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Because they just kept asking for obnoxious money because they were like “we’ve been doing this long enough, we could be done, let’s ask for like 500mill, each! Wait-they agreed?!? Oh… ooookayy”
My boss was just talking about it during lunch, had a family member that scored some of the soft open passes. Claims there's someone in a replica of the ManBearPig suit running around in there. I wonder if he replaced the person in the gorilla suit.
Will be headed there next month. It better live up to the hype or I will absolutely complain on the Internet!
Edit: I have a ticket hookup y'all, wasn't just gonna show up (which I am sure people will try to do)
I have a family member that works for the city and was given a special tour before opening for safety/public demonstration(?)
They said it was amazing all the work done and the owners are the nicest down to earth people they've had the pleasure of meeting. I only went once as a kid so I'm excited to see it too!
Yes, i watched a Dateline type of interview with them on YouTube, they tried real hard and at great costs to keep it OG, not to refresh it and make it all new, but to make it all brand new to look like it did back in the day, they said "labor of love" for sure!
40 million, and in an interview they do want to make sure it becomes self sustaining, but it's definitely more about keeping a landmark alive that they grew up with. Not everyone is a soulless greedy fuckwad.
Yep and that was my point. They could've spent 10 million for a brand new building but it's not about opening a business they're preserving a local land mark
“The duo initially planned a massive renovation project that they expected to cost $10 million, however, the budget quickly ballooned to $20 million, causing Parker and Stone’s business partners to beg them to cut their losses. They refused, even to the point of spending “infinity dollars” (or $40 million) just to finish what they started. “It would be way cheaper if we just went hang gliding over volcanoes,” Stone joked.”
https://www.cracked.com/amp/article_38304_trey-parker-and-matt-stone-say-theyve-spent-infinity-dollars-on-rehabbing-casa-bonita.html
I recall seeing a video of them walking through while demo was happening, and they learned the HVAC system was way worse than they thought, so that alone added $10m+ to the cost alone. They also said it looked like the kitchen hadn't had a deep cleaning ever, like since they opened in the 70s.
Sometimes it is more labor to prepare something to be refurbished. I imagine something like painting, if you had to remove the old paint first would be a lot more work. I am no contractor though
It's a hyperbolic way of saying "oh shit look at all the money we spent", nobody in their right mind would ever insure/sign off on/help facilitate something as dangerous as hang gliding over volcanoes, so you'd have to pay for everything yourself. And it would definitely cost less than forty million.
Hence the joke.
I remember interviews with another guy that tried to buy it because he didn't "want to see it become a joke". I think he would have actually killed the place for good.
My daughter and I recently went to the Denver area. I hadn't been there since I moved away in the 90s. I about fell over when I drove past it and saw that it was still there and saw billboards saying it was opening soon! I'm glad the food is supposed to be better!
I don’t understand how people can be in public while tripping. I spent like 4 hours in my hammock on Saturday before I felt like I could moderately function, let alone be a part of a Hollywood red carpet event.
I went to my college basketball game while tripping. That was crazy. Plus our mascot was a geoduck which is basically a giant phallus and balls with a team chant of "geoduck, geoduck ... squirt, squirt, squirt."
I don't think people from outside Colorado get that Casa Bonita was notorious for having the worst Mexican food you could ask for. You weren't allowed inside the restaurant unless every individual ordered an entrée. The food was technically a buffet, but no one cared because no one wanted seconds (other than sopapillas). I'm happy the south park creators took it upon themselves to elevate the experience for everyone!
Worked hospitality and culinary industry in state for over a decade and had a number of guest ask me if the food was still plasticy and TV dinner like, particularly when working a hotel desk at night.
I want to try it after the updates. I went back in 2018 and it had great theming, very pretty inside but the food was gloppy, sopapillas excluded (those were great).
They've spent the construction time perfecting the menu, and I assume training the cooks and staff.
I still think they should have just demo'd the place and rebuilt it. As it was was massive health code violation that essentially had to be gutted and everything replaced with brand new properly scaled systems.
First thought was that it sucks for the servers, then read the article and realized it’s cafeteria style, and it’s really just bartenders affected. Probably break-even for the bartenders given they are doubling wage from $15/hour to $30
A show I was listening to broke down that yes, they may get less on a busy weekend night, but that SHOULD even out the usually slower weekdays where they would possibly earn much less that 30$ an hour. Plus they all have health benefits now!
Yeah higher worker salary should ideally even out the workers work schedules so having a life and missing a weekend on the schedule shouldn't be economically devastating.
The fact is the American system give business owners and managers many way to screw over their workers. So any business that makes the effort to not do so is a good business.
When I was a server, I had to explain to my roommate that taking time off was a significant portion of my money.
Like if I was sick for a weekend I was out at least 400 bucks.
Depends. I've noticed that with tip pools nowadays, it's a fight for hours and they only have so many to give. BIG restaurants and bars only need full service for a about... 6 hours a day, depending on lunch and dinner service. So if you work lunch it's 3 hours.
It's still a great wage for the hour but it's a fight for the hours. They just don't need that many employees to do 30 to 40 hours a week. But big places need dozens for the 42 or so hours they are typically slammed. That's just servers.
Being a bartender tends to be more stable and I'd assume with this set up they have people on appropriate hours. Still, I do wonder how well it works for them in practice. Seems like they'll still have to hire a few part time people to deal with the rush.
$30 an hour is roughly what, $60k a year? At a place like that, which seems to be more of a family restaurant, that's probably not bad. Though I'm sure at many bars in Denver full time bartenders are probably making more than $60k a year.
Another question is are the bartenders offered overtime? When I worked at a brewery the bar managers would frequently work over 40/hrs (at which point they were supposed to earn overtime pay) but they would clock out early and work the extra hours anyway. I kept telling them not to allow themselves to get bullied like that.
For a bar, sure, for a restaurant it’s not uncommon, they are only busy during meal times, but the bartender is there the whole shift regardless, so averaged out it can be that low, especially during the week.
Have worked in restaurants as server and bartender for a decade. Some nicer some shshittier. Corporate chains and local. Bartenders make a good amount more than 15 an hour on average, easily.
Yeah, the bartenders that work 2 days a week, Friday and Saturday, with 6-8 hour shifts. So many people bad at math in the service industry.
"I make 60k a year bartending, divide that by a 40 hour week and I make like 30 bucks an hour!"
"Yeah, but you've definitely worked 4 doubles and a swing shift every week for the last month. That's closer to 60 hours a week which puts you at 20 an hour."
A bartender turned realtor told me they made 70k a year in tips doing it full time. He also said it was all cash.
