Jill Petersen waits tables at a Somerville restaurant that could be a template for the future. The menu at Juliet indicates that service is built into the price of a meal, so, unlike most waitresses, Petersen earn no tips.
“I don’t have to worry about how I’m getting paid,” said Petersen, “so I can talk to people as if they’re real people rather than an immediate source of income.”
Workers at Juliet, from the servers to the kitchen staff, all make at least $15 an hour. It’s higher than Massachusetts’ $12 an hour minimum wage and eclipses the “tipped wage” restaurants are required to pay servers — $4.35 an hour.
Juliet co-owner Joshua Lewin said the upfront costs of paying servers far more than the industry standard are significant, but there’s a payoff.
“We’ve actually saved quite a bit on efficiency because we’re not always training new staff,” said Lewin. “We’re able to achieve so much more through our service and our hospitality and our level of cuisine, because that well-trained staff is always here and always working on something new instead of maintaining that kind of baseline.”
The restaurant’s doing so well, there are plans to open a second one. And, as he makes his mark on the local food scene, Lewin is also pushing to make a key aspect of his business model the norm. He’s advocating for legislation that would require all restaurants in Massachusetts to pay wait staff the prevailing minimum wage.
Backers say the measure would help eliminate on-the-job harassment, but critics say upending the established system will hurt both restaurant owners and servers.
“It would dramatically increase the cost, and that would have to be passed on to the consumer and menu prices would have to be raised dramatically,” said Bob Luz, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. “And the consumer stops coming in every time the menu price goes up.”
Working for tips, said Luz, often enables servers to earn more money than anyone else in the restaurant.
There’s also evidence that not all servers want to change the way they earn money. A referendum in Maine to replace the tipped wage with the minimum wage was overturned two years ago amid protests from waitstaff.
In Massachusetts, servers already have an important protection: a law that requires restaurant owners to make up the difference if a server ends up making less than minimum wage.
But advocates argue raising servers' wages is about more than the bottom line.
“It’s about the power dynamic it creates where tipped workers are, just, they’re at the mercy of everybody else,” said Marie Billiel, who worked as a waitress for 10 years.
Billiel said that in the quest for tips, she routinely endured harassment from customers, managers and the guys in the kitchen.
“I got grabbed by the wrist and dragged to the back of the kitchen while a cook demanded that I kiss him, got shut in the walk-in cooler. And these were all pretty par for the course,” she said. “But if we reported it, ultimately what they would do is not make your [food] orders.”
Billiel now works with Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which advocates for higher server wages nationally. The organization argues that in this #MeToo movement, servers, who are often female, shouldn’t have to depend on tips for their income.
Jill Peterson said working conditions at Juliet in Somerville are the best she’s experienced. But she said it’s also possible that she could make more money somewhere else.
“I think it depends on the restaurant, whether or not it’s going to more or less lucrative with tips,” said Petersen. “It just kind of depends on where you’re working.”
Whatever happens on Beacon Hill, servers in Massachusetts will get at least a slight raise. By 2023, their hourly pay will creep up to $6.75 an hour.
