[juanbenae]

Originally Posted by masraum

I doubt it. If that's what was going on it would be govt mandated and everyone would be doing it.

I do think there are 2 goals. I think it is a way for the restaurant to pay the servers/employees more without driving the customers away with much higher prices and also a way to somehow get out of other additional costs associated with being an employer. I don't know the employer side of things, but I suspect there's a difference in cost for an employer that pays an employee 50k vs paying an employee 35k + 15k of redistributed fees. Hell, the restaurant may even call it "tips" at the end of the year when they tell the IRS.

Wonder if the joint was a corporate chain or a brick and mortar ma & pop?