Restaurant Adds 23 Percent Service Fee To Help Pay Servers

CHARLOTTE — A full-time job advertisement looking for restaurant servers says they will be paid between $21 an hour and $35 an hour and receive competitive benefits such as a 401(k) plan, bonuses and paid vacations.

Leah & Louise, a recently opened restaurant in Charlotte’s Camp North End, put the ad out as part of the “BayHaven Pledge,” an effort from their parent group that supports better benefits and higher salaries for its employees, the Charlotte Business Journal reported.

But it comes with a twist: a 23 percent service fee added to every order.

The service fee will replace traditional tipping, the restaurant stressed on its Facebook page. Guests will still be allowed to give an additional tip if desired, the restaurant owners told the Business Journal.

Of the 23 percent service fee added to the bills, 21 percent will go to servers and hostesses to ensure they make a living wage, while the other 2 percent will support kitchen staff and managers, according to a WSOC report.

Greg and Subrina Collier, founders of the BayHaven Restaurant Group that formed last year and have a goal to create 10 new restaurant concepts over the next decade, told the Business Journal they are looking to transform the restaurant industry with the new business model.

“We’ve always tried to find ways to make it better,” Greg Collier said. “What we hope is it creates a sustainable hospitality industry.”

“We want to make sure our staff is treated as well as we treat our guests,” he added.

It could also be seen as a way to combat the recent nationwide restaurant industry problem of finding people to hire amid the coronavirus pandemic.

About 90 percent of restaurant owners expect it will be more difficult to hire employees after the pandemic than before it began, according to the restaurant association's latest update on the industry's attempted recovery from the pandemic.

"This is a large contributor to why more than half of full service operators and 42 percent of limited-service operators polled are unable to open at the maximum-allowed capacity and grow back their business — they do not have enough employees to staff the restaurant," Hudson Riehle, the National Restaurant Association's senior vice president, said in a statement in May.

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Leah & Louise’s service fee will go into effect on July 15.