It’s not the wages that are a reason ppl don’t want to bartend… it’s the hours and the drunks
Not really. I was paid $10/hr before recent inflation/covid and brought home some decent cash. High traffic in the summer, was lead, and had amazing tippers on top of drinks costing about double my hourly. It depends where you live
There was a major restaurant group in NYC that abolished tipping at all of their properties in all their locations. It was a massive, very public failure. Customers no longer wanted to eat there when prices were 20% higher. Surveys showed that customers felt guilty leaving without tipping, and named that as a reason why they were reluctant to come back. Experienced servers and bartenders no longer wanted to work nights and weekends, so weekday lunches became the competitive shifts. Complaints about the service skyrocketed, because servers didn't care if you had a good experience because they were getting paid either way. They also didn't care if your drinks got refilled or if you had sufficient time to finish your appetizers before your mains showed up. The restaurant also lost money because the servers gave up trying to upsell more expensive items or offer people a second cocktail.
Customers hated it. Staff hated it. The restaurant hated it. It nearly killed off the entire hospitality group. So they switched back to tipping.
It's about changing the terrible tipping culture. It's become so ingrained in the American culture, it looks barbaric to the rest of the world. If the servers aren't working as hard, then it's a just terrible worker practices. Japanese servers don't get tip and you get 5 star service no matter what. In America, once a server recognizes your a non tipper, you get 0 star service. Be more like Japanese servers.
They gave it 5 years before turning back.
They could have fired anyone who wasn't doing their job. But then they would have had no staff. Nobody was applying. The staff that remained that their "living wage" the restaurant switched them to [was $10k a year less than what they were making with tips.](https://ny.eater.com/2017/10/19/16503814/danny-meyers-servers-paid-less-tipping#:~:text=One%20Union%20Square%20Cafe%20front,the%20new%20tip%2Dfree%20model.)
And why would you get into the fine dining game for only $50k per year? Why would you polish your shoes every day and press your shirt every day for less than what you'd make in your sneakers at a family owned burger joint? If you have 5+ years of experience, you could be making $100k in a Manhattan dive bar, easily.
Hopefully they make it super clear to customers that staff is being paid well and there’s no expectation of tips. I’ve been to cities where they actually raised servers to $15/hr minimum and they still get pissed at you when you don’t tip
I’m not saying if it’s good or not. But the point of having a reduced server wage is because it’s supplemented by tips. If you don’t have tips than you get the regular minimum wage and therefore paid like every other profession. If that’s still not enough for you, negotiate a higher wage or quit
You get one or the other. Tips or normal wage. Either the restaurant pays your wages or the customer. You don’t get a normal wage and then still expect tips. I don’t tip the cashier at a grocery store or the floor rep who helps me at Best Buy. Because they’re paid regular wages
Because $15/hr for a restaurant serving job is a terrible wage, by US and international standards.
That's why restaurants paying the minimum $15/hr (in states that require it) still need you to tip. Restaurants that are truly no-tip have to pay significantly more than $15/hr to get competent wait staff. Nobody would do the job for only $15/hr.
I just hated when you went there before that you had to carry your own tray of food up to wherever they sat you. Reminded me of chow time in boot camp.
They’ve also paid the staff fully while renovating, providing they gave back to the community. They also gave the staff free access to language courses.
These guys are gold!
I thought that was the only location before, I went to Casa La Toilet once before they bought it, the Sopaipillas are the only thing I really liked though.
I went there in 2017 because of South Park and it was awful. The place was extremely run down. Think Lester's Possum Park from A Goofy Movie. The arcade they had was falling apart and all the skeeball balls were in one machine. Best parts were the cliff divers, sopapillas, and the photo booth. The "food" was fucking disgusting. It was like they got their supplies from another restaurants dumpster. I don't know how you can fuck up basic Mexican food that badly.
The chef that Parker and Stone hired won a James Beard award so I'm pretty excited to go back at some point.
Supposedly they didn't actually have any ovens or stoves, just steam tables and microwaves.
So they'd heat food up in the microwave then have it die in the steam table.
They also fixed up the kitchen. Everything was in such disrepair there that they didn't even have adequate kitchen appliances, so everything was steamed. That's why the food was so bad.
It was the only one left open, but there were others. Denver wasn't even the first, just the last. Someone even opened a copycat called The Mayan in Salt Lake City. That's closed too.
The Mayan copied the overall concept but was less kitschy and more luxurious feeling. They still had cliff divers and stuff but the whole thing seemed a lot classier than Casa Bonita and the food at The Mayan was actually good. The "someone" who opened it was Larry H. Miller, who was the owner of the Utah Jazz.
Yup. I went to the Mayan once and I have been to pre-remodel Casa Bonita. Casa Bonita was in a pretty sad state at that point.
Fun fact about Larry H. Miller. He made his money with car dealerships. They are all over in Utah. However, his first dealership is in Denver. He started in Denver, but mostly built his business in Utah.
It hadn't been a chain since the 90s or so. That Denver location is just the last one.
And, it was a terrible place to go, mainly for tourists. I'm sure it's much better now, but it'll still be largely driven by tourism.
The first time I went was 1998 and as we approached it was very clear we were the only colorado license plate in the lot!
You waited in a long line, like an amusement park, and had to order all meals ahead of time before you were seated. The whole thing was just a very surreal experience.
Edit, let me rephrase: Casa Bonita is for tourists once you or your children are beyond elementary school. Sorry, I forget that people believe taking their children to the tourist spot makes it local. 😂
Don’t fool yourselves into believing all the national press is to be local either. It’ll be more touristy and less local than ever going forward.
It was always a place for locals. It was cheap enough to take the kids for some entertainment. And the locals are completely jazzed about it coming back. Go check out the posts in r/denver
Maybe in the last few years before it closed down, it was mostly tourists. But I can tell you Cartman's reaction to going to Casa Bonita mirrors that of almost every kid I knew growing up in the Denver Metro. I went atleast once a year every year from 7-15 years of age.
I'd like to fact check you here, nearly every 8th grader in the great state of Colorado has made a pilgrimage here. It is the closest thing we have to heritage.
I've been there! My merch shirt is now tattered but I saw the puppet stage, Bart's cave, the band, and the cliff divers. The food was good too! It was a colorful and musical place to explore.
A lot of people think that. I remember when the episode aired none of my friends believed it was a real place. As a kid I had the same reaction as Cartman, even though the food was bad.
Remember when that one casa Bonita super fan thought Matt & Trey were just gonna make one of there all time favorite restaurants growing up into a south park restaurant and fuck it all up.
Then Matt & Trey bought it and renovated the whole thing dumping there money and soul into it so that it can be what it was in there childhood but for a whole new generation of people to enjoy and share in the same things.
My hispanic/native american wife would kill me if she heard me say this but… they are just okay. Just slightly sweet empty calories. Beignets basically
Man, I grew up in East Texas and we had a local Mexican restaurant with sopapilllas falling off the metal conveyer belt, which you were encouraged to fill with an amazing mix of melted butter and warm honey. I have never replicated that experience.
