Restaurants Are Abolishing Tipping

There is a movement to get rid of tipping at restaurants and instead just pay workers a better wage.

We have all seen pictures on the internet from restaurant staff –  a snapshot of a receipt with a total over $100 and a tip of exactly $0. The consensus among servers: they heavily rely on the tips they earn.

So maybe this new idea will gain some traction, but there is an ensuing debate between anti-tippers and pro-tippers.

Anti-tippers believe that restaurant staff should earn an hourly wage. Earning a set wage every day is unpredictable, due to external factors like weather and customer satisfaction.

Pro-tippers believe that if staff wages increase and tips are abolished than menu prices will also rise, causing less people to go out to eat.

The National Restaurant Association are in the pro-tip camp, considering the minimum wage increase in 2007 caused menu prices to increase by 58 percent.

Servers nationally earn an estimated $16 to $22 hourly, including the median base wage of $4 to $5 an hour, according to the association.

"We do think this is the future," says Cristian Mora, owner of tip-included restaurant Girard on Girard in Philadelphia. "We and others are the few early adopters and the tipping point will come when one of the bigger restaurateurs or chains in the country adopts this practice."

Where do you stand: are you pro-tipping or anti-tipping?

Additional reporting by Victoria Meneses