Two JP restaurants to add 3% fee to help pay back-end workers

So I'd suck it up and pay $0.50 more per item if I liked the food. But if you start tacking on required fees I'll assume you're becoming Verizon. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak.

I don't shop at businesses which add fees. The cost of an item should be what you pay.

Their prices are higher than most other nearby restaurants, but they also serve pretty unique menus for Jamaica Plain.

I think the "look" associated with adding fees will turn some people off to these places, though probably not all that many.

I will absolutely tip less to account for the three percent fee. 17 percent for the bar staff and 3 percent for the back of the house staff.

So why not raise the price of the items and then include a disclaimer at the bottom saying the menu price reflects the cost of paying the back of house a living wage?

How do we know they didn't simultaneously cut the cook's hourly wages by 3% and tell them the customers will be making up the difference?

Thanks for your comment, Bob, and it's a great illustration of the issue here. We chose 3% because it is only pennies on the dollar, but because it goes directly to the kitchen, it doesn't get allocated among all the other costs that the restaurant bears so it has a sizable effect. And immediate: both kitchen crews got raises yesterday because of the new hospitality admin fee, and as owners who have deep respect for the work they do, that makes us happy.

You really think the profits are just so massive on a small restaurant? Even a small restaurant group? Newsflash--running a restaurant isn't exactly the kind of thing you take up after your investment banking gig falls through. And sorry, but I don't think the grade of "gentrification" is quite as steep as you claim. CSC has always been a lovely place but IMO having a really good Italian place where I can go occasionally as a treat (we've had several really wonderful meals there) is preferable to having a spot where I'd have to stand in line for twenty minutes for a biscuit and omelet I could make at home. Really delicious and unpretentious food--no whiff of South Endery that I can detect.

I've worked and/or lived in JP for over twenty years, and with luck I'll live and work here another twenty more. JP has changed a lot since I moved to Boston, and will continue to (that's good, neighborhoods that don't change die). Most of our employees live in JP, so we as restaurant owners are as concerned about the consequences of gentrification as anyone else in the community. The mission of our restaurants is not to contribute to gentrification, it's to provide a great place to work, and eat, for local residents. We fully understand that our style, menus, playlists, etc are not for everyone, and that's okay.

What's not that okay is spreading misinformation with negative intent on-line. Believe me, our profit margin has not "shot up," and we could not "easily have given 3% more to the kitchen staff all on (our) own." Do your homework, and don't make statements you can't support.

Thank you for reading some of the other sources and obviously also giving them some thoughtful consideration. Regarding doing away with tipping, we think it is too large and emtional of an issue for servers and guests alike to try and confront and dismantle. There is a practicality here to try and chart a course that makes a financial difference for our kitchen crew but does create an inordinate amount of risk and put us out of business. You can see what this small fee has incited already, we have an obligation to protect the jobs of our team, the local events and charities we support, the vendors we buy from, and the people who loaned us their hard- earned savings so that we could even exist. I consider it practical, others will think it cowardly.. Judging from a lot of comments here, I think getting called a coward is relatively low on the scale of insults that will be lodged against us..

That's about business in general, not the unique situation restaurants are in.

Restaurants aren't unique. To put it another way, every business is unique. Don't use "unique" to justify a bad way of doing things.

Thank you. Very apt and succinct. We don't expect everyone to support us or even take the time to understand. For those that do, we are absolutely here to explain and be transparent. This is a scary decision that we really think is the best ethical way forward. We can't live with ourselves at leaders if we don't at least try to make a difference.

Reminds me why people fought over a goddamn supermarket and a CEO so hard. It is to be such a rare gem for an entity to choose profitability with everyone getting a decent wage (in other words, wages are people getting a fairer cut) versus maximizing profit that it almost went down (and one day may inevitably become that way) with all its typical ungenuine PR front with sleek looks and short sighted cost cuts.

I will note that I do hold sympathy if a business just don't have the money - saying if a business model can't pay their works decent wages makes the business questionable, at least in many of those cases, you can't really fault the ownership. But way too many are just choosing larger margins.

As I just noted in another response (we'll be doing a lot of this today, which is great, we're happy to explain ourselves), the profit margin for many restaurants is in the single digits, and the margins for our two JP restaurants are in the mid single digits. We could probably increase our profits if we bought more ingredients from mega-producers, made fewer dishes from scratch, and donated less to the community, but we don't want to go in that direction.

Needless to say, a mid single digit profit margin does not leave a lot of cushion for hard times. We would be irresponsible to our employees to reduce that margin even more in an effort to pay the kitchen team higher wages, because that would increase our vulnerability during slow times and increase the chance of failure.

