The owner of an Indiana brewery decided to get rid of tipping in favor of paying his employees more after noticing a disparity in tips based on a server’s age, gender, or race.
Switchyard Brewing owner Kurtis Cummings implemented a “no-tipping policy” two weeks ago after watching the struggling service industry and noticing a tipping disparity amongst his servers.
“There was about a 25% pay difference,” Cummings said. A disparity that seemed to depend on the age, gender, and race of the server.
Cummings decided to make the change at his establishment so that his employees can make a living wage, raising their pay rate from $2.13 an hour plus tips to $18 an hour plus some other perks and benefits.
However, with the policy change, Switchyard customers will be charged a little more as pizza and beer costs have increased by 20%, which works out to a dollar per beer.
“I felt like we weren’t doing everything possible as a company to take care of our coworkers and our staff,” Cummings said.
“We have had no staff leave since implementing it, and we’ve had only 100% positive comments from our community and our customers,” he added.
https://twitter.com/SwitchyardBeer/status/1432419271464919044
