On 2013-05-17 18:04:58 +0000, sf said:

> AFAIC, my tip is for the server and I would be LIVID if I heard it
> went to the owner. The owner should put a service charge on each
> meal, not expect customers to tip and then steal it from his waitstaff

Last year I had a waitress in Paris explain some complicated
calculation/process/scam by which the owner got the bulk of all tips.
Heard it again, in a different but just as convoluted process in NYC
two years before. In both cases they said that the process was
ubiquitous throughout both towns. I lost track of the particulars but I
seem to recall they were quite different in mechanism, but identical in
result: vastly diminished tips.

Battali got sued and lost over a similar issue recently:

http://tinyurl.com/6o7cacr