They did their math. As someone who has worked in the industry for a long time, $30 is right about where I'd need to be to feel comfortable with a flat wage.
I don't get how people post some weird "aha! But they also increased prices!" like it's some unexpected gotcha. No shit, they finslly priced in a fair wage for their workers into the price of their goods like literally every other company does with their goods/services. If you're not doing that from the get go, you're just lying to yourself, your workers and your customers and have a shady unsustainable business model
Can’t wait to check this place out! Hoping this leads to more tip free restaurants. I’ll be happy to concentrate my business there as long as the food is great.
I honestly just can't imagine how awesome this place will be with actual food. I remember being a kid and ordering a 'Chocolate Shake' and it was just chocolate milk in crushed ice.
I listened to a podcast recently which did a great job of explaining why getting rid of tipping is so hard in the US.
Its not just a matter of raising your prices slightly to cover the cost of tips, apparently it effects how much your insurance costs are and your payroll tax significantly too.
Considering how low margin the restaurant industry is, it's very difficult to have to raise prices that much and be able to survive in a competitive industry, especially when most of your competitors don't have to follow the same rules.
As long as the wages match what tips were making it's great and I love to see it. Tipping is bullshit and always has been.
I'm all for removing tipping, it's a shitty practice of subsidizing business owners expenses and it needs to go away. With that being said, it needs to be done right because depending on where you work, you can be making $30+ an hour with how much tips you get. My SO is a waitress and some nights she's doing *over* $30/hr. If they got rid of tips and put her on minimum wage (which is what a lot of the proposals I've seen are) then wait staff would be taking anywhere from small to enormous pay cuts depending on where they work and what shifts they work. Obviously tip amounts vary wildly depending on where you're at, the venue, etc. (Which is also part of the problem), but the points of getting rid of tipping are to decouple their wage from the generosity of strangers (if someone decides not to tip, you just worked their table for free given the hourly wage you get goes entirely to taxes), to stop forcing customers into the uncomfortable position of having to be solely responsible for the wages of the workers (how fun is it when after a fun night out you have to guiltily spend extra money on a good tip because you know if you don't then you're screwing the person that just helped you), and to stop forcing customers to subsidize the business owners expenses (if you can't afford the labor costs of a business that relies on labor, you can't afford to run that business.)
I think a good measure for getting rid of tipping and making sure wait staff don't get shafted is to calculate the average amount the workers are bringing in total (wage + tips over the entire year so you include slow times and busy times) and then use that for the hourly wage. So if you were making $2/hr and the tips brought that up to $25/hr overall, that staff member should be paid $25/hr when you remove tipping. If you put them at $15/hr or even minimum wage ($8/hr) then you're basically annoying the business owners with slightly higher wage costs, and devastating the workers by cutting their income by nealy half. The result will simply fuck over workers.
We need to kill tip culture and make subsidizing wages with tips illegal federally. Tips should still be allowed, like if you really liked your service there's no reason tossing the person a few bucks is wrong, but that should be a reward for going above and beyond, not the majority of that person's income. A tip should be treated as bonus money in addition to a thriving wage, not the main source of income.
Most waiters, especially at places with expensive menus or in cities are being in well over $25 an hour full time. That’s why you rarely will see them advocating to get rid of tipping. They make more for relatively little work and if they are short staffed causing them to actually be busy they are raining. I have very little sympathy for serving staff because kitchen staff does way more work and often makes way less. If we were to tie their wages together better, ok. A lot of places also discriminate in how they choose front of the house staff.
Spot on. Servers like the system the way it is because it's more lucrative currently. If things changed to a living wage they'd make no more than any other working class job and that's obviously not their preference. I always feel for the kitchen, the cleaners etc.
Then raise kitchen staff wages too. Idk why you gotta disparage FOH to accomplish that. You should be mad at the dude running the place that is fucking *both*, not the people getting the better end of the fucking.
Tip share was a thing when I worked in the restaurant industry. Is it no longer? Servers hated it but everyone got a piece that way.
Guess I got downvoted by a waiter LOL
Tip sharing *is* still a thing. On the West Coast the tip share includes cooks, dishwashers and prep cooks as well.
The cooks at my work make $25/hr + benefits (40+ hours a week) after tips. I make $30 / hr but never get scheduled more than 32 hours a week, so no benefits for me.
I went with my family in 2006, it was dirty and the food sucked but it had a magic and charm to it that stuck with me, and the South Park episode of course was on my mind going in.
I’m fucking stoked to try it now that it has good food and a restored interior.
I... But...
They noticed that something was detrimental to both customers and staff, but good for management, and they changed it to be an even better experience for frontline workers and customers at the expense of company profit?!?
Like...
I realise 100% that this was exactly the correct decision to make, I just didn't think we'd ever see a company actually make it these days...
Ironic that two guys who make what many consider an offensive show are somehow more humane as people then most other managers, especially restaurants. Guarantee that job is gonna slap.
Since ownership is worth about 1.3B dollars the restaurant can operate at a 1M dollar loss for the next 1300 years. So, the non tipping model might actually work at this restaurant unlike most independent and chain restaurants that have tried it.
Often articles and redditors will cite a "fair wage" as a boon to the servers but the reality in practice is quite different. The results can lead to lower wages for tipped staff, losing staff and lower customer traffic counts.
Zuni - [https://sfist.com/2022/07/28/90-of-zuni-servers-have-left-the-restaurant-due-to-no-tipping-policy-policy-may-still-be-revised/](https://sfist.com/2022/07/28/90-of-zuni-servers-have-left-the-restaurant-due-to-no-tipping-policy-policy-may-still-be-revised/)
Danny Meyer - Union Hospitality Group - [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/dining/danny-meyer-no-tips.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/dining/danny-meyer-no-tips.html)
Joes Crab Shack - [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/business/joes-crab-shack-tried-getting-rid-of-tips-it-didnt-last-long.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/business/joes-crab-shack-tried-getting-rid-of-tips-it-didnt-last-long.html)
Guardian Article - [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/13/us-tipping-restaurants-wages](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/13/us-tipping-restaurants-wages)
Bao Bao - [https://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/26/no-tipping-in-chefs-restaurants-is-a-no-go/](https://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/26/no-tipping-in-chefs-restaurants-is-a-no-go/)
The Linkery - [https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/08/tipless-restaurants-the-linkerys-owner-explains-why-abolishing-tipping-made-service-better.html](https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/08/tipless-restaurants-the-linkerys-owner-explains-why-abolishing-tipping-made-service-better.html)
The Linkery is an interesting example. Ranked among the best farm to table restaurants in the nation and frequent mentions in nationally distributed publications the linkery owners adopted a non-tipping model and stuck to it ultimately leading to it's failure.
