More on Gratuities - help please

InfamousQBert

After everyone said that their catering gratuity was worked into the bill, I looked over our contract and asked them. There is no gratuity included in our contract at all.

SO, my next question is, do you know how much your waiters were getting paid, pre-gratuity? Was their hourly wage listed? If you don't mind sharing, I'd really appreciate it.

Conversely, if their wage is typical and we still should provide a gratuity, is that based off the WHOLE catering bill (which includes our party rentals) or just the food & beverage portion?

Thanks!

bsn1752

I'm not having servers, but I'm having station attendants.  I know that the 20% is on top of food and beverage for mine.

InfamousQBert

We have 5 servers that will be both station attendants and drink servers (champagne, etc). They're getting $30 per hour according to our contract. I've never done a catering job, but I was a regular server at a restaurant and if I'd gotten $30 to do something, I would have been THRILLED and assumed that was my pay, no tip expected. I don't know if I'm way off-base here, though.

DFWIndian

Normally if you give a tip you give it to the venue. They would divide it up the way they see fit. We have a 22% grat. If you do do it, then you probably want to just add it to the cost of food and beverage not everything.

bsn1752

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_texas-dallas-ft-worth_gratuities-please?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:102Discussion:0c216bdc-8e6d-49f0-9b49-92565eaf6ecfPost:2e599d0f-85ee-4bd8-ad94-29143bf2daf9">Re: More on Gratuities - help please</a>:
[QUOTE]We have 5 servers that will be both station attendants and drink servers (champagne, etc). They're getting $30 per hour according to our contract. I've never done a catering job, but I was a regular server at a restaurant and if I'd gotten $30 to do something, I would have been THRILLED and assumed that was my pay, no tip expected. I don't know if I'm way off-base here, though.
Posted by InfamousQBert[/QUOTE]

WHOA!  They're getting paid $30.00 an hour??

If you break it down... let's say your catering bill is $5,000.  20% of that is $1,000.  Split between 5 servers is $200 each.  If you take 15% of 5,000, that's $750 which means each would get $150.

If you have 5 servers for 4 hours at $30.00 each, then they'll be making $120.  If you have them for 5 hour, they would make $150 each.

What's your catering total (food and beverage) come to?

serlace

We are paying our servers $25/hr. plus an 18% service fee on top of that.  Damn fees are eating us alive!  That being said, I am appreciative and by no means do I think we should not tip our servers. 

InfamousQBert

the food and beverage total is only 1171.25 currently (only 50 guests). we've spent between $300-$400 on beverages ourselves, so, service wise, that would be included in the tippable amount. so, we'll round up and say $1500.00.

they're there for 7 hours because our caterer does all the party rentals themselves, so these are both the delivery/set-up/clean-up people and the waiters. do you see why i'm getting confused?

i'm not trying to get out of tipping if it's apprpriate, i promise. i worked for tips for many years. i'm just trying to figure out if our catering company is doing things the same way most of them do. that hourly amount seemed like a lot to me, but, like i said, i never did catering, just regular restaurant work, where you ONLY get your tips (essentially).

bsn1752

20% of your total bill would be around $235.  I would talk to your caterer to find out what you're supposed to do, especially considering how much you'll be paying the servers.

Terriniski

The owner of our catering company told us that servers were paid $22.50 per hour, and therefore tipping was optional.  If we chose to tip, based on our satisfaction with the service, she recommended between $25-$100 per server.  So we did it on a $ basis rather than a percentage.  I can't remember what we decided.

tam427

Our servers are getting paid $125 ea for the whole night (2 servers) and our service charge is $500. A little on the high end, I know...