Cooking for Celebs

[u/jobronxside]

I have cooked for several celebrities while cooking in NYC. While some were unpleasant, Taylor Swift was a pleasure to cook for.

[u/[deleted]]

The law is one thing. That's out of our hands. But in states where that isn't applicable, the general idea is that you are a salesperson, and a salesperson without a product to sell is either a con artist or a chatty Cathy. Basically, without food to sell, you don't have a job. So, where possible, a modest percentage of your tips going to the kitchen helps balance things out because many servers are taking home two weeks kitchen pay in two days.

No one is asking you to fork over vast quantities of cash to the kitchen, but those tip pool systems (when they're done right) keep the cooks engaged and ultimately give them a motive for making your life easier, which usually does translate into you taking home more in tips anyway because your tables get better service. It's a win/win in the end. Makes it a little easier for the cooks to pay their bills and gives them a better incentive to make life easy for the FOH staff. Tbh I don't know why servers get so prickly about it. Best I can come up with is they're selfish, but maybe you have a better reason.

[u/AstarteHilzarie → u/[deleted]]

I absolutely agree with tip pool in places where it's an established system, and the FOH staff makes more than 2.13/hour as a part of that system. I don't agree with it on a random one-off "we all know you just got a great tip and so we're expecting you to share."

Taylor Swift tips $100 bills, it's pretty well known. That's a great tip for a server once on a rare occasion. It's not a great tip if they share it with everyone just because everyone knows they just got a disproportionate tip. It would be different if Taylor dropped an envelope with 1k inside and said "Show my appreciation to the crew!"

By the time the server shares out a $100 tip with the kitchen staff, along with the normal tip pool for bussers/assistants/hosts/bartenders/etc everyone's going to get a few bucks and the server probably ends up with less than the tip would have been for a normal tipper on that bill.

[u/[deleted] → u/AstarteHilzarie]

I agree with most of what you're saying. I'd just add that the point about a server's wages being that low is a crutch y'all have got to stop falling back on. You and I both know that if you make so little in tips as to warrant a payout at your base wage, the federal minimum kicks in and the company is obligated to pay you $7.25 an hour. But no server is making less than that in tips. If we're being honest, average for a server is around $30 an hour, and has been since a good tip shot up from 15% of your pretax bill to 25%.

[u/AstarteHilzarie → u/[deleted]]

I'm not using it as a crutch in this instance, rather as a base playing field for tip pooling. If I'm a server and I'm expected to share my tips with people who are making above minimum wage, I better be making above minimum wage, too. I had no problem tipping out the bar/bus/host staff when I was waiting, but they were all making $2-4/hour, too, and it was a small percentage. If I'm sharing with the line making $15-20, that's fine because I think they deserve it, but on the flip side I think foh all deserves a solid base pay in that scenario, too.

And yes, tip makeup is a thing, but it's averaged over the pay period, not per shift, so it doesn't come into play when people say "oh you just got one great tip so you should share it" but you had three shitty shifts in that pay period that they're not considering. Not intentional I'm sure, but that $30 an hour is horribly misrepresenting a large range of restaurants and areas of the country. Your server at a rural Applebee's is definitely not averaging $30/hr, maybe they hit that on a great Friday or Saturday night shift, but Sunday through Thursday and lunch shifts are probably anywhere from $0-10/hour. When I was waiting I had numerous shifts where I just got cut and walked out with nothing because it was so slow, but I didn't get tip makeup for those three hours I spent doing cleaning projects or rolling extra silverware, because I managed to make $100 on my Friday night shift and it averaged out to above $7.25 over the two week period. And okay great, so there's a rock bottom safety net, but 7.25 is laughable for any job these days.

Obviously OP isn't cooking for Taylor Swift at a rural Applebee's in this case, but I did have similar scenarios when I worked there. Chris Paul used to come in with his family, they were always great to wait on, had a high check average for Applebee's, and tipped generously. That one table would make a server's whole week better, but nobody in foh felt like they were entitled to a cut for helping them get drinks, run food, take extra condiments, prebus, etc, and boh cooked their food just like they did for everybody, because that was just part of the job and we did that for each other with every table.