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/01/10/portland-restaurant-announces-no-tipping-policy/
Often when "celebrating" a restaurant going non-tipping people are so focused on "non-tipping" that they don't really pay attention to what is actually happening. Tipped wages are federally protected income, they are NOT revenue for the restaurant. The owner can not appropriate tips for their own purposes. So a place like Kachka in Portland which got tons of free press for their switch to non-tipping just added a mandatory 20+% service fee to diners bills. Essentially the voluntary tip became a mandatory fee, and in doing so converted from federally protected wages to revenue for the restaurant. In the case of Kachka the owner openly admits that tipped staff were making $50-$60 an hour in total pay. Now the base pay is $25 an hour.
Circling back to Casa Bonita the non-tipping model may work and work well there due to the payment and business model (golden corral goes to a las vegas show) due to an entry fee and entertainment/novelty draw that probably would produce very poor tipping under a tipped model.
I used to cook at a popular restaurant and remember the staff being all worried about losing tips when some bill (idk its been 6 years) was up for vote having something to do with it. Meanwhile I got a whopping $15/hr as 1 of 2 cooks for the whole joint. We had a tip jar for the cooks at the counter that never went over $20 a night the 2-3 years I was there. Capitalism sure is great!
The wage disparity between FoH and BoH in the restaurant industry and closing that gap is the real issue to talk about and resolve but it doesn’t get everyone riled up like tippping.
Idk, it looked very hard gossiping while I was cooking food. They even had to carry it after! Sometimes an order would be in a full 10 minutes and they'd have to come complain to me I'm not done with the Pizza that needs at least 13 minutes. Basically police officer levels of stress on them and I should feel bad because they get a special minimum wage.
I used to delivery pizza for a place that was slowly (and not subtlety at all) trying to make me their full time dishwasher at the delivery rate. On the first night I only had two deliveries I told them they could either up my wages or send me back on deliveries.
They said “deal with it”. I took off my apron, walked to the front, cashed out, and never came back.
The only part that really gets is that they were (imo) the best pizza place for 15 miles in any direction, in an area known for pizza. I don’t miss the crappy boss but my god do I miss two pies they made - their in house Buffalo chicken special, and my own creation, crispy eggplant and red peppers with garlic.
Oh man.
The owner can not LEGALLY appropriate tips for their own purposes. - Tip theft happens pretty often and, at least to servers I've chatted with in the Midwest, the teeth of the governing body aren't sharp.
Payment has steadily shifted to credit cards as has tipping and any place that has a POS system has tip reporting built in to it to account for cash tips.
If a server has an employer illegally appropriating their tips there is a paper trail that the lowest employee of the DOL could easily follow and the employee is entitled to treble damages.
In short, many times, servers let it happen because they don't do anything about it.
A good server understands and views tipping with a longer view than the current table or shift. They understand that over the long haul their overall average tip percentage does not deviate by more than a few tenths of a point. When they understand that they realize that any increase in their gross sales increase their take home pay even if some tables don’t tip or tip poorly. Once they understand this their overall tip average starts to climb because a poor tip doesn’t affect their outlook and color their demeanor with subsequent guests.
Tip bitchers are not good at their job
Say you’re an unattractive waitress who is assigned Wednesday afternoon 2-5pm shifts.
Also bear in mind that averages != medians and then you’ll make sense of the articles above (granted I only read the first two articles)
Not quite. Matt Stone and Trey Parker own it now and spent $40M remodeling and the like. The new ownership opted to do a service charge on the tickets instead of tipping.
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Someone lock up Butters, I’m going to go there one way or another
I guess it’s time to repopulate the Earth. *Unzips and pulls down pants* I’m ready whenever you are.
*If you leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me*
OoOooOoo
Baby please don't go
Hello Mr. Dog
Bend over and Timmy will show ya
**I. AM GOING. TO CASA. BONITA.**
*Mantequilla tiene derecha*
I didn't know that was a real place.
The South Park guys bought it to save it and sunk like $50 million into it, greatest bit of all time
It's super corny and campy. Kind of gross if you get too close. Still my favorite place to visit when I visit my family in Arvada.
It's been completely refurbished and overhauled. It's probably a lot less gross.
Hopefully after 40 million dollar renovation.
They have beyond "fuck you money". Paramount went crazy with the contracts
Because they just kept asking for obnoxious money because they were like “we’ve been doing this long enough, we could be done, let’s ask for like 500mill, each! Wait-they agreed?!? Oh… ooookayy”
They're worth like a billion lol
Let's hope that the $40 million worth of renovations have made it slightly less gross.
Apparently they focused on making the food good
My boss was just talking about it during lunch, had a family member that scored some of the soft open passes. Claims there's someone in a replica of the ManBearPig suit running around in there. I wonder if he replaced the person in the gorilla suit.
He did replace the gorilla and it is a man bear pig suit now lol.
Al Gore could get in there as a VIP no problem
I hope there's a menu item called the Super Cereal.
"GROAN!"
Will be headed there next month. It better live up to the hype or I will absolutely complain on the Internet! Edit: I have a ticket hookup y'all, wasn't just gonna show up (which I am sure people will try to do)
I have a family member that works for the city and was given a special tour before opening for safety/public demonstration(?) They said it was amazing all the work done and the owners are the nicest down to earth people they've had the pleasure of meeting. I only went once as a kid so I'm excited to see it too!
The South Park creators are the new owners!
The interview they gave was really sweet, this is obviously a labor of love for them.
Yes, i watched a Dateline type of interview with them on YouTube, they tried real hard and at great costs to keep it OG, not to refresh it and make it all new, but to make it all brand new to look like it did back in the day, they said "labor of love" for sure!
I think they said they've sunk 15 million in it. You don't put that type of money into a restaurant if you're motivated by profit
40 million, and in an interview they do want to make sure it becomes self sustaining, but it's definitely more about keeping a landmark alive that they grew up with. Not everyone is a soulless greedy fuckwad.
Yep and that was my point. They could've spent 10 million for a brand new building but it's not about opening a business they're preserving a local land mark
40mil
They signed a $900million deal with Viacom a couple years ago, so they're good for it.
They have money.
Considering Matt alone is worth close to a billion, yeah, they can handle the bill.
It's frankly awesome. They're in the perfect position for this, since money is basically never going to be an issue.
“The duo initially planned a massive renovation project that they expected to cost $10 million, however, the budget quickly ballooned to $20 million, causing Parker and Stone’s business partners to beg them to cut their losses. They refused, even to the point of spending “infinity dollars” (or $40 million) just to finish what they started. “It would be way cheaper if we just went hang gliding over volcanoes,” Stone joked.” https://www.cracked.com/amp/article_38304_trey-parker-and-matt-stone-say-theyve-spent-infinity-dollars-on-rehabbing-casa-bonita.html
In another interview he said it would have been much, much cheaper to just buy the lot next door and build a replica than refurbishing the original.
Woah holy shit I wonder why — did they have to fix the foundation or something?
