'No Tipping' Experiment Ends At 2 Minneapolis Restaurants

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Remember the big experiment about Upton 43 and Victory 44 abolishing tipping and including service in the price?

Consider it over.

Both restaurants have resumed a traditional style of pricing, where the customer adds a gratuity.

When Upton 43 opened, chef and owner Erick Harcey said he wanted to create a stable income for servers, and be able to pay back-of-the-house employees -- like cooks and dishwashers -- more money.

"Nothing went wrong, it was an experiment," Upton 43 and Victory 44 spokesperson Josef Harris said. "It helped us build a strong, unified and supportive service staff that works as a team. As the restaurant industry grows and progresses into no tipping as a general practice, we will be ready to implement the structure again."

Victory 44 raised its prices by 18 to 20 percent, while Upton 43 set initial prices that much higher. The restaurants say they have lowered the prices by that same percentage since ending the "no-tipping" policy.

Related: DeRusha Eats: These Restaurants Have Banned Tipping, Raised Wages

"Guests were completely on board, we had no issues from guests concerning the old no tipping policy," Harris said. "We actually had more problems with people wanting to leave a higher tip than the included 18 percent."

Harris said the service staff didn't rebel. In fact, he said not a single server had left the restaurant during the time servers were getting paid hourly without tips. He said the math to make this all work out was really hard to achieve.

"Where we were challenged was that if we were to stay competitive (price wise) we wouldn't have been able to continue the no tipping model. We would have priced ourselves right out of the market," he said.

Simply raising prices 18 percent higher than what they would charge under the old model wasn't enough to pay people what they wanted to pay. They would have priced entrees in the $35 to $45 range, which likely wouldn't fly in the Twin Cities.

"We experimented, it worked, but until the market catches up with the coasts' prices or the no tipping model becomes more mainstream we have to go back to tipping," he said.

Harris said the salaries and hourly wages of the back-of-the-house staff did not change at all after returning to tipping.

Across the country, restaurants have expressed interest in changing the payment model as a way to improve pay for non-servers, as well as build up a pool of money to provide for sick days and paid time off.

Servers have often rebelled against changes perceived to threaten their income.