Toronto Restaurants Are Scrapping Tips Because Of Racial Prejudice

When dining out, leaving a tip is something most people do without a second thought. However, a group of Toronto restaurants are getting rid of tipping, arguing that the system is flawed. Eateries are banding together to take a stand against the discriminatory history of tipping.

Richmond Station, Ten, and Burdock Brewery have all taken to social media over the last few weeks to announce their plans to remove tipping.

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Each has stated that they're scrapping the practice to fairly compensate employees. Richmond Station was the first to announce the decision and raised its prices to include gratuities.

"Richmond Station has long sought to unravel the tipping culture that is woven into the daily mechanics of the hospitality industry," the restaurant wrote on Instagram.

"Now is the right time to take the final step and to build the price of our service into the price of our product."

Ten and Burdock Brewery also spoke up about their decision to abolish tipping culture. They cited race and gender issues as a driving factor behind their decision to restructure their payment system.

"We’re going hospitality included for several important reasons: to provide a predictable living wage for our servers and kitchen staff during these unpredictable times, to avoid the race and gender prejudices that often come with tipping," said Burdock.

Julian Bentivegna, the owner of Ten, told Narcity the restaurant’s new program would add a flat untaxed 18% service charge onto each bill.

“This service charge will still be split evenly between our BOH and FOH members so that our cooks who work as hard as our front of house, also get paid,” she added.

Richmond Station's owner, Ryan Donovan, said to Global News that eliminating tips is "the right thing to do."

"We want our staff to have the same entitlements to the social safety net and their professional peers in other industries and the fall-out from the pandemic has made that abundantly clear," he said to the outlet.