If you are a Restaurant or an agency that works with restaurants, take note...a growing majority of customers do not want to call your business but would instead message you and interact with your restaurant online. Are you ready for this cultural shift?
Jillian Melton and Paul Sklar work at two restaurants hundreds of miles apart. And when it comes to the $15 minimum wage debate, their differences in views could almost be as vast.
The push by Democrats to raise the federal minimum wage would also eliminate a decades-long practice of paying restaurant servers as little as $2.13 an hour under the expectation they would earn far more through tips.
It is a pay structure prevalent in most states, including in Tennessee, where Melton was a server at the chain restaurant Seasons 52 until she was laid off during the pandemic. But for Melton, that reliance on tips was "archaic," often meaning the difference between spending more time with her children, or having to work a last-minute shift.
"I've missed track meets," Melton says. "I've missed baseball games because I needed to work, even though I planned to be off tonight, because yesterday went so terrible."
But Paul Sklar, a server at an Olive Garden in Baltimore, doesn't want the tip wage system to change. He worries restaurants would have to cut hours or lay people off if they were forced to pay more to their staff out of pocket.
"If they have one slow day or one bad weekend, they're ready to cut hours, make tough decisions with some of their most loyal people, so I can only imagine what having to pay a much higher wage would do," Sklar says.
Although servers make far less than the standard federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, restaurants are legally supposed to pay the difference when those employees' pay falls short of that amount.
But servers complain many restaurants often skimp on topping off their pay if they don't make enough in tips.
The tipped wage structure is a relic of the Jim Crow era, when businesses looked for ways to avoid paying a full wage to African Americans and women.
People of color and women today make up a huge chunk of the tipped workforce, and discrimination and sexism persist, affecting servers such as Melton.
The most recent Democratic proposal to hike the minimum wage would scrap this two-tiered system. Businesses would have to pay every worker at least $15 an hour, whether they make tips or not.
Forecasters from the Congressional Budget Officesay boosting the minimum wage to $15 an hour would deliver a pay raise to as many as 27 million Americans, but they caution it would also cost as many as 1.4 million jobs.
This article appears in the January-February 2021 issue of PMQ Pizza Magazine. Click here to read it in the digital edition.
If you’re sick and tired of paying 20% to 25% or even more in third-party online ordering commissions and fees, the new Facebook App called Tap the Table (TTT) is for you!
While many restaurants and pizzerias may agree that these third-party services are necessary during tough times, the fees and high commissions are a serious burden. Plus, while it’s great to get customers from anywhere, being so dependent upon those third-party services is just not efficient or sustainable.
Why and how did these digital delivery services gain so much power, anyway? Well, as they say, the money is in the list! These large companies have a big checkbook and can easily acquire new customers with their technology. However, restaurants are prioritized most often when they offer big discounts. So not only are these guys taking commissions with each delivery, which hurts your profits, they are now asking restaurants to discount even further.
Fortunately, the ultimate digital solution has finally arrived with Tap the Table. Collecting data from your customers who order online through third-party services has been impossible. Their contact lists are carefully protected, and they will never share information with you. So it’s time to take back your customer data!
How, you may ask? When your restaurant or franchise signs up to get started with a free Tap the Table account, your customer database will automatically grow with every single online order. Even better, you’ll instantly start turning your comments on social media into real paying customers. Imagine being able to reach back out to every customer who left you a great comment about your food. The possibilities are endless!
With TTT, your restaurant can also automate the process of gaining great reviews on Yelp and Tripadvisor. And you can easily send trackable coupons and other promotions directly to your entire customer list using TTT’s built-in Email and Text Message Marketing Suite. You’ll never pay for a social media ad to reach the same person twice (read that one again—it’s huge!). And TTT offers many more amazing restaurant-centric features.
Finally, you’ll never pay a commission or unnecessary fee with Tap the Table! Why? Because, at the end of the day, these are your customers we’re talking about, not any third-party service’s customers—and not ours, either. With TTT, all customer data belongs to you.
