Indiana Brewery Implements No Tipping Policy, Increases Pay and Provides Benefits for Employees Instead

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