00:00 Speaker A
we’ve seen the White House move to eliminate taxes on tips. Not all tips are included in that. and then in the background, you have a shift in the behavior for tipping where it feels like every which way you go, you’re always having to tip. So, your general thoughts on on how tipping has evolved.
00:19 Andrew Zimmern
It’s a circular firing squad. Uh, tipping as a system has a a an awful history, right? Um, and it’s an antiquated system. But what you also have is people in the front of the house who traditionally are making a lot more money than the people in the back of the house. Now, a lot of folks have argued that group is smaller, that group is uh oftentimes easier to schedule, etc, etc. But as we as we’ve seen post COVID, not only has human behavior changed, resistance to tipping, uh, but we’ve taken away the ability in many states through junk fee bills, like in my state of Minnesota, taken away the ability for restaurants to add a surcharge to your bill that simply goes to let’s say, uh, we’re taking 3% and adding it to your bill to pay for healthcare costs and to our, you know, to lend a gratuity to our back of the house employees.
01:21 Speaker A
They do it in Europe, right?
01:22 Andrew Zimmern
100%. Well, that’s a much more professionalized industry over there. Um, and those employees, the regulations in one part of France are equal in the other part of France. When we talked before about regulatory issues, one of the biggest ones is that state- to state it confuses the consumer. A serve service charge in one state, a surcharge is A-Okay in another state like mine, Minnesota, it’s not okay. We have to have a national plan, but unlike so many other things that we’ve seen roll out from this administration, it has to have incredible forethought put into this. Another reason why a secretary of food would be such an important thing. It’s not just, you know, an almost trillion dollar bill like the the farm bill that includes Snap. We’re also talking about issues like this that would actually help support the third largest piece of our economy when it comes to jobs and those are that’s the food service worker.
02:26 Speaker A
Yeah, and you think taking an aggregate with rising costs and then the tipping and the inability to really add a surcharge, it all adds up for these restaurants. Andrew Zimmern, great insights there. Thank you so much. Appreciate you joining us.
02:40 Andrew Zimmern
Can I throw in one more thing? givingkitchen.org. It’s the best place to take care of food service workers. And people food service worker Day is this Thursday the 25th. two-thirds of America. You should post a little story about what it was like when you were working down on the Jersey Shore and hashtag it FSW Day. F I’ve many stories.
03:07 Andrew Zimmern
FS, I bet. FSW Day. Um and go to givingkitchen.org. Your dollars help, but educating people and awareness really helps too. If you’ve heard something here today that makes you want to help support a food service worker, a simple act of gratitude helps a lot and giving a couple dollars helps too.
03:32 Speaker A
Yeah, definitely. And I remember my days as a server that always was very much appreciated. Andrew, again, thank you again for joining us.
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