogers died in 2013.
“We’re offering a very fair wage,” Pilgram told Eater SF. “Some staff members were not happy with it. Yes, it’s a change. And it’s going to be growing pains. But in the long term, I hope that Zuni is proven right … and I don’t think Zuni is going to be alone in doing this.”
That second part has yet to be proven as restaurants around the Bay Area return to a tip model to incentivize workers to return. One anonymous server who spoke to Eater put it succinctly, that such a move appears sound outwardly but only serves the owner of the restaurant rather than the workers.
“It’s a business. I get it,” the anonymous server says. “But you don’t take out of the pocket of one employee to pay another employee.”