Tips not allowed at Bistro on Union Street

By: Antho­ny Zepperi
Octo­ber 21, 2019
The Dai­ly Campus

Bistro on Union Street, locat­ed in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut’s Stu­dent Union, does not allow cus­tomers to tip servers due to a uni­ver­si­ty policy. 

Den­nis Pierce, exec­u­tive direc­tor of UConn Din­ing Ser­vices, said that the rea­son for this was to cre­ate sym­me­try with the oth­er com­pa­nies on campus. 

“Sev­er­al years ago the change was made to be con­sis­tent with sev­er­al areas of din­ing that already had a no tip­ping pol­i­cy in place for many years,” Pierce said. He said that this pol­i­cy has been around since August of 2016. 

These areas are the Dairy Bar and UConn’s cater­ing bar­tenders, accord­ing to Pierce. 

He said that UConn imple­ment­ed this pol­i­cy just as there was an increase in the hourly wage of the restaurant’s wait staff. Stu­dent employ­ees also receive free meals. 

Jack­ie Riberdy, an employ­ee at the Bistro on Union Street, said that the pol­i­cy was cre­at­ed for eth­i­cal pur­pos­es because a tip can be seen as a form of bribery. 

“We are state employ­ees and peo­ple are not able to bribe the employ­ee,” Riberdy said. 

Riberdy said servers at Bistro cur­rent­ly make a lit­tle above min­i­mum wage. 

“If we were work­ing in an actu­al restau­rant, we would be mak­ing a lot more mon­ey,” Riberdy said. 

Riberdy said she does not like that she can’t be tipped com­pared to oth­er employees. 

“I don’t think there is much inter­est and it is so sil­ly to me that tip­ping is seen as bribery by cus­tomers,” Riberdy said. “It would only ben­e­fit col­lege stu­dents and not the employees.”