Published November 12, 2015

Joe’s Crab Shack First National Chain to Ban Tipping

The movement against tipping in American restaurants has been generating headlines in the fine dining world for months, but the debate hasn’t reached chain family dining restaurants until now. Joe’s Crab Shack announced that it would we the first national full-service restaurant chain in America to test a no-tipping policy. 18 of the 131 total Joe’s Crab Shacks locations are now experimenting with eliminating tips and making up for servers’ lost wages by raising the starting server wage from $2.13 to $14 an hour. Joe’s CEO Ray Blanchette said in the announcement that he believes tipping to be an antiquated model, and that the new policy would improve employee satisfaction and retention.

The no-tipping policy will also allow Joe’s Crab Shack to cope better with future increases to the minimum wage for restaurant workers. Blanchette also thinks that eliminating tipping will improve service, because servers won’t have an incentive to try to serve large parties by themselves in order to hog tips. The company says that the initial response to the no-tipping experiment has been positive.

Read the full article here: First Major Restaurant Chain Tests No Tipping