We are proud of the benefits we offer our employees, and the fact that we go out of our way to help every employee with time off, and finances, when there is a family emergency, etc. We believe the small hospitality fee is the most responsible and effective way to keep our teams strong and healthy, to keep our business model sustainable, all the while remaining true to our vision of what a neighborhood restaurant should be.

Posted twice.

So let's have them shut down and open a Dunkin' Donuts franchise in the spot instead.

Can we just acknowledge for a moment that running a small business--even a good, successful one--is challenging in myriad ways? I don't know ANY lazy or talentless people who are doing it but all of them to a one struggle with these questions of balancing their books, compensating their staff fairly, trying their best to provide health care, etc. It is incredibly difficult and I don't know any of these folks who are making big money--some barely break even.

David's response is excellent, but also that is not a true statement. We have never sold a gass of wine for $15 that any retailer is selling at $16 per bottle, unless that retailer was deciding to sell that bottle below cost or there is some other completely atypical factor at work.

I echo the concerns here. My greatest fear is that big box restaurants and chains will put this to use and not handle with integrity. We are choosing not to allow that fear to stop us for implementing our best long contemplated best attempt to shift the business model for the benefit of our kitchen team. This actually really hits home and is a major concern, I can only hope that the market and guests in general can tell the difference betweem a small family business run with integrity and best intentions and a large corporation that is attempting to dishonestly increase their bottom line. Judging from a good amount of comments here, a lot of people really can't distinguish our tiny restaurant from a massive corporation like verizon. I'm hoping that in the grand scheme of things the people who support our restaurants don't feel the same way.

Hi Sally: Just wanted to say thank you for sharing your perspective, which we as restaurateurs deeply appreciate. As you imply, the joy of going to a "nice" restaurant is the feeling that you will be taken care of, served delicious, carefully prepared food, in an appealing environment that transports you away from work, home, worry, etc. All of that takes a lot of time, energy (human and fossil fuel) and yes...money.

Not at all, shift pay is illegal in our specifice business except for a couple of really limited circumstances. There are two entirely different types of workers (tipped and hourly) and associtate labor laws under a single business model and it has created a massive pay gap that is really hard to solve legally. We're not willing to try and solve it by breaking the law. It is a complicated issue that doesn't take to simple solutions, or none of this would be an issue across the entire industry and we wouldn't be here getting our a$$es chewed off for trying to fix it. I'm so glad to explain, clarify, share details, etc... but I'll be upfront and say that we've been trying to solve this for years and I don't think there is an easy, one line, silver bullet that will fix it as many negative commentators would like to imply.. If it were easy to fix you wouldn't be reading about it. We're sincerely trying to make a small but lasting improvement to both our business and our industry. The fact is we don't have to as we do not have the same hiring issues as other restaurants, our only motivation is to improve the wage gap because it is the right thing to do. We think this is the simplest solution to a really hard problem.

I would also like to note that our entire team, tipped and non-tipped, has been very supportive of this change. It's a credit to them, and it confirms our belief that step 1 is to create a great workplace in which the motivation and objective is entirely about delivering great food, service, and experience to each and every guest, every day. If our servers and bartenders can give us the benefit of the doubt and see the bigger picture we are trying to address, I hope guests and commentators can also.

Phil is a force of nature, world class human, and one of my favorite people. The retail side of the business does not suffer from the same dilemma as the restaurant side, so it's apples and oranges, or rather apples and LPs...

Thank you for getting on UHub and making an effort to explain what you're doing. I know I have a been a bit harsh about your new fee, and your posts here have definitely tempered my feelings about it. I'm sure your lip is practically chewed off from biting it so much while writing your responses, but it has definitely influenced my thinking.

You have obviously put a lot of thought into devising some way to solve a problem you see. A lot of places don't even get that far. To actually implement a solution is laudable. It may not be popular, and it may eventually be replaced by another solution, but I respect your attempt to try something. I may not fully agree with it, but again, I respect your efforts.

As an aside, I'd like to address those people here that brought up profit margins.

I know nothing about the restaurant business, but I have always thought that it has to be one of the toughest small businesses to manage. The dynamics of the business are mind boggling, between managing the help, the menu, the physical place, getting the ingredients you want, getting customers to come in and come back, and pulling all that together. You have to be crazy to want to do it, and the only reason someone would want to do it is passion. Your passion is obvious. Making everything from scratch from good ingredients is a commitment one can only accomplish with passion.

So, when someone looks at your food, looks at your prices, and makes a comment about your huge profit margins, I don't see that as a well thought out comment (my turn to bite my lip). If someone feels that dinner for two is more than they want to spend, I understand that. But when they start throwing out the words "huge profit margin", I think it displays a gross misunderstanding of what went into creating that meal. Living out in the semi-sticks, I have never been to your restaurants, so I'm just talking from a general perspective.

Anyways, thanks for your responses. Again, I live a distance from your restaurants, but would definitely like to make a visit in the future.