Andrew Tarlow Wants Tip-Free Restaurants to Display This Logo [Updated]

Clear and simple.

Now that it’s picking up steam, the no-tipping movement’s primary obstacle seems to be stopping customers from giving extra money anyway. Retraining stubborn people in a city that tips for everything else may be a lost cause (looking at you, Jerry Seinfeld), but Brooklyn-dining-scene titan Andrew Tarlow thinks everybody would at least start on the same page if establishments posted a universal window sticker saying, Please don’t tip.

He tells Bloomberg it’s an issue of better branding: “A non-proprietary logo that diners could see across the city would simplify things tremendously. We process visual information quickly.” As a result, he’s hung the logo in the front window at Roman’s, which went tip-free two weeks ago. As his other restaurants like Diner and Marlow & Sons follow suit, their windows will also brandish this sticker, which was custom-designed by Drew Heffron, a graphic artist Tarlow has used before on his menus. Heffron went with the phrase “gratuity-free” instead of something negative like “no tipping allowed,” feeling that it piggybacked on already-common restaurant phraseology (“smoke-free,” “gluten-free,” “dairy-free,” etc.). It subs a conspicuous x in for one of the percent sign’s circles.

The logo is open-source and can be downloaded on a site Tarlow created called gratuityfree.nyc. West Village hospitality maven Gabriel Stulman is already using it at Fedora, which stopped taking tips last month.

This post was updated to clarify that the logo at Fedora’s isn’t actually on the window.

[Bloomberg]