Danny Meyer’s no-tipping plan is the biggest restaurant breakthrough since Ice Age owners launched the first mammoth house. Anyone who eats or works in a place where food is served should cheer him on.
I wrote last month that tipping warps every eatery — from the steakhouse where I once slaved as a busboy, to New York’s exalted fine-dining temples.
But the custom is so entrenched, only a guy as powerful and popular as Meyer could take the no-tipping plunge on such a grand scale.
Many customers and employees will go bananas — at first. But the new way of doing business might save the American dining scene from its lack of professionalism compared with other countries.
Customers will no longer have to do arbitrary calculations in dim light after a wine-soaked meal. Waiters can earn a living wage without having to grovel, and their greater self-respect will improve service in the long run.
Meyer was nudged partly by impending minimum-wage changes, which would put his eateries at a hiring disadvantage compared with fast-food joints. But an inspiration does not have to be 100 percent pure in motive to be purifyingly transformational.
A meal at Gramercy Tavern, The Modern or Maialino will look more expensive with a service charge yet to be finalized. But it won’t be more expensive — or will only be slightly more costly — to anyone accustomed to tipping 20-plus percent, the norm in Manhattan’s better restaurants.
Restaurant work will become a more stable vocation than the pump-and-dump racket it is today.
Why do you think your favorite waiter is gone after three months? He or she left to chase a bigger pot of gold at a hotter place with a heftier (for the moment) tip pool.
Tipping demeans employees as it does customers. No longer will certain owners and managers illegally dip into a tip pool.
No longer will cooks earn a pittance of what front-of-house staff make — at least in Meyer’s empire, where he plans to allocate the service charge equitably.
Good luck, Danny — you’re going to need it.
Steve Cuozzo is The Post’s restaurant columnist.