A newcomer to the restaurant scene wants to turn the industry upside down by doing away with tipping — likely the first in Canada to do so.

When David Jones opens Smoke and Water in June at the Pacific Shores Resort in Parksville, customers will never have to crunch the numbers to determine what 10, 15 or 20 per cent of their bill is to leave a gratuity.

“Tipping is a broken business model,” said Jones, an admitted neophyte in the hospitality industry.

Instead of tipping, Jones has increased menu prices by about 18 per cent and intends to pay his staff a living wage, which is a business model accepted around the world in places such as Japan, New Zealand, Australia and parts of Europe.

That means the 155-seat restaurant will pay servers between $20 and $24 an hour and cooks $16 to $18 an hour.

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At Smoke and Water — named after its fire-inspired menu of barbecue and wood-fired pizza and its proximity to the ocean — Jones will also put aside a small percentage of gross receipts to pay for medical and dental coverage for his 48 staff.

“When you take away tipping, you find you get more seasoned servers and you’re able to increase the quality of personnel you get in the back of house,” Jones said.

It also goes a long way to eliminating the division between the two sides of any restaurant where the servers often make three times what the cooks do, he said.

Jones is going so far as to eliminate the lines on credit card and debit receipts where tips used to be penned in.

“We will not accept them, we will give them back,” he said. “If a tip is left and we can’t get it back to (a customer), we will donate it to charity.”

It’s a novel concept here, but a Canadian tipping expert thinks Jones may be on to something.

“He’s ahead of his time,” said Bruce McAdams, a 25-year veteran of the restaurant industry and assistant professor at the University of Guelph’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.

No tipping in Canadian restaurants is an idea whose time may finally have come, said McAdams, who has been researching tipping around the world for the last three years.

“Three years ago, I wouldn’t have said this will catch on, but I think there’s a 50-per-cent chance that, in five years from now, the restaurant model could change,” he said. “And it will start with small, independent operators.”

McAdams said most restaurateurs he speaks with agree tipping is archaic and makes little sense, but all are loath to change a system that has become ingrained.

“They say it will never change and consumers will never go for it, and no one will have the stones to try it first,” he said.

But he argues that is changing with increased pressure and discussion about what constitutes a living wage.