The creators of South Park have abolished tipping at their Casa Bonita restaurant, in favour of paying staff $30 an hour instead.

Founders of the show Trey Parker and Matt Stone have implemented the policy at their Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita, which is located in Lakewood, Colorado.

The $30 an hour wage at Casa Bonita is more than double Colorado’s current minimum wage of $13.65. …

However, they also felt it could represent a decrease in total wages when Casa Bonita was busier. as paying customers may leave generous tips for staff.

[It’s an interesting experiment. It shifts compensation back to the employer, where it belongs, while creating income stability for the servers. Prices will go up, but probably not by 20%, which has become more or less the baseline for tipping these days. We’ll see if it pays off, literally and figuratively, for both labor and ownership. As an aside, I went to Casa Bonita in 2015 while doing research for Going Red, specifically because I recognized it from the South Park episode and hadn’t realized it was a real restaurant. It gets a mention on pages 156-7. — Ed]