Should restaurants stop tipping? That is something I have explored recently.

     In many restaurants, it is customary for restaurants to pay their servers as little as $2 to $3 an hour. Did you know that? That is roughly half of minimum wage, but as an author previously explored in the Cal Times: It is not worth being replaced by a computer-interfaced kiosk and decreasing your working staff at a $15 hour rate.

     While I did not know a lot of about the economics side of things, I decided to consult someone who did.

     Ed Matecki, a Cal professor of economics, said it is much more likely for restaurants to raise prices for food, drinks and appetizers across the lunch and dinner menus overall. Think about it this way: If you are a business owner, you have two options if you are required to give your staff more money, you can raise the prices or dramatically decrease the size of your wait staff during their shift.

   Matecki also argued in terms of supply and demand that more restaurants could shut down for a few hours between the late lunch and very early dinner period (2 p.m. to 4 p.m.) So that would note effect the servers in a positive way, either.

     I think the system should not get rid of tips. It would impact the restaurant business negatively if we did away entirely with tips. We have had the gratuity system for so long in our restaurant system.

   I think something as a compromise of sorts, however, would be a nice modification to the system. I think it is a little pathetic honestly that we pay them $2 an hour.

        So what if we introduced something new for their payment method? I think that first of all the ancient $2 an hour system needs to get a small upgrade to whatever the restaurant manager can agree on with the server. Call it a negotiation of sorts. As for the tips, I would not advocate for the 20 percent tips that some servers hope for, but rather leave it as the percent of the bill.

Then, to make up for any potential increase of menu items, what if we added a small service charge to the customers? That way, the manager does not absolutely need to raise the prices, and service charge can cover the price-increased food items without technically having to raise prices.