Woke up this morning thinking about my friends in the service and entertainment industries who have been laid off, or are facing the threat of it. Between coronavirus and the stock market tanking, there is surely more hardship to come.
I want to help support them; but a lot of the suggestions I’ve heard (get takeout, buy gift certs) benefit the business, not the staff. The suggestions to support staff are piecemeal and short-term, like sending them tip money via Venmo.
I have a different idea.
The crisis provides an unprecedented opportunity to help in a long term way. It’s not every day we get to press the “reset” button on an entire industry.
Here in Maine, Portland has been declared a restaurant destination by media like Bon Appetit magazine. But the Portland Press Herald and Mainer News have reported on several popular restaurants which closed last year, in large part because they couldn’t find staff.
Becoming a foodie destination has caused rents in Portland to skyrocket, like they have in other, much bigger cities. The workers who make the restaurant scene function can’t afford to live close enough to work there. This situation would have become unworkable everywhere eventually, the current crises have just accelerated it.
What if we, customers and staff together, pledge that when businesses reopen, we will give significant preference to those with a living wage/no tipping policy?
This model can work — several restaurants I love in Austin and San Francisco already operate this way. In Europe it’s always been the culture. Usually we say “well, we can’t change our culture”, but now we have been given exactly that opportunity.
Searching for “no tipping” comes back with a bunch of results about how the industry already wants to move in this direction, but hasn’t been able to because of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ — no one wants to go first, alone, so no one goes at all. Now’s the chance to jumpstart that dynamic.
This crisis will have damaging effects on our favorite establishments, there’s no way to avoid that. Let’s start thinking about how we’re going to rebuild now.
What am I missing? What’s the best way to get started? What can we do at the same time to help support staff right now? I’m volunteering to put in the leg work to get this started, but I need your feedback, your experience, and your support. Please join the conversation on Twitter.
Let’s rebound from this challenge, eating right, together!