Nearly every Bangkok restaurant, from the little guys up to the massive chains, charge you 10 percent on top of your bill for “service.” But where does that money go?

 

After some digging (and a lot of cornered waiters), we believe most venues do distribute at least a portion of that surcharge to their staff. Considering the average base salary for restaurant wait staff is between B10,000-15,000, that’s a good thing. But it could be a whole lot better.

 

It’s rare to find a place which gives the full 10 percent to staff: a majority of waiters and restaurant owners told us that roughly four percent will be divided between employees in both the front and back of house, with the rest being used for restaurant maintenance (broken dishes, replacing glasses) and utility costs (power and water).  

 

One steep-mark-up Japanese kaiseki restaurant we questioned admitted to only paying its kimono-wearing staff two out of the 10 percent they add to the bill, and that the rest (eight percent) goes to providing each staff member one meal per day as well as restaurant maintenance and even the delicate fresh flower displays. One of the waitresses also told us that personal tips are forcibly collected, and she is doubtful whether that money gets distributed among staff.

 

We found an even worse situation in a Japanese dessert cafe with various mall branches, where none of the service fee charged to diners goes to staff members. While they definitely charge an extra 10 percent on your bill for service, an HR officer, when questioned, said, “There’s no service charge here.We only give ‘incentives’ to staff if we can reach our monthly target sales.”

 

On the fine dining side, a very big-name French chef guarantees each of his staff B9,000 a month in service charge. Though one waitress we spoke to wouldn’t say exactly how much she gets, she did say that what she receives in service charge usually eclipses her base salary. The staff at another French fine-dining place informed us that since the restaurant was new, they didn’t get a total cut of service money, but she was positive management would up the amount if the restaurant were breaking even. 

 

In large hotels, we found a similar approach. The waiter at one hotel’s Thai fine-dining restaurant said that over half of the money goes directly to staff. And we heard the same story at the restaurant spin-off of a well-known TV show which pinched all its waiters from the hotel industry. “Service charge is shared to everybody in the restaurant after maintenance costs are deducted, which vary every month,” they told us.

 

At a large Thai restaurant chain, we were also told about six percent goes to staff: “There are costs we need to cover. I use my own calculation and give out four percent to the staff, take two for restaurant maintenance and keep two to pay out staff bonuses at the end of the year.”

 

Six percent is better than two percent. But are we alone in thinking that diners expect the entirety of service charge to go to employees—not to the owner’s electricity bill? Some restaurateurs agree. “It’s the same as the fee you pay mechanics when they fix your car,” said one Thai chef-owner with a restaurant in the Old Town and who distributes all the charge to his staff. 

 

The owner of an Asoke brunch institution also executes the same policy, sharing the whole amount of service charge to every one of its staff members, including part-timers. “This is to help pay our staff fairly without having to up the food price,” he said, adding that service charge money should act as an incentive that encourages staff to do better. 

 

Even if the money goes to staff, service charge (and displaying prices without tax, a practice practically unique to the food and beverage industry) makes prices all the more confusing. There are still people in the business who are hesitant to charge their diners a compulsory service charge. One wine-and-dining chain which just began charging for service at its fourth branch said: “We didn’t have service charge because we were new to the scene and not confident enough to charge the same rate as five-star hotels.” But the days when “plus plus” was only to be expected at fancy hotels are now long gone.

 

Legally, there’s no law or regulation governing how much a restaurant can charge for service, or how that money should be used. But after talking to this city’s restaurateurs and waiters, we were left quite certain that only about half of what we pay on top of our meals is going to the right people.