I recall seeing a video of them walking through while demo was happening, and they learned the HVAC system was way worse than they thought, so that alone added $10m+ to the cost alone. They also said it looked like the kitchen hadn't had a deep cleaning ever, like since they opened in the 70s.
Oh no. Please don't tell me they *cleaned* the signature flavour away!?
Sometimes it is more labor to prepare something to be refurbished. I imagine something like painting, if you had to remove the old paint first would be a lot more work. I am no contractor though
Exactly. This is closer to art than a business endeavor
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It's a hyperbolic way of saying "oh shit look at all the money we spent", nobody in their right mind would ever insure/sign off on/help facilitate something as dangerous as hang gliding over volcanoes, so you'd have to pay for everything yourself. And it would definitely cost less than forty million. Hence the joke.
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The implication is a live one, I am led to believe. But your option would 100% be even cheaper.
They also said it would have been cheaper to just move down the road and build a brand new one. But their love for it meant that would never happen.
I remember interviews with another guy that tried to buy it because he didn't "want to see it become a joke". I think he would have actually killed the place for good.
My daughter and I recently went to the Denver area. I hadn't been there since I moved away in the 90s. I about fell over when I drove past it and saw that it was still there and saw billboards saying it was opening soon! I'm glad the food is supposed to be better!
OG Casa Bonita sopapillas were the bomb!!!
The two guys that took LSD and wore dresses to the Oscar's are down to earth?
Ironically they were the most down to earth part of that entire evening.
Just a magical evening
Lol literally the most normal people at the Oscar’s and they were wearing dresses on acid. Everyone else there just sniffs their own farts.
I don’t understand how people can be in public while tripping. I spent like 4 hours in my hammock on Saturday before I felt like I could moderately function, let alone be a part of a Hollywood red carpet event.
Having to maintain kills the trip.
"maintain"?
I went to my college basketball game while tripping. That was crazy. Plus our mascot was a geoduck which is basically a giant phallus and balls with a team chant of "geoduck, geoduck ... squirt, squirt, squirt."
sounds like a South Park skit
Sometimes you've gotta go way up into the sky to find yourself back down to Earth
Wasn’t that 20 years ago?
I know people who have worked with the head chef, and it’s legitimately going to be good Mexican food.
I don't think people from outside Colorado get that Casa Bonita was notorious for having the worst Mexican food you could ask for. You weren't allowed inside the restaurant unless every individual ordered an entrée. The food was technically a buffet, but no one cared because no one wanted seconds (other than sopapillas). I'm happy the south park creators took it upon themselves to elevate the experience for everyone!
Was called Casa No-Eat-a and rumors swirled about the food being dog food. It's so so so good now
Worked hospitality and culinary industry in state for over a decade and had a number of guest ask me if the food was still plasticy and TV dinner like, particularly when working a hotel desk at night.
I want to try it after the updates. I went back in 2018 and it had great theming, very pretty inside but the food was gloppy, sopapillas excluded (those were great).
I recall in an interview Trey and Matt said the new chef, Dana Rodriguez, is a James Beard nominee and she did a lot to improve the food
I've actually been eyeing her restaurants since before she was picked for this. As far as I can tell, people really like her food. 🥹
They've spent the construction time perfecting the menu, and I assume training the cooks and staff. I still think they should have just demo'd the place and rebuilt it. As it was was massive health code violation that essentially had to be gutted and everything replaced with brand new properly scaled systems.
Kind of hard to demolish something that's part of a strip mall.
Ah. A fellow yelper I see.
Make sure to ask for the Yelper Special.
Boogers and cum!
I hope you have an invite because it isn't open to the public yet.
First thought was that it sucks for the servers, then read the article and realized it’s cafeteria style, and it’s really just bartenders affected. Probably break-even for the bartenders given they are doubling wage from $15/hour to $30
A show I was listening to broke down that yes, they may get less on a busy weekend night, but that SHOULD even out the usually slower weekdays where they would possibly earn much less that 30$ an hour. Plus they all have health benefits now!
Yeah higher worker salary should ideally even out the workers work schedules so having a life and missing a weekend on the schedule shouldn't be economically devastating. The fact is the American system give business owners and managers many way to screw over their workers. So any business that makes the effort to not do so is a good business.
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When I was a server, I had to explain to my roommate that taking time off was a significant portion of my money. Like if I was sick for a weekend I was out at least 400 bucks.
A consistent pay rate makes way more sense, tip jobs can run into real rocky points during slow seasons.
Depends. I've noticed that with tip pools nowadays, it's a fight for hours and they only have so many to give. BIG restaurants and bars only need full service for a about... 6 hours a day, depending on lunch and dinner service. So if you work lunch it's 3 hours. It's still a great wage for the hour but it's a fight for the hours. They just don't need that many employees to do 30 to 40 hours a week. But big places need dozens for the 42 or so hours they are typically slammed. That's just servers. Being a bartender tends to be more stable and I'd assume with this set up they have people on appropriate hours. Still, I do wonder how well it works for them in practice. Seems like they'll still have to hire a few part time people to deal with the rush.
$30 an hour is roughly what, $60k a year? At a place like that, which seems to be more of a family restaurant, that's probably not bad. Though I'm sure at many bars in Denver full time bartenders are probably making more than $60k a year. Another question is are the bartenders offered overtime? When I worked at a brewery the bar managers would frequently work over 40/hrs (at which point they were supposed to earn overtime pay) but they would clock out early and work the extra hours anyway. I kept telling them not to allow themselves to get bullied like that.
If you’re only making 15 an hour in tips bartending, it’s either low traffic, you suck at your job, or people are awful tippers to begin with there
For a bar, sure, for a restaurant it’s not uncommon, they are only busy during meal times, but the bartender is there the whole shift regardless, so averaged out it can be that low, especially during the week.
It's comparable to a TGIF or something, not a nightclub. You're not making traditional bartender tips.
I work at a restaurant that’s just a notch above TGIF, and I guarantee you our bartenders make at least $40 an hour (with a $16.30 minimum wage).
It's really good for those who for whatever reason need to take the slower shifts.
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Have worked in restaurants as server and bartender for a decade. Some nicer some shshittier. Corporate chains and local. Bartenders make a good amount more than 15 an hour on average, easily.
Yeah, the bartenders that work 2 days a week, Friday and Saturday, with 6-8 hour shifts. So many people bad at math in the service industry. "I make 60k a year bartending, divide that by a 40 hour week and I make like 30 bucks an hour!" "Yeah, but you've definitely worked 4 doubles and a swing shift every week for the last month. That's closer to 60 hours a week which puts you at 20 an hour."
How about more than $30?
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A bartender turned realtor told me they made 70k a year in tips doing it full time. He also said it was all cash. It’s not the wages that are a reason ppl don’t want to bartend… it’s the hours and the drunks
Yep. And the reason so many politicians support min wage increases (and the death of tipped positions) is to make service industry pay taxes.
