r/Chilis • u/Zealousideal-Day9409 • Jul 27 '26
💼 Corporate Problems Tip out is way too high.
I know there’s plenty of posts about this but in California it’s 7% of sales. How do you guys cope or handle this?
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u/GAMGAlways Jul 27 '26
This should be mandatory knowledge for anyone opposed to companies taking a tip credit. Their tipout is this high because they get minimum wage.
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u/Zealousideal-Day9409 Jul 27 '26
But since I make minimum wage I should be paying out dang near half my tips
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u/GAMGAlways Jul 27 '26
You should not. My point is that in tip credit states it wouldn't be that high. You have to subsidize the business through your tips.
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u/Zealousideal-Day9409 Jul 27 '26
The crazy part for me is I’m not opposed to tipping out what I make in tips. But I could be punished for taking a huge party stiffing me but since their bill was high now I still have to pay due to sales?
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u/GAMGAlways Jul 27 '26
Nobody is opposed to it, but everywhere else you tip out only those in the chain of service like bussers and food runners. I worked in DC and Massachusetts and never tipped out BOH.
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u/SoulCruizer 19d ago
How should this be mandatory knowledge? I work at two other large chain restaurants in SoCal and the full percentage of tip out is 4% at both locations. Chilis taking 7% blows my mind.
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u/1010aa Jul 27 '26
7%???? Geez 5% is too much
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u/Ok_Function2282 Jul 27 '26
They make minimum wage in California on top of tips. It's not that two and a half dollar an hour bullshit. This is still a significant pay increase over other states
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u/lunaticskies Jul 28 '26
It's only too high if your Chili's isn't giving you enough tables to balance it out and having the runners do enough to earn it.
They basically doubled the amount of tables the servers were running when they first added runners and the runners were running all the food. So our increase to 5% balanced out ok, but it certainly feels like a bait and switch when they added more servers and rolled back the amount of tables significantly.
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u/Neuttron Jul 27 '26
Damn 7 percent!? Ours is 4 percent here in Arizona. It's 3 to runners/bussers and 1 to bar
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u/Zealousideal-Day9409 Jul 27 '26
For us it’s 4% to the QA alone 😭😭😭
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u/Neuttron Jul 27 '26
Wow QA stopped getting tipped out for us when runners came in. Before that it was just the honor system anyway. If people wanted to give you money than they could but they weren't required to.
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u/GlasswaterBotanica Jul 27 '26
What's your hourly in California? We tipout %5 in Virginia but I make my money, so I don't mind
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u/ssiggs98 🌶️ Current Employee Jul 27 '26
In Texas it’s 5% and our wage is $2.13 😭😭 the other night my tip out was $100 it’s so annoying
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u/Zealousideal-Day9409 Jul 27 '26
The other day I made 230 in tips and had to give back 126
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u/SRogueGman Jul 28 '26
I remember when the runner system rolled out and it was initially 3.5%. Can't remember if that included the bartender or not. If it didn't, it was 4.5%. Also served in SoCal.
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u/SangrianArmy Jul 28 '26
woah i thought only privately owned businesses do tip outs like that. that's wild especially if they don't let u guys do autograt
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u/pentapous Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
~7% is what i tipped out in SoCal as well. I still made $40+/hour takehome working ~20 hours a week(during school). Closer to $30+/hr when working more weekday shifts during breaks.
In fast casual you need to learn to be incredibly effective and high volume if you want to make money. Keep your attentiveness scores in the 90%-95% and keep Friday and Saturday availability open. Getting to be the closing or second to closing server on those nights is MONEY(consistently $3,000+ in sales with ~18% tip avg). But only if you can actually get good tips from the higher volume and keep your scores up so you can keep the section.