National Be Kind To Food Servers Month
Show some good old-fashioned manners, spread a little extra sunshine, and watch their faces light up. It's contagious!
Drive restaurant traffic and gift-card sales in January by positioning kindness to servers as a cultural movement, with messaging around tipping, appreciation, and worker dignity.
- Share server appreciation stories and behind-the-scenes restaurant content to humanize the role
- Promote gift-card bundles or 'kindness packages' (gift cards + branded items) for customers to give servers
- Highlight tipping best practices and worker-friendly policies to differentiate your brand
- Partner with servers/comedians (like founder Sybil Presley) for authentic testimonials and PR
The history of Food Servers, especially in recent years, has a tragic understory. They’re some of the hardest working people in the nation, employed in every level of society from restaurants like McDonald’s, all the way up to the Ritzy five star restaurants enjoyed by the stars. In all of them, it is entirely legal to pay them far below the minimum wage, with the concept being that tipping will make up the difference. In some circumstances it’s even possible that the employer won’t have to pay a wage at all, the entirety of their payroll being covered by you, the tipping customer.
Be Kind to Food Servers Month was established in 2009 through the efforts of Sybil Presley, an advocate for the proper treatment of food servers and a waitress for 50 years. Presley is also a stand-up comedian and poet in Tennessee, and the governor of the state honored has her event with a proclamation.
This event has also been acknowleged by the Department of Labor to make sure that everyone was aware of this disparity, and to call on them to pull a little deeper in their pockets to ensure that the food servers they work with can make ends meet.
Tip Servers Well
The best way to celebrate Be Kind to Food Servers Month is to make sure that you tip more than the basic 15%. Go out and show food servers that you appreciate the efforts that they go to when you enjoy your favorite meal at your favorite restaurant. Not only that, but just remember to be kind as their jobs are very demanding!
Give Gifts to Favorite Servers
While it often goes unseen by the customer, there is an entire world behind the walls that the food server has to manage to make sure your experience is enjoyable. If you really want to show them that you care, think about giving them gift certificates to restaurants that they enjoy, or to a place they can buy a great pair of shoes for working. Be Kind to Food Servers month is your opportunity to give a little back to these people who let us enjoy our lives of luxury.