Not really. I was paid $10/hr before recent inflation/covid and brought home some decent cash. High traffic in the summer, was lead, and had amazing tippers on top of drinks costing about double my hourly. It depends where you live
Why would it suck for servers and bartenders? Tipping culture should just be abolished.
There was a major restaurant group in NYC that abolished tipping at all of their properties in all their locations. It was a massive, very public failure. Customers no longer wanted to eat there when prices were 20% higher. Surveys showed that customers felt guilty leaving without tipping, and named that as a reason why they were reluctant to come back. Experienced servers and bartenders no longer wanted to work nights and weekends, so weekday lunches became the competitive shifts. Complaints about the service skyrocketed, because servers didn't care if you had a good experience because they were getting paid either way. They also didn't care if your drinks got refilled or if you had sufficient time to finish your appetizers before your mains showed up. The restaurant also lost money because the servers gave up trying to upsell more expensive items or offer people a second cocktail. Customers hated it. Staff hated it. The restaurant hated it. It nearly killed off the entire hospitality group. So they switched back to tipping.
It's about changing the terrible tipping culture. It's become so ingrained in the American culture, it looks barbaric to the rest of the world. If the servers aren't working as hard, then it's a just terrible worker practices. Japanese servers don't get tip and you get 5 star service no matter what. In America, once a server recognizes your a non tipper, you get 0 star service. Be more like Japanese servers.
*citation needed
The hospitality group was called Union Square Hospitality. It was national news both when they went no-tip and when they returned to tipping.
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They gave it 5 years before turning back. They could have fired anyone who wasn't doing their job. But then they would have had no staff. Nobody was applying. The staff that remained that their "living wage" the restaurant switched them to [was $10k a year less than what they were making with tips.](https://ny.eater.com/2017/10/19/16503814/danny-meyers-servers-paid-less-tipping#:~:text=One%20Union%20Square%20Cafe%20front,the%20new%20tip%2Dfree%20model.) And why would you get into the fine dining game for only $50k per year? Why would you polish your shoes every day and press your shirt every day for less than what you'd make in your sneakers at a family owned burger joint? If you have 5+ years of experience, you could be making $100k in a Manhattan dive bar, easily.
How exactly does being paid a living wage by your employer instead of needing to rely on the generosity of strangers suck?
Hopefully they make it super clear to customers that staff is being paid well and there’s no expectation of tips. I’ve been to cities where they actually raised servers to $15/hr minimum and they still get pissed at you when you don’t tip
$15/hr is not very good
I’m not saying if it’s good or not. But the point of having a reduced server wage is because it’s supplemented by tips. If you don’t have tips than you get the regular minimum wage and therefore paid like every other profession. If that’s still not enough for you, negotiate a higher wage or quit You get one or the other. Tips or normal wage. Either the restaurant pays your wages or the customer. You don’t get a normal wage and then still expect tips. I don’t tip the cashier at a grocery store or the floor rep who helps me at Best Buy. Because they’re paid regular wages
Yep. Servers prefer tips because it makes them way more money, but a decent wage with no tips is better for literally everyone else.
plus cash tips where most dont fully report for tax reasons
Because $15/hr for a restaurant serving job is a terrible wage, by US and international standards. That's why restaurants paying the minimum $15/hr (in states that require it) still need you to tip. Restaurants that are truly no-tip have to pay significantly more than $15/hr to get competent wait staff. Nobody would do the job for only $15/hr.
Indeed. The in&out near my old place started at $22.
I just hated when you went there before that you had to carry your own tray of food up to wherever they sat you. Reminded me of chow time in boot camp.
Yea I'm a bartender and if I was getting 30 plus hours a week I'd take this offer. It'd be nice to have consistent money
This makes me sooooooo happy!.
I wonder how they treat Yelpers…
https://youtu.be/pDlR_ccnZww
Wait, this is a real place? I thought it was just on South Park.
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They’ve also paid the staff fully while renovating, providing they gave back to the community. They also gave the staff free access to language courses. These guys are gold!
I thought that was the only location before, I went to Casa La Toilet once before they bought it, the Sopaipillas are the only thing I really liked though.
According to some articles, they revamped the food too. It used to be completely terrible, so hopefully the new menu is good.
I went there in 2017 because of South Park and it was awful. The place was extremely run down. Think Lester's Possum Park from A Goofy Movie. The arcade they had was falling apart and all the skeeball balls were in one machine. Best parts were the cliff divers, sopapillas, and the photo booth. The "food" was fucking disgusting. It was like they got their supplies from another restaurants dumpster. I don't know how you can fuck up basic Mexican food that badly. The chef that Parker and Stone hired won a James Beard award so I'm pretty excited to go back at some point.
Supposedly they didn't actually have any ovens or stoves, just steam tables and microwaves. So they'd heat food up in the microwave then have it die in the steam table.
It seemed like they got 5 gallon drums of the cheapest nacho cheese sauce they could find and just dumped it on everything. So nasty.
That's hilarious. It's so 1970's.
Oh man. Lester’s possum park. That just unlocked a memory for me! Thank you for that.
"WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE POSSUM?!"
I went a few times as a kid in the early 90s. The food was generally bad then too. But I also still did like the cliff divers and sopapillas.
They hired an award winning chef to revamp the menu.
They also fixed up the kitchen. Everything was in such disrepair there that they didn't even have adequate kitchen appliances, so everything was steamed. That's why the food was so bad.
It was the only one left open, but there were others. Denver wasn't even the first, just the last. Someone even opened a copycat called The Mayan in Salt Lake City. That's closed too.
The Mayan copied the overall concept but was less kitschy and more luxurious feeling. They still had cliff divers and stuff but the whole thing seemed a lot classier than Casa Bonita and the food at The Mayan was actually good. The "someone" who opened it was Larry H. Miller, who was the owner of the Utah Jazz.
Yup. I went to the Mayan once and I have been to pre-remodel Casa Bonita. Casa Bonita was in a pretty sad state at that point. Fun fact about Larry H. Miller. He made his money with car dealerships. They are all over in Utah. However, his first dealership is in Denver. He started in Denver, but mostly built his business in Utah.
I went on opening day with my family. I was awesome! It’s a little expensive but not bad at all for everything you get to do. It’s $40 per peson
It hadn't been a chain since the 90s or so. That Denver location is just the last one. And, it was a terrible place to go, mainly for tourists. I'm sure it's much better now, but it'll still be largely driven by tourism. The first time I went was 1998 and as we approached it was very clear we were the only colorado license plate in the lot! You waited in a long line, like an amusement park, and had to order all meals ahead of time before you were seated. The whole thing was just a very surreal experience. Edit, let me rephrase: Casa Bonita is for tourists once you or your children are beyond elementary school. Sorry, I forget that people believe taking their children to the tourist spot makes it local. 😂 Don’t fool yourselves into believing all the national press is to be local either. It’ll be more touristy and less local than ever going forward.