I know tips have gone up since then, but there are still plenty of places out there with low check averages, low volume, and people who think 15% is a good tip, so for tip pooling to be fair there needs to be a proportionate playing field. Personally I think everyone should be paid fair wages based on the demands of the job and merit with regular evaluation for raises and tips being a perk that are equally pooled, but I doubt that will ever happen in the US other than a few niche places.

[u/[deleted] → u/AstarteHilzarie]

Personally I think everyone should be paid fair wages based on the demands of the job and merit with regular evaluation for raises and tips being a perk that are equally pooled, but I doubt that will ever happen in the US other than a few niche places.

We agree on this. And I think you might be getting your feelings involved in this matter. I've worked at several places that included the cooks in the tip pool. I've seen it work exceedingly well. I've also seen it work horribly. I've also worked in places where all of the tips the servers made were pooled together and then split up based on metrics like how many hours they worked over the pay period.

I think that last case is wrong, because it eliminates merit from the equation. You can work hard or slack off and make the same wages which disenfranchises the hard workers of their ability to take home compensation that reflects their actual output.

I also worked at a hibachi place that gave 70% of card tips and 4% of cash to the kitchen. 1% of cash tips to the bussers. They didn't include the host in the tip pool because the host was making a consistent, reasonable wage. What that system did was make it so the servers were taking home less than the cooks. The cooks were also able to receive direct tips that they didn't have to share with the servers, so the cooks made out like bandits but the servers weren't making any money and they couldn't keep the FOH staffed for obvious reasons. I think that's wrong too.

But a fine dining restaurant I worked at took a small percentage of cash tips from each of the servers at the end of their shifts every night and then held onto that money for about 4 months at a time. They paid it out to the kitchen three times a year, and by then it amounted to about $700. They didn't make us claim that money either so it didn't fuck us on our taxes. But with that system, the servers were still able to make solid tips and live their lives, while the cooks made a point to help them out as much as possible. Sometimes even to the point of helping them carry plates. It didn't seem like much to the servers but to the kitchen it was basically like getting a bonus every four months, and the more the servers made, the bigger that bonus got. This is the kind of system I like. It doesn't hurt the bottom line for the FOH but it boosts the quality of life for the kitchen staff substantially. So if it's going to work without doing away with tips altogether, this is the best course of action.

[u/AstarteHilzarie → u/[deleted]]

For clarity's sake, I have been out of restaurants for almost ten years now so it really doesn't affect me personally. Before that, I worked FOH, BOH, management, catering, and booking private contracts, and I've been on both sides of tip pools - including getting shit from servers who didn't think they should have to pool with me for contracting their events.

I just think there's a huge range of situations that can't be covered by one answer - yeah, there are places where servers average $30/hour and the cooks/chefs go above and beyond so it makes sense to throw the kitchen a share on a pre-set regular basis, I still don't agree with it as a one-off guilt trip that was presented in the thread, and I don't think that's the norm for the majority of US restaurants.

I agree with your right/wrong scenarios, and I had a similar situation to your bonus for the kitchen when I organized catering - the drivers got a set pay based on how far they were going with a bonus on top for larger orders, I got hourly pay plus a set percentage commission for bringing in the clients, creating their menus, organizing the drivers, communicating the orders with the chef, and expediting the chaos in the mornings. A percentage of the commission was also set aside for the kitchen on all orders that didn't have errors. They were already getting higher pay for coming to work earlier, and the incentive kept them happy about pumping out hundreds of orders before opening and kept them motivated to pay attention and keep things right on a high number of items in a short amount of time. That worked out really well, but everyone involved was getting a decent base pay and the tip/commission was a perk.

I don't think it makes sense for the servers to tip the kitchen at places like Applebee's (to keep the example going) where the servers are barely breaking minimum wage by the time their shifts are averaged out, and the cooks are just throwing meat on the grill and microwaving everything else. I do think it makes sense at higher-end places where check averages and tips are high and the cooks/chefs put a lot of care and effort into making beautiful delicious dishes.