No Tipping Policy Will End At These Brooklyn Restaurants

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN -- Local restaurateur Andrew Tarlow -- who created buzz years ago when his Brooklyn eateries joined the gratuity-free movement -- is back in the headlines. But this time, it's for rolling that policy back.

Tarlow announced to Eater that he will begin accepting tips again on Dec. 17 at Roman's in Fort Greene and his Williamsburg restaurants, Diner and Marlow. The change comes just about three years after he first rolled out the gratuity-free model at the Fort Greene spot, and later at all three.

The roll-back doesn't seem to be because Tarlow has changed his mind about the movement, though. Tarlow said in his statement that the "challenges and inequalities" in the industry that led him to try out the model still exist, but admitted that higher prices to accommodate eliminating tips have made it difficult to sustain.

"It's become impossible to ignore that removing tips has created new challenges that we are unable to solve, chiefly that prices have hit a peak that the market cannot bear. In order for a Gratuity Free model to be sustainable for casual full-service restaurants like ours, the public has to buy in, and as an industry we struggle with communicating to consumers the true cost of dining out."

Eater reported that menu prices, as with many restaurants that try out the no tipping model, went up as much as 20 percent since Tarlow joined the movement back in 2015. He joins a list of NYC restaurant owners who have tried and then abandoned the policy, though there are still many that remain gratuity free, the article noted.

Tarlow said he still believes in the values that motivated the movement, pointing to the gap between "front and back of house wages," or workers who receive tips and those who do not. He also cited the desire to not pass half the burden of paying staff onto the guests.

But, he ultimately resolved to seek out other solutions to these and other issues facing the industry that would be more "socially and economically equitable."

"Ultimately, we ended up serving an ideal at the expense of taking care of our staff, which is a trade-off I did not fully anticipate and am unwilling to make," he said.

Photo from GoogleMaps.