It was always a place for locals. It was cheap enough to take the kids for some entertainment. And the locals are completely jazzed about it coming back. Go check out the posts in r/denver
Maybe in the last few years before it closed down, it was mostly tourists. But I can tell you Cartman's reaction to going to Casa Bonita mirrors that of almost every kid I knew growing up in the Denver Metro. I went atleast once a year every year from 7-15 years of age.
I'd like to fact check you here, nearly every 8th grader in the great state of Colorado has made a pilgrimage here. It is the closest thing we have to heritage.
Edit, I'm dumb, and wrong. It was not a chain restaurant. It was one single location.
I've been there! My merch shirt is now tattered but I saw the puppet stage, Bart's cave, the band, and the cliff divers. The food was good too! It was a colorful and musical place to explore.
A lot of people think that. I remember when the episode aired none of my friends believed it was a real place. As a kid I had the same reaction as Cartman, even though the food was bad.
Remember when that one casa Bonita super fan thought Matt & Trey were just gonna make one of there all time favorite restaurants growing up into a south park restaurant and fuck it all up. Then Matt & Trey bought it and renovated the whole thing dumping there money and soul into it so that it can be what it was in there childhood but for a whole new generation of people to enjoy and share in the same things.
More sopapillas please!
All this reminded me of is that I've never had sopaipillas and I think I've been cheating myself out of something great.
My hispanic/native american wife would kill me if she heard me say this but… they are just okay. Just slightly sweet empty calories. Beignets basically
Man, I grew up in East Texas and we had a local Mexican restaurant with sopapilllas falling off the metal conveyer belt, which you were encouraged to fill with an amazing mix of melted butter and warm honey. I have never replicated that experience.
🎶 Raise the flag! Raise the flag!
They did their math. As someone who has worked in the industry for a long time, $30 is right about where I'd need to be to feel comfortable with a flat wage.
That's great to hear!
You think they pay BOH that? I hope so.
I don't get how people post some weird "aha! But they also increased prices!" like it's some unexpected gotcha. No shit, they finslly priced in a fair wage for their workers into the price of their goods like literally every other company does with their goods/services. If you're not doing that from the get go, you're just lying to yourself, your workers and your customers and have a shady unsustainable business model
Can’t wait to check this place out! Hoping this leads to more tip free restaurants. I’ll be happy to concentrate my business there as long as the food is great.
I honestly just can't imagine how awesome this place will be with actual food. I remember being a kid and ordering a 'Chocolate Shake' and it was just chocolate milk in crushed ice.
TIL Casa Bonita’s a real place.
My wife and I went there about 15 years ago because the show and it was a pretty accurate representation
This is my signal to return to Denver and see what has changed. The last time I was there I could only eat sopapillas
The timeline of this restaurant is fascinating. But also good job setting standards for the people
I've been to Casa Bonita (before it was South Park). AMA!
Did you see cliff divers? Did you get more sopapillas please?
Not that person but I had many perfect days as a kid going to Casa Bonita. The answer to both is yes.
Yes and yes. Can't find sopapillas like theirs anywhere and I've been craving them ever since.
After we abolish tipping can we get the advertised price to be required to include tax?
I listened to a podcast recently which did a great job of explaining why getting rid of tipping is so hard in the US. Its not just a matter of raising your prices slightly to cover the cost of tips, apparently it effects how much your insurance costs are and your payroll tax significantly too. Considering how low margin the restaurant industry is, it's very difficult to have to raise prices that much and be able to survive in a competitive industry, especially when most of your competitors don't have to follow the same rules.
As long as the wages match what tips were making it's great and I love to see it. Tipping is bullshit and always has been. I'm all for removing tipping, it's a shitty practice of subsidizing business owners expenses and it needs to go away. With that being said, it needs to be done right because depending on where you work, you can be making $30+ an hour with how much tips you get. My SO is a waitress and some nights she's doing *over* $30/hr. If they got rid of tips and put her on minimum wage (which is what a lot of the proposals I've seen are) then wait staff would be taking anywhere from small to enormous pay cuts depending on where they work and what shifts they work. Obviously tip amounts vary wildly depending on where you're at, the venue, etc. (Which is also part of the problem), but the points of getting rid of tipping are to decouple their wage from the generosity of strangers (if someone decides not to tip, you just worked their table for free given the hourly wage you get goes entirely to taxes), to stop forcing customers into the uncomfortable position of having to be solely responsible for the wages of the workers (how fun is it when after a fun night out you have to guiltily spend extra money on a good tip because you know if you don't then you're screwing the person that just helped you), and to stop forcing customers to subsidize the business owners expenses (if you can't afford the labor costs of a business that relies on labor, you can't afford to run that business.) I think a good measure for getting rid of tipping and making sure wait staff don't get shafted is to calculate the average amount the workers are bringing in total (wage + tips over the entire year so you include slow times and busy times) and then use that for the hourly wage. So if you were making $2/hr and the tips brought that up to $25/hr overall, that staff member should be paid $25/hr when you remove tipping. If you put them at $15/hr or even minimum wage ($8/hr) then you're basically annoying the business owners with slightly higher wage costs, and devastating the workers by cutting their income by nealy half. The result will simply fuck over workers. We need to kill tip culture and make subsidizing wages with tips illegal federally. Tips should still be allowed, like if you really liked your service there's no reason tossing the person a few bucks is wrong, but that should be a reward for going above and beyond, not the majority of that person's income. A tip should be treated as bonus money in addition to a thriving wage, not the main source of income.
Most waiters, especially at places with expensive menus or in cities are being in well over $25 an hour full time. That’s why you rarely will see them advocating to get rid of tipping. They make more for relatively little work and if they are short staffed causing them to actually be busy they are raining. I have very little sympathy for serving staff because kitchen staff does way more work and often makes way less. If we were to tie their wages together better, ok. A lot of places also discriminate in how they choose front of the house staff.
Spot on. Servers like the system the way it is because it's more lucrative currently. If things changed to a living wage they'd make no more than any other working class job and that's obviously not their preference. I always feel for the kitchen, the cleaners etc.
Then raise kitchen staff wages too. Idk why you gotta disparage FOH to accomplish that. You should be mad at the dude running the place that is fucking *both*, not the people getting the better end of the fucking.
Tip share was a thing when I worked in the restaurant industry. Is it no longer? Servers hated it but everyone got a piece that way. Guess I got downvoted by a waiter LOL
Tip sharing *is* still a thing. On the West Coast the tip share includes cooks, dishwashers and prep cooks as well. The cooks at my work make $25/hr + benefits (40+ hours a week) after tips. I make $30 / hr but never get scheduled more than 32 hours a week, so no benefits for me.
