Food Geographies Robbie Faselt
Op-Ed 10/29/14
Servers and the Ebb and Flow of Restaurant Business
The restaurant server is one of the most popular jobs in the country and according to the National Restaurant Association, currently, 1 in 12 Americans work in the restaurant industry and about 50 percent of all adults have worked in the industry at some point during their lives. The industry is clearly very large with over 13 billion workers, but overall, workers in the industry do not get paid very well. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), the average annual salary for a server is just over $20,000. In fact, servers are twice as likely to use food stamps as the rest of the U.S. workforce and three times as likely to be living in poverty.
The main reason for this is the existence of the tipped minimum wage, which since 1991 has stayed set at $2.13 per hour. Not many people even realize that the tipped minimum wage exists, but according to the DOL, servers in 43 states get paid less than the regular minimum wage hourly based on the assumption that the rest of their wages will come from customer tips. In fact, 22 states pay their tipped workers less than $3 per hour.
Although tips can often lead to servers making well over regular minimum wage per hour, overall, tips are very inconsistent and are completely dependent on restaurant customers. Not only does the customer decide how much to tip based on his/her enjoyment of the dining experience, but also servers need busy restaurants in order to make good money.
There is an ebb and flow to the restaurant business both daily and on a seasonal basis. The average restaurant is open for lunch and dinner and that means that there are two blocks of time a day in which restaurants are filled with customers. From about 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM, many customers come in for lunch and from 5:30 PM to about 8:00 PM, there is a dinner rush. During these periods, servers receive many tips due to the large volume of customers. But during the period between the lunch and dinner rushes and the period after the dinner rush, generally, restaurants receive a lot fewer customers, which is something I can attest to having worked in a restaurant this past summer. During these down periods, servers are not acquiring many tips, which means they do not have much to supplement their hourly wage.
In addition, restaurant business is very dependent on the time of the year. While these seasonal fluctuations may not affect restaurants in major cities to a great extent, restaurants located in towns in touristy regions have a tourist season, in which restaurants are usually busy, but during the rest of the year, business declines. In terms of server wages at these restaurants, they are much higher during the tourist season, but servers often struggle to makes ends meet during the longer offseason.
From a personal experience of working in a restaurant located in a touristy town, I found these fluctuations in business to be a reality. I worked in a restaurant in Williamstown, Massachusetts, which gets very busy in the summer due to a renowned theater festival. During the summer, the restaurant was completely filled almost every night of the week and all of the servers made well over regular minimum wage. But after the theater festival ends every summer, sales decrease and servers receive fewer tips due to the decline in customers. I did not work past the summer tourist season, but I learned from some of my coworkers who work as servers year-round that during the offseason, they make just over minimum wage and many of them take on other jobs just so that they can afford rent.
Also, there are certain days throughout the year that are generally very slow business days nationwide. According to Blue Sky Local, a company that tracks restaurant sales, 61 percent of restaurants report a decline in sales during a holiday or major event. A report by the National Employment Law Project gives examples of servers who worked on Super Bowl Sunday that made a total of $10 in tips in a day.
Servers deserve to be paid more, but due to the ebb and flow of the restaurant business both daily and on a seasonal basis and servers’ reliance on tips to make a living, they do not make much money during “down periods” in business. One way to ameliorate this would be for new legislation that states that employers must pay their employees the regular state minimum wage rather than the tipped minimum wage during these “down periods.” These “down periods” should be defined as the period between the lunch and dinner rushes and the period after the dinner rush, as well as during the tourist offseason when restaurants report decreased sales. By enacting this legislation, servers would not be so reliant on tips, would be more financially secure, and would have some income that they could rely on during “down periods” in business.
I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment.
Robbie Faselt
Works Cited
The Aspen Institute. Reinventing Low Wage Work: The Restaurant Workforce in the United States. Rep. The Aspen Institute, 2012. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. <http://www.aspenwsi.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/The-Restaurant-Workforce-in-the-United-States.pdf>.
Bittman, Mark. “A Valentine for Restaurant Workers.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 Feb. 2014. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/opinion/bittman-a-valentine-for-restaurant-workers.html?_r=0>.
Blue Sky Local. Why Your Restaurant Is Losing $30,000 a Year & You Don’t Know It. Rep. Blue Sky Local, 2012. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. <http://www.blueskylocal.com/restaurant-research/SSR%20Insights%20-%20Bluesky%20Local%20-%20October%202009.pdf>.
Kilhefner, Johnny. “The Average Yearly Income for Fine Dining Servers.” Work. The Houston Chronicle, 2013. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. <http://work.chron.com/average-yearly-income-fine-dining-servers-20195.html>.
Myotte, Maria. “Op-Ed: Restaurant Servers Can’t Live on $2.13 an Hour.” Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 11 Dec. 2013. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. <http://news.yahoo.com/op-ed-restaurant-servers-39-t-live-2-010524712.html>.
National Restaurant Association. 2013 Restaurant Industry Pocket Factbook. Rep. National Restaurant Association, 2013. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. <http://www.restaurant.org/Downloads/PDFs/News-Research/Factbook2013_LetterSize.pdf>.
Nayak, Rajesh, and Paul Sonn. Restoring the Minimum Wage for America’s Tipped Workers. Rep. National Employment Law Project, 2009. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. <http://nelp.3cdn.net/f6df4ed353601d4c50_x6m6iy650.pdf>.
U.S. Department of Labor. Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees. Rep. U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, Dec. 2011. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. <http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped2012.htm>.