By Charles Passy

The argument that waiters and customers will be happier if all tip 0%

A recent move by Sushi Yasuda, a high-end Japanese eatery in New York, to prohibit customers from leaving gratuities — the restaurant raised menu prices by roughly 15% to cover waitstaff salaries — is prompting discussion about whether the no-tip movement could reach, well, a tipping point.

And it is a definite movement: Such renowned restaurants as Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York and French Laundry in Yountville, Calif.; Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif.; and Grant Achatz’s Alinea in Chicago have similar policies in place. So did the recently closed Linkery restaurant in San Diego, where owner Jay Porter found that service improved because of the policy, despite widespread beliefs that the tradition of tipping fosters a culture of accountability.

Porter’s argument? Having a reliable income is empowering. “If you don’t have to think about money, you can focus on doing your job well,” he wrote earlier this month.

Actually, the case for going tip-free is broader than that. Restaurateurs and customers alike say that it does away one of the most unpleasant aspects of the dining-out experience — namely, the meal-ending ritual of “grading” a server and then doing the math based on that judgment. “The meal should be there for you to enjoy without doing this calculus,” says Sushi Yasuda owner Scott Rosenberg.

That said, consumers don’t appear to put a lot of thought into the grading, at least according to a Cornell University study. Researchers at the school found that diners tipped about the same amount regardless of their experience. “Average tip percentages are only weakly related” to service quality, study author Michael Lynn concluded.

Still, at a time when dining establishments have come under fire for issues relating to how tip money is split among employees — in many eateries, gratuities are shared with support staff or even managers — there’s some thought that a no-tip policy may be the quickest way to avoid headaches and potential legal complications. For example, at Starbucks, the issue has become so thorny that baristas have sued to win back millions in tips that they allege were unfairly divvied; one case is currently making its way through the courts.

In that light, eliminating the whole issue of gratuities looks like “a win for the restaurants,” says management and strategy consultant Abhay Padgaonkar.

But the practice has its defenders. Without such a reliable system of accountability, high-level service could be compromised, says Edward P. Foy, Jr., owner of The Chateau on the Lake, an American-European upscale restaurant in Bolton Landing, N.Y.

Even some servers point out that accountability can sometimes work to their advantage: With tips, there’s the potential to make more money than might be possible under a flat-wage system. “Getting rid of tipping would be horrible,” says Jenn Harris, a waitress in Solana Beach, Calif.

There’s also the issue that old habits are hard to break. While tipping is not necessarily standard in other parts of the world — most notably, some Asian and European countries — it’s long been part of the American dining system. “Even if you changed the server’s mentality toward how they are compensated, it is almost impossible to rewire the American customer who thinks they have to leave ‘something’ at the end of the meal,” says Carolyn Richmond, a New York-based attorney with Fox Rothschild who specializes in the hospitality industry.

That’s indeed what Scott Rosenberg of Sushi Yasuda discovered after establishing the restaurant’s no-tip policy a few months ago. Patrons were still leaving money on the table, resulting in instances of waiters having to track them down outside the restaurant to return the cash. But Rosenberg says that customers have gotten more accustomed to the policy in recent weeks and are better appreciating the point.

“It just seems like a more transparent way of operating a restaurant,” Rosenberg says.