Durham restaurant adding 20% ‘fair wage service fee’ to every bill
DURHAM, N.C. (WNCN) — A restaurant in Durham said it’s now paying employees a fair wage, but that means some customers could be left with a bigger bill.
Pizzeria Toro added a 20 percent gratuity to every bill for dine-in customers, along with a message saying seen and unseen hourly wage workers are the backbone of the restaurant.
Gray Brooks is a chef and one of the owners of Pizzeria Toro. He said some prep cooks and dishwashers had to work two jobs.
He sees the fee as a way to close the wage gap between staff who traditionally did not make tips and those who did.
“The restaurant business is such a slim margin business, we were paying them as much as we could and it wasn’t enough,” Brooks said. “This was a way to sort of take that extra income and spread it out so that everybody was making enough to make a living.”
Brooks said a living wage to him means enough money to pay bills, with a little leftover every week.
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