If Meyer's new tips policy doesn't make it in New York, it won't make it anywhere

US Outlook

Danny Meyer is eliminating tipping at his Union Square Hospitality restaurants (Getty Images)

A living wage working in a restaurant? How un-American. There are a handful of facts of life that are uniquely American, like killing sprees and bankrupting the seriously ill.

Tipping every Tom, Dick and Harry is another. Everyone here wants a tip. Buy a five buck beer with a ten dollar bill and you’ll get five ones in return. Not so that you can feel rich with a wad of notes, but so you’ve got no excuse for not leaving your barman a tip for pouring you an ale.

That’s why this week’s decision by the restaurant company Union Square Hospitality’s to stop tipping at all of its outlets came as something of a shock. Union Square is going to embark on a quest to do something that until now has been as rare as hen’s teeth – paying restaurant staff a living wage. The price of its food will go up, of course, but at least patrons will no longer be left sitting around trying to work out how much to tip their server.

Tipping is an anachronism anyway. It’s a long-outdated throwback to Prohibition, when booze was a cash-only market. The restaurant industry is a great advocate of tipping, particularly because most servers can be paid a paltry $2.10 an hour and make the rest up with tips. It’s the only industry that doesn’t have to pay federal or state minimum wages. So no wonder the restaurant trade likes tipping.

Union Square’s chief executive, Danny Meyer, should be applauded on several levels, not least among them trying to drag the restaurant industry into the 21st century.

But New York diners are a notoriously picky bunch. If Union Square’s quest fails in the most liberal of all American cities, there’s little hope elsewhere.