From 2006 until the restaurant closed recently, The Linkery, in San Diego, didn't allow customers to tip its servers . Instead, a flat surcharge of 18% percent was added to every bill. The restaurant's owner, Jay Porter, made the policy for a variety of reasons and has written about the experience extensively at his blog and elsewhere.

“It’s a pretty niche market when you want to make the argument to your community that you should make everything by hand and pay people livable wages," Porter says. "That’s also the argument that I would like to make.”

He made that argument for more than six years as The Linkery was a successful restaurant that improved sales and provided better service after it went the no-tip route. At the peak of sales, before the recession, the 18% surcharge led to servers earning an average of $22 per hour. Cooks and dishwashers benefited, too, with wages that averaged between $10 and $14 per hour, well above the minimum wage or the $8 per hour that is commonly paid to such workers across the industry.

Removing tips from the equation, Porter says, resulted in better service and reduced turnover. If servers aren't trying to get more and more tables so they can get more and more tips, they aren't overworking themselves in a way that diminishes service. And if cooks are getting paid more and are on more equal footing with servers, they perform better as well.

Porter argues that the assumptions most people make about servers don't make sense. He says people tend to think of servers as "a class of simpletons who require a drip of money every few minutes to keep them on task." Not only is this inaccurate, he says, it is insulting. “By perpetuating the idea that servers, and servers alone, won’t perform without the threat of pay withheld, we dehumanize our neighbors and peers who work taking care of us.”

The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United ( ROC-United ) approves of Porter's model. “Although tipping is most likely not going anywhere anytime soon,” ROC founder Saru Jayaraman says, “there are several restaurants across the country that institute alternative approaches to wages—either by doing away with tipping altogether or starting their tipped employees at higher rates than the subminimum—all of which help combat the industry narrative that low wages are fundamental to running a successful restaurant.”

The surcharge model also helps lessen a wide array of social problems that arise in the restaurant setting. According to  research , nonwhite servers make less than their white co-workers do for equal work. On the other hand, people of color, young people, older people, women and immigrants tend to get worse service than white males. There is also a complicated power relationship between tippers and servers—73% of servers are women. The restaurant industry generates five times as many sexual harassment claims per worker when compared to other industries. 

“So tipping is a way in which it allows all these nasty things to happen that we’ve outlawed in every other industry but restaurants," Porter says. "So, we’re just sweeping that all under the rug because we don’t want to give up our racism or we don’t want to give up our sexual power games. But we just have this tipping thing that kind of hides it all.”

Porter recently closed The Linkery  because he and the other co-owners wanted to pursue different projects and is currently developing a new restaurant.