Observations from a Tipless Restaurant
Back when I lived in San Diego I took my parents to the Linkery. The service was so bad it actually reversed my opinions against tipping. The servers clearly didn't care much about making us happy, messing up almost every aspect of the order. They put meat in my food - I'm vegetarian. My father got his food 20 minutes after my mother and I did. The waiter forgot one of my drinks. We called over the manager who offered us a free dessert to make up for it. Guess what? The dessert was on the bill. I'm always happy to tip 20+% for good service, but being forced (yes, we asked) to pay the service charge added insult to injury.This is just one data point, but the Linkery was infamous around San Diego for having much worse service than other places in a similar price range. I'm convinced their experiment with tipping was correlated with this.