One thing that makes me furious about the modern hospitality industry and your everyday restaurant is this obsession with service charges. Across the world, managers are forcing them onto bills and then pooling or splitting tips across the whole team.

The big reason I find split tips such a stupid endeavour is because once you make your sales team, the waiters, split their tips, there’s no incentive to work harder. You’ve robbed yourself of revenue opportunity. I’ve seen it firsthand, you can train staff to upsell, drill the SOPs into them, but if they know the reward gets split evenly, they don’t care. If you’re not standing there to enforce it, they’ll coast.

I once had an incredible waiter, a service guru. This guy would regularly pull in €3,000 a month in tips, while the others maybe scraped €200 or €300. But under a pooling system, his €3,000 got chopped down and spread across the floor, leaving him with maybe €300. Do you know how heartbreaking that is? To hustle, upsell, entertain, give everything, and then be handed the same as the laziest person on shift? What do you think he did the following month? He slowly stopped caring. Why kill yourself for the same as everyone else?

And that’s the point, by pooling tips, you’re not being smart. You’re not protecting your business. You’re robbing it. You’re turning high-performers into coasters and teaching the lazy to ride on the backs of the talented. It’s defensive, it’s cost-saving, but it kills revenue growth dead.

I’ll give you an example from my own days as a waiter. We used to literally ask team members if they wanted to go home early, because the fewer waiters on the floor, the more tips for the rest of us. “Less is more.” And then we’d work our asses off. I’m talking running, laughing, cracking jokes, jumping from table to table, we turned service into a show. And the guests loved it. They could see the energy, the passion, the chaos with purpose. And on those nights? We made so much money it was addictive.

Was it perfect? No. Sometimes it came at the company’s expense if managers weren’t watching closely. But that’s the balance, what’s best for the company vs. what’s best for the individual. At least back then, both sides had skin in the game.

Now it’s just managers gaming the system. Minimum wages, compulsory service charges, and a guaranteed cushion for themselves. They’ve taken the risk out of their hands and shoved it onto the guests and the staff. And to me, that’s not management, that’s cowardice.

Now, let me be clear, I’ve been on the other side too. I’ve managed restaurants. I’ve done the budgets. I understand the financial risks, the payroll pressures, the thin margins. I know what it’s like to sit in that office and wonder how the hell you’re going to cover salaries if the week is soft.

But here’s the problem, too many managers have let that fear turn into cowardice. Excuse my language, but it feels like an entire generation of hospitality managers have become pussies, cowards who don’t believe in their product, don’t believe in their team, and refuse to carry any risk themselves.

They slash payroll to the bone, reduce salaries to the legal minimum, and then hide behind service charges and tip pools to plug the gaps. They expect their people to bleed for the business, to carry trays and stress and screaming customers, but they themselves won’t carry an ounce of financial or moral responsibility.

It’s all reduced to the absolute minimum, minimum wage, minimum care, minimum courage. They treat payroll as the enemy instead of the engine. And when you do that, you’re not managing, you’re gutting the very thing that could make your business thrive, people who believe in you, because you believed in them.

That’s not risk management. That’s cowardice dressed up as efficiency.

And then there’s the part that makes my blood boil, the so-called “loyalty hours.” Anyone who has worked in hospitality knows exactly what I’m talking about. The shift runs over, the place is packed, and management needs more hands. But instead of paying overtime or even basic extra hours, they expect you to stay for free. They dress it up as commitment, as family, as being a “team player.”

Let’s call it what it is, modern-day slave labour.

I’ve seen it again and again. I’ve lived it. You give up your time, your energy, your body, and in return, you get nothing. If you're lucky, you might get a thank you. And here’s the truth, if you drop dead tomorrow, you’ll be replaced in five minutes flat. That’s the harsh reality of being a waiter, a bartender, a cook. You are disposable.

The hypocrisy is staggering. I have been through induction videos where the company proudly declares they don’t tolerate exploitation. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, they’re squeezing unpaid hours out of their people and calling it loyalty. It’s corporate brainwashing. A PR stunt for the top brass, while the floor staff are treated like batteries, run them dry, then swap them out.

And it breaks my heart. Because I’ve been there, stuck with no choice, no options, doing it just to get by. And I see it happening to others now, people who deserve better, people whose passion for hospitality is being slowly crushed under the weight of a management culture that preaches “family” but practices abuse.

Even worse, the managers don’t know better, because they learnt from a bad manager, who learnt from another bad manager, and so on. They’re simply the product of a string of poor leaders. Regardless of what’s taught in theory, once you’re in the real world of restaurants, you’re forced to adapt to survive. My only wish is that more good managers make their way into the industry before it’s irreversible. That it goes against “everything we know” to do the right thing, the courageous thing. But right now, cowardice and abuse, masked as “efficiency and effectiveness”, has become the collective practice.

Here’s the crazy part, it doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve seen restaurants thrive while taking care of their people. I’ve worked in places where the floor team would go to war for the business, give up endless free hours and do everything to keep the place alive, not because they were forced to, but because they wanted to. Because they knew the company had their back, and none of us wanted to work somewhere else that would abuse us.

