In December 2024, the employees at the Sea Creatures restaurant group were called into a meeting. Sea Creatures, founded by acclaimed chef Renee Erickson, runs some of Seattle’s most celebrated restaurants, including oyster bar the Walrus and the Carpenter, innovative steakhouse Bateau, and the Whale Wins, which earned Erickson a James Beard Award in 2016. At the meeting, ownership announced there would be changes coming. After years of accepting tips, Sea Creatures restaurants would be switching to a service charge model.
Starting in January, every guest check would explain that 22 percent of the bill (about what the average customer tipped) would be added to the total. This “is retained entirely by the house,” the checks would say. “Revenue from this service charge is used to pay operating expenses, including labor.” At the meeting, employees learned that what this meant in practice was that about half of the service charge would be paid out to hourly workers, who, before this change, all shared in the tip pool. (Back of house employees, including dishwashers, were part of the tip pool.) The hourly rate would go up to a base rate of $25 an hour. While in theory it might appear roughly equivalent to the pre-service charge take home, workers say that in practice it spelled a sharp reduction in income from tips.
It was “a huge pay cut for all of us,” says Jeff Kelley, who was a front-of-house worker at the time. “They said, you either hear what we’re saying and decide to continue to work here, or you quit and you go somewhere else… We immediately were like, ‘No, there’s a third option.’” They could form a union…