Will a minimum wage bump for servers change tipping in Ontario?

TORONTO -

Ontario announced the minimum wage for bartenders and servers will jump from $12.55 to $15 per hour on Jan. 1. 

Currently, the minimum wage for this group of workers is lower because they receive "tips or other gratuities as part of their work," according to the province's minimum wage breakdown. 

But in the New Year, their baseline salary will increase nearly $3. 

Will tipping change too?

"The way that I look at gratuities as a server is as a service charge, an undefined service charge," Matt Martineau, who has been a server for over a decade in downtown Toronto, told CTV News Toronto. 

"Did your server refill your water? Pack up your food? Does your server go through a bunch of modifications with you? Did the server go through the menu in detail with you? Did the server give extra care to your child?"

In essence, Martineau said, "You're getting a full experience."

While a 15 per cent tip, or higher, has become standard in Ontario, that's not the case in many other places. In some countries, such as Spain and Australia, gratuities are not expected.

"To me, tipping is part of the culture here," said Martineau. "I think people also have to understand that $15 an hour, even for a regular base minimum wage in a city like Toronto, still doesn't match up to what you need in order to survive in the city."

As an industry long-timer, Martineau said he would never work as a server solely for minimum wage, unless, at bare minimum, he was making $25 an hour – $10 above Ontario's minimum wage hike.

If tipping diminishes, Martineau worries bartenders and waiters with ample experience will dwindle and alongside, high quality service in Ontario will too. 

"Are you going to spend $350 on a nice coat that's going to last you four or five years or are you going to go to Walmart and buy one for $49.99 and it's going to fall apart after two months? You get what you pay for."

'HAVE FAITH'

"If tipping got eliminated, I wouldn't want to be in the industry anymore," said Carmen Householder, who works as a bartender and a waitress at a restaurant in Bloorcourt Village. 

Just based on tipping, Householder said she could make between $20 and $30 per hour. 

But inevitably, there is a wide range when it comes to gratuities and Householder said she could foresee consumers on the lower end of the spectrum entirely eliminating the practice. 

However in her eyes, this one group of patrons won’t severely impact the industry as a whole. 

"It would be painful for people to say you're making $15 an hour, I don't need to tip you," Householder said. "But I have faith in people to realize the state of the world."

'IT'S INEXCUSABLE'

When Premier Doug Ford announced proposed changes to the province's minimum wage, the industry directly impacted by the shift was shocked, including Todd Barclay, president and chief executive officer of Restaurants Canada.

"What other industry that employs 450,000 people in the province wouldn't be consulted?" Barclay asked. "It's inexcusable."

In the context of tipping, he's concerned about the ripple effect the minimum wage change will have on the industry.

If restaurant owners can't afford to pay their staff more, they will either have to hike the price of food for customers or shutdown in the most desperate of situations. 

If consulted, Barclay said he would have pushed for the province to financially support business owners who now bear the responsibility of paying employees a higher wage.

Echoing that sentiment, Larry Isaacs, President of the Firkin Group of Pubs, said he worries that if there isn't enough profitability in a business, large-scale changes could unravel across the sector.

"There are a lot of unknowns right now about how the consumers are going to respond, about how owners of restaurants are going to respond," Isaacs said. 

"We hope consumers don’t take it out on the servers….but desperate times call for desperate actions."