When you dine out, what happens to a tip you leave?
Following a long-running controversy about how customers’ tips were handled in Dublin’s Ivy restaurant several years ago, another bone of contention about fairness there has arisen.
This time things are getting hot in the kitchen of the popular Dawson Street restaurant in Dublin, one of 44 outlets of a UK chain spun out of the original famed Ivy restaurant in Mayfair.
A policy on handling credit card tips in the Dublin restaurant over the past three years saw bubbling resentment among chefs and kitchen porters reach boiling point in September. For over a year, kitchen workers were the only staff in The Ivy who didn’t get a cut from customers’ tips by card.
RM Block
They’ve just started getting a token share, but chefs and kitchen porters are frustrated by what they see as unfairness.
Diners in The Ivy leave about €20,000 in tips by card each week, and 70 per cent of that – plus all cash tips – now goes to waiters. “The system for sharing tips is grossly unfair”, so that waiters can earn over three times as much as chefs, says “Jorge”, a senior employee at the restaurant who has spoken to The Irish Times.
Following a long-running controversy, the law changed in December 2022 and hospitality staff are now legally entitled to keep tips and service charges.
[ The waiters who took on the Ivy restaurant – and wonOpens in new window ]
At The Ivy, waiters have kept their tips in full since then. Following staff disgruntlement about this, in August 2024 waiters agreed to share 30 per cent of card tips with other departments that contribute to diners’ experience. Waiters still keep cash tips in full.
This 2024 agreement, overseen by Ivy’s London head office, signed by individual waiters and seen by The Irish Times, specifies that 30 per cent of tips left by card go to other staff: 25 per cent to managers, 20 per cent to runners, 30 per cent to bar staff/still room, 15 per cent to back waiters, 10 per cent to reception, etc – but excluding those in the kitchen, who make the food.
Customers deserve to know where their tips are going. Staff deserve to be treated equally
— “Jorge”, a senior employee at the restaurant
We have seen an in-house spreadsheet documenting the complicated weekly distribution of over €21,000 in card tips one week in September, before kitchen staff started to receive token amounts. In the sample spreadsheet, most waiters appeared to receive €500 to €700 each from card tips, on top of their wages and cash tips, and some waiters got over €1,000 top-up.
The remaining 30 per cent of card tips was shared among other colleagues: bar staff got €60-€80 (some up to €151) each for the week. Managers’ tips share was €300-600 each, with one topping €1,000. Backwaiters mainly €60 to €80, runners €50-€100, reception €150-ish, per person in a week. Kitchen staff did not get a share at all at that point.
This means, says Jorge, that waiters can earn more than three times what a chef earns, while chefs and kitchen porters (KPs) get wages only, so their earnings are far less than other staff. Jorge, who doesn’t want to use his real name, said the current system for sharing tips is “like a discrimination against the very team that works long, demanding hours to prepare every dish for customers”.
The Ivy Collection is opening a second restaurant nearby on Dawson Street on November 7th, The Ivy Asia, serving Asian-inspired dishes. In response to queries, Ivy Asia says there will not be a service charges on bills, and that “gratuities directly provided to a server are kept by the server” (minus a 5 per cent admin fee on card tips).
At The Ivy, chefs are paid €14 to €20 an hour, and KPs (washing and scrubbing pots; seen as the toughest restaurant job for the least money) €13.80-€15, Jorge estimates, while waiters get at least minimum wage, ranging from €13.80 to €18 – but cash and card tips bring waiters’ earnings way up, well above chefs’ earnings.
Finally at the end of September, following kitchen complaints and departures, a small proportion of money from card tips went to the kitchen. Jorge says 48 chefs and KPs got card tip shares ranging from €17 to €28 each that week, whereas other departments’ staff got considerably larger amounts.
What the kitchen staff regard as very small, unfair shares in the tip distribution continued through October (managers getting up to €550, bar-staff up to €300, waiters up to €1,250 each a week on top of base wages, while kitchen staff got up to €44 a week).
Jorge’s concern is for his many lower paid colleagues, and the lack of fairness. By late September Jorge estimated 29 back-of-house staff (chefs and kitchen porters) had left The Ivy because of this over the past six months.
Another staff member, a chef who left recently after working at the restaurant for a couple of years, has a similar tale. “Peter” says there is a lot of pressure and staff don’t feel supported, but tips are the biggest issue for kitchen staff.
Realising that “a floor manager got €1,500 from tips, while kitchen staff got nothing” was “very frustrating”. He says there has been a lot of coming and going over the past year.
Some chefs have worked out their notice, he says, and others left suddenly. He recalls one line chef who “went on his break and never came back”.
The Ivy was queried regarding the card tips system, specifically where kitchen staff are excluded. The query was relayed from Dublin to The Ivy’s head office in London, but it declined to make any comment.
Jorge added: “Customers deserve to know where their tips are going. Staff deserve to be treated equally.”
