By Scott Kauffman, Contributor, Golf Business
One of the paramount elements to ensure long-term happiness in a relationship is successfully navigating the notion of money. Even in the workplace, how money is being handled can be a sensitive subject when it comes to employee relations.
For hourly wage employees reliant on tips to supplement their income, quite frankly, it can be more than personal. That partly explains pushback circulating in golf business circles after one course operator changed the policy on how its food-and-beverage servers realize their daily take on tips.
The commerce culprit? Well, in many respects, one can blame the growing cashless nature of society.
Traditionally, most courses and similar businesses like restaurants allow ‘front-of-house’ hospitality staff – i.e., bartenders and waitstaff – to effectively take home their credit card tips each day by “cashing out” at the end of each shift. However, with consumers increasingly using credit/debit cards and other digital payment methods, the unnamed golf facility found itself with drawer shortages and reconciliation issues.
Consequently, this operator decided to change course by tracking daily credit card tips for their staff and paying them out weekly through payroll. As expected, backlash from at least one food-and-beverage staffer ruffled a few golf facility feathers to say the least.
According to general manager Jeff Hoag of Scott Lake Golf & Practice Center, a 33-hole public course and driving range in Comstock Park, Michigan, the family-run facility his father built in 1960 has always cashed out hospitality staffers at the end of the evening, and his team just “re-balances the drawer and reconciles the credit cards the following day.”
The two-time past president of the Michigan Golf Course Association acknowledged he runs a relatively more modest operation compared to many of his national course owner peers, mostly serving hot dogs, sandwiches, beer, etc., but the tips still tend to be significant over time in the grand scheme of things.
“We run a small operation, but the tips can add up to between $6,000 and $7,500 every two weeks,” added Hoag, former President of the National Golf Course Owners Association and active board member since 1988.
As Hoag puts it, with most customers using plastic to pay for food and beverage bills these days, keeping a running tally of all Scott Lake tips until the next (biweekly) payroll would be “difficult for our staff to manage.”
Not to mention, Hoag empathizes with the side of his employees, some of whom might truly need that daily dose of cash to help purchase certain necessities, whether it be food or gas.
Approximately four million people in the U.S., or 2.5% of all workers, earn tips, according to the Budget Lab at Yale, a nonpartisan research center founded by former Biden administration officials. Of course, some workers can make tens of thousands – if not more – in tips each year.
Shane Riley, director of golf at 72-hole Garland Lodge & Golf Resort in Lewiston, Mich., vividly recalls being one of those tipped workers when he started doing bag drop service 15 years ago in what was then a “cash-heavy society.”
“I would walk out with three or 4-to-5 hundred dollars in cash,” says Riley, who enjoyed a 14+ year career at Scott Lake prior to starting his new position at Garland Lodge last January. “Nowadays, in the bag drop, they’re walking out with $45 or $65 to $80. Maybe a couple hundred dollars on a great Saturday.”
Indeed, in what has become a more cashless lifestyle both on and off the links, even Riley himself wound up short on cash during last month’s NGCOA Multi-Course & Resort Operators Retreat in Monterey, Calif., making it difficult to tip not only course employees but others working at the host hotel.
So one question that begs to be asked is what can be done to help Riley’s former bag-drop brethren stay afloat in these inevitable cashless moments? One solution at Scott Lake and other retailers, for example, is allowing customers to draw $20 in cash back when using their debit cards at the point of sale.
Perhaps another solution is somehow allowing this part of the workforce, trying to make ends meet on the $2.13 federal minimum wage established 30 years ago for tipped workers, to legally be compensated through digital payment methods such as Venmo.
Nevertheless, the current golf policy at Garland, much like the one at Scott Lake that seemed to work well for all parties involved during Riley’s 14-year stint, is that employees keep their daily tips and are held responsible for keeping track of everything for future bookkeeping purposes.
The only difference at Garland is that the bag drop department pools their tips with no presence of any tip jars.
“So they’re held to a higher standard of honesty,” Riley adds. “But for someone who’s 16, 17, or 18 years old, and expect them to not be able to keep their cash tips they made that day, I don’t think I would buy into that program.”
“I think you open a can of worms to expect someone to forfeit that. I can’t see that happening.”
For Pinnacle Golf Properties partner/chief operating officer Del Ratcliffe, whose Charlotte, N.C.-based company oversees more than 15 facilities in the South, he has an entirely different perspective on what is becoming a tipping point for many Americans about tips in general.
“I think our culture here, you’re starting to see a little bit of a pushback on that,” the former NGCOA president adds. “Our company sees it as an opportunity. And the opportunity is the traditional whole idea behind a tip. It was a thank you for your service, or for your exceptional service above and beyond what you were getting in your compensation from your employer…
“What we stress upon our staff is that if you really want to have good tip income, don’t blame the methodology of how we’re collecting tips. Focus on making sure your efforts are appreciated by the guests so that they want to compensate you. If you go above and beyond, people will do it all the time. We have some staff that do fantastically well because they give great service, they establish a personal relationship, and they find a way to get that relationship going and make sure that this is a good thing.”
A good thing not only for the server at hand, but the overall business as well.
