Then you are hiring the wrong people for the kind of coffee shop you claim to desire running. There are plenty of people who enjoy coffee enough to make a career out of it even if it's for a few years. You are pitching this evolved, pay every one a fair wage, this is a real place to work that's super cool, and then treating them like it's some chain. It's transparent. You don't expect them to work with you longer then a couple months. You want customers to track whether employees are doing good or not trying to create some BS KPIs or whatever and then use that to incentivize your employees. Everything you write in every one of your posts demonstrates that you seem to miss the entire point of a coffee shop. It should be a cool place to relax and read or work or meet friends while drinking coffee.

> In the service industry, and especially amongst young people, it's common to pick up a job like this for a few months and make some money, then move on to something else.

By making that assertion you're absolving yourself of responsibility and shifting the retention issue entirely to the employee. You're completely dismissing the possibility that your retention issue is due to a customer culture you fostered or created, a poor work environment due to a manager or toxic employee, the demands of the job vs compensation, or any other factor.

> Ultimately, money is a motivator and pretending like it's not does not make tipping go away.

Money is a motivator but not necessarily for the right reasons and it has diminishing returns. Tipping culture has evolved from a mechanism for customers to thank staff into a means for staff to make up for insufficient wages. They're effectively panhandlers.

If an employee relies upon a tip to makeup for wages, they aren't paid enough and are being exploited and abused.

Today, not tipping is a punitive measure that allows customers to diminish an employee or staff's wage at the customer's discretion and without any insight or feedback provided to the employer. People feel compelled to tip because they thing employees aren't paid enough, not because service was above expectations.