Red Robin Will Offset Minimum Wage Hikes by Canning Busboys

New York Post ^ | January 8, 2018 | Lisa Fickenscher

[nickcarraway]

Restaurant busboys, in line to earn a little more dough this year as minimum wage hikes hit across the country, are instead losing their jobs as chains look to cut costs.

One chain axing jobs is Red Robin, which hopes to save about $8 million this year by eliminating busboys at each of its 570 restaurants, the company said Monday.

Red Robin restaurants are located mostly in Western states, where the minimum wage has risen more quickly.

[FrdmLvr]

No, the waitresses can bus, the food runners handle the food. Ive never understood places who use food runners anyway. Why can’t the waiter or waitress do it? Food runners never know who has what when they come to your table. When I waitressed, back in the day, we did it all, including bussing most of the time and making the salad, plating desserts, etc.

[Ouderkirk]

NOw the food will be even colder that it already was the last time I ate there.

I will never go back to Red Robin because of the cold food, and this only cements that position.

[Fiji Hill]

I've worked in restaurants that did not use busboys. More work for the waitresses/waiters, but when all cooperate helping each other out, and the bartenders jump in when needed and not busy it works well enough.

My concern is that those who are handling dirty dishes are also handling my food. To they make sure that whoever handles food washes his hands after busing tables?

[Teflonic]

Do they make sure that whoever handles food washes his hands after busing tables?

There is no way to enforce hand washing in the chaos of restaurant operation. Just like anything else there are the fastidious employees that constantly wash their hands and there are those who do not.

[loveliberty2]

Professor and Dr. Walter Williams has been writing and speaking on the "cruelty" and ineffectiveness of minimum wage laws as a way to fight poverty for decades.

The Progressive meme on "minimum wage" is both misleading and a deliberate political tool of people like the Clintons and the Schumer/Pelosi pair in order to get votes in order to gain power over the very people they claim as subjects.

[Sam Gamgee]

They think something akin to that. That there is an endless supply of rich people willing to part with their money.

[Sam Gamgee]

Ontario here in Canada is openly engaged in a propaganda fight against the company Tim Hortons. Ontario approved a $15 minimum wage, totally ignoring the business leaders it consulted. It seems $15 is a CASH wage only. So the Horton boys threatened to cut benefits, which would make the raise meaningless. So now the state (Ontario) has called them bullies and is running a hot line to report any other business that “bullies” its employees over minimum wage.

[Cold Heart]

kiosks are for ordering, not food prep or delivery.

[Hawthorn]

>> Thats gonna hurt canning is brutal <<

Yep, it’s inhumane, and even fatal. First you boil, then seal up the container.

Furthermore, it makes no difference whether the container used for the process is tin or glass.

(On the other hand, if you take that second “enn” away, the process still can hurt a lot — but it ain’t always fatal.)

[moehoward]

“The wait staff does not have to give a share of tips to the non-existing busboys, either, so it’s a win for them. ”

An excellent point.

Red Robin already has little iPad type devices on the tables to pay your bills. It wouldn’t take much to use them to place orders too, but I can’t imagine they’ll make customers fetch their own food and drinks, their prices are too high for that.