Slaffey stayed as long as she did because she needed the job. She said she was living paycheck-to-paycheck. “I really believed in Jon & Vinny’s,” Slaffey said recently, shaking her head with disappointment.
About a week before her last day, she said she served Shook at Jon & Vinny’s in Beverly Hills. He showed up with a man and ordered zucchini spaghetti and pizza. It appeared to be a business meeting, she said.
After the meal, she said, Shook didn’t leave a tip.
In response, the restaurant group provided multiple checks showing Jon and Vinny’s partners leaving tips for service. “When Jon, Vinny and Helen are there in a personal capacity they always tip,” a spokesperson said.
Rehash by Daniel Hernandez in this week’s “Tasting Notes.”
Many guests, the suit alleges, believe that the fee is their server’s gratuity and leave little to no extra gratuity. Jon & Vinny’s, led by noted local food figures Jon Shook, Vinny Dotolo and Helen Johannesen, says it strongly believes in the service-fee model, because it helps democratize the restaurant’s earnings for service across all hourly employees, including those not present at the point of service.
I don’t know why they think that there’s some underlying principle embodied in the 18% surcharge that wouldn’t be the case if they raised menu prices by the same amount. Especially when some of their prices are 25% lower than Mozza’s and Bianco’s.
To me this is anecdotal evidence that the surcharges and fees are stealth enough that customers don’t notice them being assessed. Furthermore, to me it helps prove that they’re dishonest by nature.
Mina from baroo also just posted on her substack about service charge vs. higher prices. they were originally leaning strong towards service charge, but now reconsidering.
their rationale was the same as has been provided by others: that it is a way to strive for better parity between FOH and BOH pay.
related to this, no one ever explained to me that tips only go to FOH, so for years i was tipping on the assumption that it was evenly split between FOH and BOH. very surprising to me when i learned this wasn’t the case…
By California law as interpreted by the courts and the California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement tips go only to employees in the “chain of service.”
Service charges are great when (1) the money all goes to employees (so it’s actually a charge for service) and (2) the restaurant is transparent about it. Neither is the case with Jon & Vinny’s.
not that i want to make the argument for them, but just raising prices would leave it less transparent than putting in the service charge
if you don’t take restaurant owners’ word for it, how would you ever be able to know that the service charge all goes to non-management employees? presumably this will be adjudicated in the lawsuit, but how would J&V have implemented a service charge in a palatable way for you?
For Jon & Vinny, raising prices 18% would be no different than adding an 18% surcharge. They disclosed to the LA Times that the money all goes into the same gross receipts pot as the rest of the bill before tax and tip.
Their description of the service charge was always a bit weird and weaselly. Customers reported servers asking for large tips on top of the service charge. Servers complained about the tip policy on Glassdoor etc. And now on top of that there’s a lawsuit.
The grandmother of service charges in California is Alice Waters. There was never any doubt at Chez Panisse that staff were being treated well. They had health insurance and profit sharing.
DayTrip in Oakland is the most straightforward and transparent about its service charge of any restaurant I know.
restaurant assumes customer is willing to pay $100 total for a 2hr meal. under traditional tipping at 20%, that means FOH takes $17 on top of their hourly wage, BOH+management+operating costs take $83 to divide between themselves. if the restaurant instead applies service charge, it has $17 to split between FOH and BOH. based on the reported wages from the LATimes article and the reportage from @moonboy403 , ~$4 of that seems to go to BOH (assuming $2 more per hour wage), $13 of that goes to FOH, equivalent to increase of $6.5/hour in wage.
so FOH under service charge makes $4 less per hour at least. presumably the service charge distributes across more than just cooks and servers, so FOH would take >$4 paycut.
in an environment where other restaurants have regular tipping policy, allowing additional tipping on top of the service charge is a way to try to stay competitive for hiring. ultimately, unless management takes less money, “improving pay equity” means less pay for FOH to compensate for BOH. what server would choose a restaurant with that policy over a traditional tipping restaurant…
not everyone has been happy about the service charge at chez panisse either: