You’re very obviously not defending tipping culture. I am defending tipping culture as an organic solution to a structural issue. Is it a good solution? Not really, but more equitable than not tipping in the current state of society.

Your argument so far (as it reads by me) appears to suggest we should all stop tipping and the market will magically correct itself because (sometimes?) you go to a coffee shop that chooses to be more internally equitable.

I want to believe you have some plan as to how we get to a situation where restaurants (like McDonalds) are expected to pay a living wage, but right now, hoping that they do it voluntarily strains credibility.

Can you give me more of what you propose than “maybe not tipping is better” and “I know of a restaurant that voluntarily fixed this issue”.

I don’t see the problem:

According to my rudimentary research, the average franchise owner makes $118,00 / year (take home, after other things are accounted for). If you break that into 52 weeks and 40 hour work weeks, that suggests a (very rough) $52/hour.

And your argument is that sometimes the service worker can make as much as that, if they are tipped successfully.

I personally think that - while I would prefer to live in a world where a living wage was guaranteed and we could honorably discard tipping culture - in lieu of such regulation, this seems preferable to management making that same profit and the worker being offered poverty wages.

Correct, the customer benefits from enabling the employer to deprive th employee of a living wage. Their patronage facilitates the practice.

So yes, the customer is not a beneficiary of tipping culture, but they benefit by ignoring tipping culture at the cost of employees (in absence of robust living wage regulations or practices).