Minimum wage for waiters

midnightcaller said:
I notice that wimpy has several small boxes with the waiters names.
This is placed at the til. when you are paying your bill, you can put a tip in the box for the waiter that assisted you.


I assume wimpy pays minimum wage (or more)

How does the tips get handled?
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That's because at Wimpy you don't pay with the waiter but at the till instead.
 
Busstart said:
@southafricanrob

Someone earlier mentioned that what you really have here is an accounting problem. I suggest you carry on as normal, but allocate an extra 30min a day or week to admin to keep bureaucracy happy:

Everyone gets paid minimum wage (so DoL is happy) and you can do this because you say they already earn more in any case. They then get paid a bonus which is exactly equivalent to the amount by which their tips exceed the minimum wage. You could maybe withhold 10% to cover short recoveries if you ever have very quiet weeks/days.

End result: Staff continue to get paid whatever they have already been receiving, and payslips show minimum wage basic. Only loser is yourself who now has to do extra admin on each payroll working this all out.

Well staff may actually lose a bit too thanks to the DoL, as they will now pay income tax and uif on higher amounts, and calcs will have to be done on excl VAT amounts. Hopefully these will not be too noticeable.

Good luck and thanks for creating jobs.
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Thank you
 
SYNERGY said:
Pay at the Table is implemented nationwide. You can still pay at the till thou.
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Last time I tried to pay the waitor in December they told me to go to the till. Paying them wasn't an option.
 
JStrike said:
How are you not getting this? It is none of your business how much they make in tips. That is between them and their customers.
It is your job to pay their wages. Which does not include tips and certainly needs to be at least minimum wage.
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No, sorry have to disagree. Restaurant - Waiters have a commission style relationship. The tips have everything to do with the restaurant (location, ambiance, food, etc). The waiters are simply the last link in the chain. The tip is part of their package. The employers only responsibility should be to ensure that the employee takes home an amount at least equivalent to minimum wage.

It is well known by clientele that waiters earn very little and rely on tips. If it becomes common knowledge that they are earning a basic salary (our opinion on whether its enough or not is irrelevant), why should we pay any tip at all? We don't tip shop assistants at Builders Warehouse, or receptionists at the doctors rooms.

So waiters should choose - basic pay or commission (tips), but to demand both is ... well, unfair.
 
Chevron said:
Last time I tried to pay the waitor in December they told me to go to the till. Paying them wasn't an option.
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Give me the store name :twisted:

Seriously, it's implemented nationally. If you called and complained, they would have been forced to rectify the situation, and most probably throw in a meal.
 
SYNERGY said:
True, but Nando's isn't a table service restaurant. You place your order at the counter, not at the table.
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So, if I take a family of 4 to a restaurant rather than Nando's, I'm paying around R100 on say a R800 bill for someone to take my order from me while I'm seated at the table, rather than queue at a counter before sitting. The staff are still pleasant, they still bring the food to the table ....

I'm not knocking how hard waiters can work, I'm highlighting that they play only a partial role in the experience and for some to claim that they have sole right to tips as well as a basic .... is just unreasonable.
 
SYNERGY said:
Pay at the Table is implemented nationwide. You can still pay at the till thou.
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Aaah okay. It's been a while. :)

But I would imagine the boxes at the till are still a throwback to when it was till only.
 
Busstart said:
No, sorry have to disagree. Restaurant - Waiters have a commission style relationship. The tips have everything to do with the restaurant (location, ambiance, food, etc). The waiters are simply the last link in the chain. The tip is part of their package. The employers only responsibility should be to ensure that the employee takes home an amount at least equivalent to minimum wage.

It is well known by clientele that waiters earn very little and rely on tips. If it becomes common knowledge that they are earning a basic salary (our opinion on whether its enough or not is irrelevant), why should we pay any tip at all? We don't tip shop assistants at Builders Warehouse, or receptionists at the doctors rooms.

So waiters should choose - basic pay or commission (tips), but to demand both is ... well, unfair.
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+1

If waiters are paid a fair wage (minimum wage and above, as determined by supply and demand) by the restaurant, why should I also pay them for just doing their job? Effectively paying them twice for a single job?

The "table fee" makes a lot more sense then. Let them be truly independent contractors, where they hire a bunch of tables at the restaurant. Like personal trainers pay to work a the gym, and car guards pay to get an area in a parking lot to guard.

Do I really think the above is "the right thing to do"? No, but neither is hounding an owner about "minimum wage" when they waiters are already earning 10-15k a month.
 
Kerrits said:
+1

If waiters are paid a fair wage (minimum wage and above, as determined by supply and demand) by the restaurant, why should I also pay them for just doing their job? Effectively paying them twice for a single job?

The "table fee" makes a lot more sense then. Let them be truly independent contractors, where they hire a bunch of tables at the restaurant. Like personal trainers pay to work a the gym, and car guards pay to get an area in a parking lot to guard.

