r/antiwork Jan 14 '22 Silver 5 Helpful 16 Wholesome 10

So sorry, I'm broke so I can only pay you $77 for my food. You were great though.

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u/Erect_Llama Jan 15 '22 Wholesome Take My Energy

One of the biggest things in America I'll never understand is why tipping is so important. Like why tf can't the server's get paid a decent wage? Why do they live off of tips?

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u/meghammatime19 Jan 15 '22 All-Seeing Upvote

Save the restaurant a pretty penny 🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲

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u/Kind_Man_0 Jan 15 '22 edited Jan 15 '22

Saves A LOT of them.

Typical paycheck for a full time waitress is about $60 or so. Let's run the math from dinner rush to close.

That is $12 for a full night's wages, Given that the cook making the meals gets paid about $14/hr that puts us at $84, so $96 for the pair of them

One waitress where I worked could have waited about 70 tables til close,

I wasn't in charge of food purchasing, but a typical meal for 4 was simple; most sides were ready made for the night, only entrees were consistently cooked to order. So at roughly $30 dollars for a table of 2, we will run that at 2.5 per table to account for larger groups. Over the course of the rush, we could serve about 300 tables in a night BUT we will consider only that one waitress and cook for this math. At $30 per table, your restaurant made $2100 off the labor of those two employee

Takes out food costs, which is about 1/4 of it, you just made a profit $1479

Pay our hardworking wait staff what the deserve in this country.

YES, I know I am not calculating in rent and other restaurant expenses. I am making a point of how the backbone of a functioning restaurant earns the lowest overhead cost.

Let me add to this a second time since some people are mad at me for not considering the other expenses.

I laid down the basic math for how much money can be made during a 6 hour shift from 5-11. This is not how much profit you are making, this is REVENUE GENERATED per employee.

Yes, if I wait tables and I go in for 6 hours, bust out 60 tables at $5 a piece, that is decent income. But it doesn't happen every night. And you don't go home right after the restaurant closes.

Most restaurants are going to have you helping shut down after close for $2.13/hr and there are no customers to tip you.

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u/rcatf Jan 15 '22

As a previous manager of a restaurant, I ran P&L's and can tell you making a profit in this business is much harder than your math makes it seem. Almost every restaurant is trying to achieve 20% net profit. This number isn't common as most KPI's are difficult to achieve. So that $2100 in gross revenues you speak of usually results in $420 to the owners at best. $210 is probably more common. Adding $72 in wages for the server to be paid a decent wage (which it still isn't) looks impossible.

Your scenario is showing 70% profit. Obviously you're not accounting for every expense, but even if you managed to show 50%, that's investor drooling material.

Think about it. If you had money to invest and were considering the stock market or restaurant ownership for steady growth on your money, the restaurant at 50% is way more appealing. Almost no one would invest in the stock market.