Tipping under the spotlight as hospitality fights for survival
Tipping is in the spotlight again, as more Aussies reject the practice.
The latest dissent comes against venues that ask for a tip for a basic order and those that have ‘snuck’ tip requests into cashless payment processes.
In defence of tipping Australian Food Service Advocacy Body CEo Tony Green told Yahoo Finance “tipping often will go directly to the employees, rather than the business itself. But it does help with retention and that is really important.
"If employees are getting a little bit extra on the side when they deliver great service, then hopefully they stay with that business longer. And that does help businesses, indirectly, when they've got great, reliable employees in their business."
Green also said, tipping can help keep businesses open.
However, there is real backlash against the practice.
Queenslander Phoebe Parsons asked "When did tipping become a thing that you all of a sudden decided that you do everywhere?"
"Absolutely not. I'm not tipping you for doing the bare minimum that your job requires you to do in getting a takeaway coffee, like we're not in the States, you are earning a good amount of money per hour. They're on less than minimum wage," she told Yahoo Finance.
"It feels presumptuous to be asked for a tip before the service has been provided".
Parsons also raised concerns about where the tip was going.
"For exceptional service, I would always prefer to tip cash to the host/server directly to ensure that it goes directly to the host who provided the service I am tipping for," she explained.
Parsons had support for her concerns.
"I can't believe they carry my food or coffee a couple of metres and expect a tip and I work all year and get nothing but my wages which they earn as well," one person commented.
"In Melbourne a lot of restaurants/cafes have this with mobile ordering because it's just the hosted platform. It's not expected to say yes, it just can't be disabled," another said.
As to Green’s point of keeping the doors open, Brisbane’s Dovetail owner Adam Thomson told Yahoo Finance he has had to cut staff shifts and is working 60 hours to lower costs.
"So we're actually having fewer people work here than we would like, and we're having to do more work ourselves to make up the numbers physically doing a lot more work than we would ideally like to be.
"We pay ourselves less than the award wage to be here because, at the end of the day, it's just been a matter of matter of survival. The last year has been just survival mode."
According to CreditorWatch the failure rate for the Australian hospitality industry is set to jump from 7.5 per cent to 9.1 per cent in the next year.
Jonathan Jackson, 15th October 2024