Do I really think the above is "the right thing to do"? No, but neither is hounding an owner about "minimum wage" when they waiters are already earning 10-15k a month.
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Yes because students will hire a table...
 
JStrike said:
I disagree.
Pay them a decent salary and no tips.
Or pay minimum wage and tips.
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We actually seem to now be agreeing :). "Decent" salary is of course a hugely grey area. I do have one caveat though: If the staff are on a basic wage, even if only minimum wage, I as a customer would like to be made aware of that. I would be feeling a bit ripped off if I paid a waiter say a 15% tip at a restaurant, only to later learn that he received a salary. Tipping levels are based on our assumption that the vast majority of a waiters earn nothing else. To not correct this assumption is to mislead.
 
The restaurant business model is all wrong and I've argued it for awhile. Also everyone is always oh but the law states that waiters are supposed to get minimum wage and I was like really, have the owners been made aware of this. Here we have an owner who doesn't follow the law and uses the excuse that they get decent tips. So basically he's not paying his waiters his customers are, he's getting a work force for R50 a shift which is madness.
I never understood why a restaurant doesn't build the cost of their waiters into the meals like every other place, I mean could you imagine going into any other industry and having to pay the person who helped you with anything, you don't pay the receptionist and I am sure most of the time she's not earning a lot over minimum wage.
How about the owners of restaurants take into account tips, increase the price of food by 5 to 10%, so your R100 steak is now R110 and that goes to paying his staff their minimum wage, tips are there for incentivising staff not to actually pay them. If they do okay 10% and so on and so on, the problem with tip culture is that people think a waiter isn't going to work hard if he suddenly gets a basic salary. But studies have shown the tips don't actually matter, same as any other industry.
So to the OP, look at restructuring how your expenditure is, work out what you will need to increase your costs to the customer and make the adjustments, remember you're running a business so staff should actually be a part of this calculation already. Don't touch their tips, that's their bonus not yours. Yes it's a bit more admin for you, but you're running a business no one said it would be easy, start a revolution in the small restaurant business and get out of this old mindset of exploiting people.
Maybe even try putting a positive spin on the whole idea, something like, in order to insure better service and to follow regulation we've had to do a minor increase on the cost of goods etc... Something to that extent.
 
Lupus said:
...So basically he's not paying his waiters his customers are...
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You need to think through the economics a bit more. The only person paying waiters -- no matter what the remuneration structure looks like -- is the customer.

Lupus said:
I never understood why a restaurant doesn't build the cost of their waiters into the meals like every other place
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Customer expectation in a given country makes it hard to do this unilaterally, even if it's judged to be a good idea from a service perspective. The economics and sociology of tipping is complicated, but the economics of one restaurant building tips into prices is simple: menu prices go up, and competition does the rest.

Lupus said:
get out of this old mindset of exploiting people.
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We need to get out of the mindset that businesses exploit people who voluntarily contract with them, and focus more on the job-destroying effects of red tape, which cannot be opted-out of.
 
Tomtomtom said:
You need to think through the economics a bit more. The only person paying waiters -- no matter what the remuneration structure looks like -- is the customer.



Customer expectation in a given country makes it hard to do this unilaterally, even if it's judged to be a good idea from a service perspective. The economics and sociology of tipping is complicated, but the economics of one restaurant building tips into prices is simple: menu prices go up, and competition does the rest.



We need to get out of the mindset that businesses exploit people who voluntarily contract with them, and focus more on the job-destroying effects of red tape, which cannot be opted-out of.
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Well said.

The one restaurant that does this will look more expensive compared to everyone else and most likely lose business putting those same waitors out of a job.
 
Chevron said:
Well said.

The one restaurant that does this will look more expensive compared to everyone else and most likely lose business putting those same waitors out of a job.
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Not true. A typical tip is 10%? Adding that to the food items isn't that different.
 
DA-LION-619 said:
Not true. A typical tip is 10%? Adding that to the food items isn't that different.
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It's 10% higher than the restaurant next door.

But then a customer wanders in, eats, gets his bill and sees that "no tipping is required". He tips 10% anyway, because he feels uncomfortable not doing so. That's 21% more.

A month later, he recalls that restaurant as being "pretty expensive", and doesn't go back.

Three months later, the restaurant is closing down.

But it's a matter of probabilities, not absolutes. I'm not saying no restaurant can do it, just that it's difficult given the customer expectation, and competition.
 
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Tomtomtom said:
It's 10% higher than the restaurant next door.

But then a customer wanders in, eats, gets his bill and sees that "no tipping is required". He tips anyway, because he feels uncomfortable not doing so.

A month later, he recalls that restaurant as being "pretty expensive", and doesn't go back.

Three months later, the restaurant is closing down.
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When have you chosen the price vs the quality of food.

I don't think I've ever heard some say, let's go there it's cheaper than x especially by an amount of 10%.

If the steak costs R100 vs R110 there, is the difference so major that you'd ignore which one does a better steak?
 
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