That’s the tricky thing about human psychology, we’re happy to push ourselves, to “abuse” ourselves by choice when it’s for a cause we believe in. But forced abuse? That’s different. That’s exploitation. And understanding that difference, and working with it rather than against it, is the mark of a real leader.

I was lucky. I hit the jackpot with two managers who changed the way I saw leadership. I like to refer to them as the angel and demon. They both had insane attention to detail, an unshakable focus on what was best for the business, and a deep commitment to understanding their people’s strengths and weaknesses. Both, ofcourse, shared a love for exceptional hospitality.

The angel was respectful, caring, dynamic, his pride came from running a business with integrity, never undercutting or abusing his staff. The demon, on the other hand, was relentless, singular, and would do whatever it took to achieve results.

And I would give both of them endless free labour. I did, easily six months’ worth, over time. Why? Because I had a secure job under them, I was learning more than any training course could teach me, and I had purpose. They let me contribute, they gave me responsibility, they treated me like someone who mattered.

Even when things got tough, when payroll was fixed and finance refused to budge, they didn’t just shrug and tell us to suck it up. They were honest: “We can’t pay you more right now.” But then they offered a compromise: “We’ll track your extra hours and convert them into extra holiday leave.” Sure, it wasn’t perfect, and some of us were disappointed, but it was something. It showed they cared enough to fight for us, to get us something when all the other restaurants in our hospitality group was getting nothing.

Those small victories matter. They both often said, “Choose your battles wisely,” and they lived by it. They knew when to stay quiet with upper management so they could secure bigger wins when it really counted. Those gestures built trust. Real leadership is courage, honesty, and a relentless fight for their people as much as their product. If you want to make millions while taking no risk and showing no courage, then find a different industry. Hospitality, restaurants especially, is not built for low risk and maximum profits. It’s a brutally hard business model with fierce competition, oversaturated markets, and a niche of character need that simply doesn’t suit profit-hungry individuals. You need to be a people’s person. You need to endure and be passionate.

Another huge problem in hospitality is the blanket approach. Managers adopt whatever practice the industry trend says is “standard”, service charges, pooled tips, whatever, and apply it blindly to every business. But not all businesses are the same.

Every restaurant has its own location, its own product, its own team, its own set of verticals to juggle. To lead properly, you’ve got to look at your unique situation and ask: what actually makes sense here?

Of course, it’s smart to see what others are doing. If a practice genuinely serves your operation, adopt it. But copying everything just because it’s “industry standard” is lazy management. It’s a shortcut.

To be fair, shared tips aren’t always a disaster. In some hospitality models, fine dining, boutique hotels, or resort environments, the guest experience depends on the entire team working seamlessly together. There’s no upselling, no waiter running their own “show,” it’s all about precision, atmosphere, and consistency. In those cases, pooling tips can actually make sense because it reinforces teamwork and spreads recognition across everyone who contributes. But outside of those models, especially in high-volume, upsell-driven restaurants, it’s a revenue killer.

Another example is of a chef opening their first restaurant. They know the back of house inside out, but they have zero experience in marketing, front of house, or the mechanics of service. They just want to cook. So why open a full-scale restaurant? Why not a cloud kitchen? If what you care about is people enjoying your food, then focus on that. Delivery might be a better fit. Design packaging that carries your quality standards to someone’s home, build a name as the go-to local spot for ordering burgers, ramen, or whatever your strength is. Reduce your risk tenfold while still chasing your passion.

Hospitality is the only industry where by consuming the product, people think they know how to operate the business. People open restaurants or boutique hotels and more because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do. They want to show off, or they believe that just because they’ve eaten in restaurants all their lives, they understand how to run one. That’s why I’ve seen dozens of places fail.

The truth is this, there are many ways to skin a cat. But the best way is the one that suits your business, your strengths, and your people, not whatever the industry next door is pretending is efficiency.

Hospitality isn’t broken because of low margins or fierce competition. It’s broken because too many managers have chosen cowardice over courage. They hide behind service charges, gut payroll, and exploit their people under the disguise of “efficiency.” They’ve forgotten that restaurants don’t thrive on spreadsheets, they thrive on people and belief in the product.

I’ve seen both sides. I’ve worked the floor, I’ve run the books, and I know it’s hard. But the truth is this, the businesses that survive and stand out are the ones that believe in their product and people. They’re led by managers who fight for their teams, who balance risk with honesty, who understand that passion isn’t free, it’s earned by building trust.

Hospitality is not for the faint-hearted. It’s not for profit-chasing cowards who think they can squeeze blood from a stone. It’s for the people who love it, who care about the craft, who light up a room and make guests want to come back again and again.

If you want safety, if you want easy money, if you want guaranteed wins, go find another industry. Hospitality will chew you up and spit you out. But if you have courage, passion, and respect for your people, then you can build something that no service charge or fake efficiency will ever achieve, a business worth bleeding for.