CW investigates the service charge and tipping culture

In a country where tipping servers at restaurants is not the norm, I’ve always wondered about the service charge that appears on some fine dining menus. Should we or should we not tip? And does the added 15 percent for service actually go to the waitstaff?

Alex Chen, Director of Sales at The Opposite House, says that an added fee should reflect the quality of the waitstaff: “Personally, I don’t mind paying a service charge if the service is great. That fee goes to the staff and ongoing training to make sure that we maintain our level of service.”

Service standards are definitely improving in Beijing. However, whether or not a service charge has played any role in this is another issue. Apart from the expertise of your waiter, it’s still unclear where this added cost goes.

Over at Brasserie Flo, General Manager Jimmy Loh expressed his uncertainty on whose pockets these fees actually end up in. “How can you be sure it goes to the employee? I would say 90 percent actually goes to the company. We refuse to do it, and instead split one percent of our revenue among our servers.” Jimmy also says that it’s not just high-end Western restaurants that have service charges these days. “Recently in Beijing, I’ve noticed even some Chinese restaurants have a service charge. I’ve even been charged for take-away boxes!”

Kevin Wang, server staff captain at Aria, shared his waiter’s perspective: “I think the service charge is a confusing policy for my guests. We don’t have one at Aria. We share any tips we get every two months or so among all of the servers. Western people always ask about tips, and I tell them ‘feel free to do whatever you want.’” Tip, service charge or not, Kevin goes by the “customer comes first mantra.” “Whether or not we get tips, our main role is to make customers happy and do our job right,” he concludes.