Its a double edged sword, but at last the wait staff get tips. (Sucks to be a bus boy, host, etc.

1. A lot alot of business dont report tips - which semi benefits them as well as employees, but also probably means less of a tax return because of less claimed income.
2. This also means that alot of businesses - mostly food sector - can make servers end up skipping their breaks and lunches and working early and later hours for prep and closing where you cant make any tips. (Surprisingly, no one wants to close.) Because you are getting paid-under-the-table by not reporting tips, you have to tolerate missing your lunches and breaks. (Very shitty.)

The upside though is that if you are extroverted, outgoing, attractive, charismatic or any combination of those you will probably make at least double the minimum tipped wage of where you work at least. Ive known servers to easily rake in 75k a year and not much of that ends up getting taxed if its cash tips, so you effectively are making more than 75k. (For instance $13 an hour untaxed is close to $17?)

But what about the rest of the workers who dont fall into any of those categories and people either stiff them or dont tip much for whatever reason? You are working a job with those existing negatives of prep, close, not getting your breaks and lunches, etc.

There is the Seattle approach where some restaurants just got rid of tipping and added a 20% gratuity that was shared with the staff. (This is when Seattle made the minimum wage 15$ regardless of wait staff or not.)

Some staff liked it, but as you can imagine others didnt. (Probably the ones who would have made more money with tips based on various characteristics.) The downside to that is prices when up with basically all the restaurants, and this was before the pandemic and inflation.

If you were a family of 4 with a budget of 40$ including the tip, you probably cant go out anymore. Dining out becomes a privilege of the upper middle class with the exception of places like Steak-N-Shake or fast food.

At some point there's gonna have to be a massive change to how the restaurant industry works.