Should tipping be banned?

Eater.com - Who wants to get rid of tipping now? Martha Cheng of Honolulu Magazine, and also California restaurateur Jay Porter. Porter actually abolished the practice of tipping at his now-shuttered restaurant the Linkery — instead adding an automatic 18% service fee to all bills — and he writes on Quartz "our service improved, our revenue went up, and both our business and our employees made more money."

Porter keeps a blog detailing his case against tipping, where blog posts are titled things like "Why Tipping Should (And May) Be Made Illegal" and "Sex, Power and Tips." His basic point is that the amount of a tip doesn't necessarily go up with the quality of service, and "tipped servers, in turn, learn that service quality isn't particularly important to their revenue." Porter says the Linkery closed because he moved to San Francisco, where health care surcharges are already added to restaurant bills. What would patrons there think of additional mandatory service charges? Continue