Hypothetical Management Decision re: non-tipping patron of restaurant

[The Owl]

Nits: You are nits.

Non-Nits: Arguing with nits about tipping is a fool's errand.

[tuq]

[ QUOTE ]
Big parties are exponentially more difficult and time-consuming to serve than smaller ones.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah but isn't say a party of eight far preferable to four parties of two? Fewer introductions and specials to announce, fewer tables to manage, can take and deliver food and drink orders en masse, etc. But most importantly I would think that larger tables mean more $$$ relative to the attention they require. Even if you're getting a couple % less I think that would still be a preferable situation.

[BaldElephant]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If I was the customer and I got autogratted without being in a party of 6, I would essentially feel like you were trying to steal from me.


[/ QUOTE ]

they basically are stealing from you if they do that

[/ QUOTE ]

This happened to me the other night. The wife and I went out for dinner at Bennigans since we had a buy one meal with two drinks get a meal free coupon. We use it, bill came out to like $17.30 (should have been $14) after tax, it was like $22 before coupon. I see an autogratted charge for $3.30 at the bottom.

I understand why they did this, so the server gets tipped pre-coupon, but I always tip before and her service was exceptional and I was going to leave a $20 and call it a night. Instead I left nothing except the autograt because I was so pissed off about it. Server ended up losing out because of what I thought was company policy, do I feel bad about it, a little, but I should never get the autograt on a party of 2.

Random note: My parents used the same coupon (had 2 and they were expiring) at a different Bennigans, 5 miles down the road, on the same night and ran up a bill closer to $40, no autograt.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would you want to tip beyond the autograt anyway? It's usually a pretty standard amount, like 15 or 18%... It's not like the waitress will care if you don't tip beyond the autograt because she's not expecting it since probably not that many people do it.

[XXXNoahXXX]

why the [censored] is this thread still open?

NT! come on, this is killing me.

[Claunchy]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah but isn't say a party of eight far preferable to four parties of two? Fewer introductions and specials to announce, fewer tables to manage, can take and deliver food and drink orders en masse, etc. But most importantly I would think that larger tables mean more $$$ relative to the attention they require. Even if you're getting a couple % less I think that would still be a preferable situation.

[/ QUOTE ]
From a strictly workload-oriented perspective, yeah. One large table > 4 smaller tables. But without the autograt, the lowered variance of 4 small tables is typically better.

[samsonite2100]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Big parties are exponentially more difficult and time-consuming to serve than smaller ones.

[/ QUOTE ]
i don't think this is true. it wouldn't surprise me if the returns to scale aren't significant, but i'd be shocked if it was on average more difficult to serve a table of 12 than 3 tables of 4.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is totally true. Big parties, are 10x harder to wait on: harder to get people's attention, harder logistically, harder to make sure the kitchen gets everything right, etc.

[samsonite2100]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Big parties are exponentially more difficult and time-consuming to serve than smaller ones.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah but isn't say a party of eight far preferable to four parties of two? Fewer introductions and specials to announce, fewer tables to manage, can take and deliver food and drink orders en masse, etc. But most importantly I would think that larger tables mean more $$$ relative to the attention they require. Even if you're getting a couple % less I think that would still be a preferable situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

It depends on the people. The larger point is that if you have a 20 top that takes up your entire section all night (another point being that big parties tend to hang out twice as long), and their bill comes to $400 and they leave $60, you would have basically made twice as much waiting smaller tables.

[jonnyd]

asking them to leave because they dont tip is ridiculous and the idea of it pisses me off

[RoundGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
asking them to leave because they dont tip is ridiculous and the idea of it pisses me off

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sure it does, stiff.

[tuq]

Honestly I can't imagine a scenario where an owner would EVER ask this person to leave. That would be bad for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the stiffer's bitching to friends and acquaintances that he was shown the door. Word of mouth is mega important to non-chain restaurants, booting that one guy could cost you several more customers later.

Not to mention that maybe the waiter in question did something that the customer thought was worthy of stiffing him. Maybe an honest misunderstanding, maybe not.

Dependent upon the size of the restaurant, I could see where the owner himself may simply wait on the customer. A lot of them do waitstaff-like chores to help out when things are busy, and otherwise function as hosts and stand around a lot anyway. This would also enable him to strike up rapport and possibly get to the heart of the matter. Plus he wouldn't care much if he got stiffed, it's not what he's working for.