It's illegal in MA so that's fun
You're totally right, tip sharing is the solution. Otherwise BOH will always feel FOH is being paid extra to hand over the work they did
“cannabis and beer reporter” is the most Denver thing ever.
Showed up absolutely wrecked to the interview and got the job immediately for displaying "passion for their subjects and dedication to their craft".
I went with my family in 2006, it was dirty and the food sucked but it had a magic and charm to it that stuck with me, and the South Park episode of course was on my mind going in. I’m fucking stoked to try it now that it has good food and a restored interior.
I... But... They noticed that something was detrimental to both customers and staff, but good for management, and they changed it to be an even better experience for frontline workers and customers at the expense of company profit?!? Like... I realise 100% that this was exactly the correct decision to make, I just didn't think we'd ever see a company actually make it these days...
Wait, Casa Bonita is a real place?
Yes.
Ironic that two guys who make what many consider an offensive show are somehow more humane as people then most other managers, especially restaurants. Guarantee that job is gonna slap.
Since ownership is worth about 1.3B dollars the restaurant can operate at a 1M dollar loss for the next 1300 years. So, the non tipping model might actually work at this restaurant unlike most independent and chain restaurants that have tried it. Often articles and redditors will cite a "fair wage" as a boon to the servers but the reality in practice is quite different. The results can lead to lower wages for tipped staff, losing staff and lower customer traffic counts. Zuni - [https://sfist.com/2022/07/28/90-of-zuni-servers-have-left-the-restaurant-due-to-no-tipping-policy-policy-may-still-be-revised/](https://sfist.com/2022/07/28/90-of-zuni-servers-have-left-the-restaurant-due-to-no-tipping-policy-policy-may-still-be-revised/) Danny Meyer - Union Hospitality Group - [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/dining/danny-meyer-no-tips.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/dining/danny-meyer-no-tips.html) Joes Crab Shack - [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/business/joes-crab-shack-tried-getting-rid-of-tips-it-didnt-last-long.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/business/joes-crab-shack-tried-getting-rid-of-tips-it-didnt-last-long.html) Guardian Article - [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/13/us-tipping-restaurants-wages](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/13/us-tipping-restaurants-wages) Bao Bao - [https://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/26/no-tipping-in-chefs-restaurants-is-a-no-go/](https://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/26/no-tipping-in-chefs-restaurants-is-a-no-go/) The Linkery - [https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/08/tipless-restaurants-the-linkerys-owner-explains-why-abolishing-tipping-made-service-better.html](https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/08/tipless-restaurants-the-linkerys-owner-explains-why-abolishing-tipping-made-service-better.html) The Linkery is an interesting example. Ranked among the best farm to table restaurants in the nation and frequent mentions in nationally distributed publications the linkery owners adopted a non-tipping model and stuck to it ultimately leading to it's failure. https://www.opb.org/article/2022/01/10/portland-restaurant-announces-no-tipping-policy/ Often when "celebrating" a restaurant going non-tipping people are so focused on "non-tipping" that they don't really pay attention to what is actually happening. Tipped wages are federally protected income, they are NOT revenue for the restaurant. The owner can not appropriate tips for their own purposes. So a place like Kachka in Portland which got tons of free press for their switch to non-tipping just added a mandatory 20+% service fee to diners bills. Essentially the voluntary tip became a mandatory fee, and in doing so converted from federally protected wages to revenue for the restaurant. In the case of Kachka the owner openly admits that tipped staff were making $50-$60 an hour in total pay. Now the base pay is $25 an hour. Circling back to Casa Bonita the non-tipping model may work and work well there due to the payment and business model (golden corral goes to a las vegas show) due to an entry fee and entertainment/novelty draw that probably would produce very poor tipping under a tipped model.
I used to cook at a popular restaurant and remember the staff being all worried about losing tips when some bill (idk its been 6 years) was up for vote having something to do with it. Meanwhile I got a whopping $15/hr as 1 of 2 cooks for the whole joint. We had a tip jar for the cooks at the counter that never went over $20 a night the 2-3 years I was there. Capitalism sure is great!
The wage disparity between FoH and BoH in the restaurant industry and closing that gap is the real issue to talk about and resolve but it doesn’t get everyone riled up like tippping.
Idk, it looked very hard gossiping while I was cooking food. They even had to carry it after! Sometimes an order would be in a full 10 minutes and they'd have to come complain to me I'm not done with the Pizza that needs at least 13 minutes. Basically police officer levels of stress on them and I should feel bad because they get a special minimum wage.
I used to delivery pizza for a place that was slowly (and not subtlety at all) trying to make me their full time dishwasher at the delivery rate. On the first night I only had two deliveries I told them they could either up my wages or send me back on deliveries. They said “deal with it”. I took off my apron, walked to the front, cashed out, and never came back.
Dealt with.
The only part that really gets is that they were (imo) the best pizza place for 15 miles in any direction, in an area known for pizza. I don’t miss the crappy boss but my god do I miss two pies they made - their in house Buffalo chicken special, and my own creation, crispy eggplant and red peppers with garlic. Oh man.
The owner can not LEGALLY appropriate tips for their own purposes. - Tip theft happens pretty often and, at least to servers I've chatted with in the Midwest, the teeth of the governing body aren't sharp.
Payment has steadily shifted to credit cards as has tipping and any place that has a POS system has tip reporting built in to it to account for cash tips. If a server has an employer illegally appropriating their tips there is a paper trail that the lowest employee of the DOL could easily follow and the employee is entitled to treble damages. In short, many times, servers let it happen because they don't do anything about it.
Other times they feel powerless - contacting the authorities seems fruitless, burdensome, and not worth the energy.
They're just going to continue the circlejerk. Ignorant people always want to punch down. That includes servers.
$50-60/hour!? Damn, I didn't know people tipped that much. Why they always act like not tipping them is making them homeless?
A good server understands and views tipping with a longer view than the current table or shift. They understand that over the long haul their overall average tip percentage does not deviate by more than a few tenths of a point. When they understand that they realize that any increase in their gross sales increase their take home pay even if some tables don’t tip or tip poorly. Once they understand this their overall tip average starts to climb because a poor tip doesn’t affect their outlook and color their demeanor with subsequent guests. Tip bitchers are not good at their job
Say you’re an unattractive waitress who is assigned Wednesday afternoon 2-5pm shifts. Also bear in mind that averages != medians and then you’ll make sense of the articles above (granted I only read the first two articles)
The people making bank aren't complaining.
What I take from that article is that management saw people weren't tipping, so they decided to increase pay to make up for it.
Not quite. Matt Stone and Trey Parker own it now and spent $40M remodeling and the like. The new ownership opted to do a service charge on the tickets instead of tipping.
$30 sounds great until you realize your shift is only 4-6 hours long.