The number of customers at the no-tip locations dropped 8 percent to 10 percent on average, he said. 
 
 Joe’s Crab Shack is not the only restaurant returning to tips. Fedora, a Greenwich Village restaurant owned by Gabriel Stulman, announced Monday that it would also discard its no-tipping policy, which it had begun four months ago. 
 
 “While we made the determination that a gratuity-free system does not work for our business at this time, we continue to believe that it has the potential to change hospitality for the better,” Mr. Stulman wrote in a letter to diners. “We hope it’s the future for more restaurants, including our own.” 
 
 Servers, who can be paid salaries below minimum wage, rely on tips to make up the difference. Their take-home pay can be unpredictable, subject to how busy the restaurant is and what customers order. Opponents of tipping say ending the practice would ensure living wages for servers while eliminating a pesky math problem and an often uncomfortable experience for customers. 
 
 While tipping remains far and away the status quo in American restaurants, a trickle of restaurateurs in recent years has begun doing away with the practice. Notably, the Union Square Hospitality Group, owned by Danny Meyer, announced plans last year to eliminate tips at its 13 restaurants, which employ 1,800 workers. 
 
 The company rolled out the policy at three New York locations: the Modern at the Museum of Modern Art in November, Maialino in February and North End Grill in April. The company plans to reopen Union Square Cafe this year with no tipping. 
 
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 Mr. Meyer has indicated that the change has been an initial success. He told the Freakonomics podcast that the past December was the most profitable month the Modern has had. He said some of that result might be because of media coverage of the no-tipping policy, but he was confident it would extend to the other locations. 
 
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 “All of our leaders in all of our restaurants are actually clamoring to be next,” Mr. Meyer said. “They all want to do this, because they’ve seen some pretty compelling statistics.” 
 
 Many other restaurants in New York have had similar experiments, including Huertas, Craft, Eleven Madison Park and Andrew Tarlow’s restaurants. 
 
 Smaller establishments have also tried. Lois, a wine bar in Alphabet City in Manhattan, went tip-free in November, advertising on its menu that there is “no need to tip; hospitality is included” and removing the gratuity line from receipts. 
 
 Nora O’Malley, the bar’s co-owner, said the wait staff had had the same or higher wages since the change, which also included a revenue share. It has become a favorite topic for customers, and she has recommended the change to her friends in the industry, she said. 
 
 “It has eliminated an element of confusion and/or slight apprehension from customers,” she said. ||||| Apparently, the no-tipping test at Joe's Crab Shack isn't working out. 
 
 The casual seafood chain announced in November that it had been trying out a no-tipping model in 18 of its restaurants across the country since August. 
 
 But less than a year later, the company is moving back to the standard gratuity model in 14 of the test locations. 
 
 Bob Merritt, who became CEO of Joe's parent company Ignite Restaurant Group in November, announced the decision last week on the company's first-quarter earnings call. 
 
 "Our customers and staff spoke very loudly [about the policy], and a lot of them voted with their feet," he said. 
 
 Related: No tips, but servers here will get $27 an hour 
 
 Joe's Crab Shack has more than 100 locations nationwide, and was the first major restaurant chain to test out a no-tipping policy. 
 
 Prices at the pilot restaurants increased to cover the new labor costs. 
 
 The pilot restaurants lost an average of 8-10% of customers during the test run. "We tried it for quite a while and we tried communicating it different ways," Merritt said. 
 
 Getting rid of gratuity eliminates any math at the end of a meal, but it turns out customers don't mind the added work. 
 
 The restaurant's research showed that around 60% of customers disliked the policy because it took away an incentive for good service and that they don't necessarily trust that management is passing along the money to workers. 
 
 Related: Restaurant owner pocketed tips paid through Seamless, GrubHub 
 
 Menu prices at the 14 restaurants will decrease now that they don't have to include gratuity, but Merritt said it could take time for customers to return. 
 
 "When you roll back prices, you rarely get credit for it very quickly, so it's going to take us time to rebuild that." 
 
 The no-tipping structure will continue at four establishments where the policy caught on with customers, and Merritt said the company will work to figure out why the model was successful in those restaurants. 
 
 The company did not immediately respond to request for comment Thursday. 
 
 When the pilot program was initially announced, then-CEO Raymond Blanchette told CNNMoney that some workers left over the new policy, but that he expected the move to eventually increase retention and enhance the chain's bottom line. 
 
 The company said in November there wasn't a timeline to make the no-tipping policy a standard in all Joe's Crab Shack restaurants. ||||| AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - National restaurant chain Joe’s Crab Shack has rolled back an experiment at select restaurants to eliminate tipping after customers and workers complained, an industry news report said. 
 
 Many of the 18 restaurants that took part in the program, started last year, said they have dropped out when contacted by Reuters on Thursday. Officials for the chain with 130 restaurants nationwide did not respond to requests for comment. 
 
 Bob Merritt, CEO of Houston-based parent company Ignite Restaurant Group, told investors this month that research indicated 60 percent of customers disliked the no-tipping policy, trade paper Nation’s Restaurant News reported this week. 
 
 “The system has to change at some point, but our customers and staff spoke very loudly,” Merritt was quoted as saying in a call with analysts. “A lot of them voted with their feet.” 
 
 He said the no-tipping test has ended at 14 of the 18 restaurants where it was implemented. The test was seen as groundbreaking for a major national chain. 
 
 At the test locations, Joe’s paid some workers a minimum of $12 an hour. The Houston-based company raised menu prices less than 20 percent to compensate for the higher labor costs. 
 
 The test, launched under a different CEO, came as a nascent movement has been launched to remove a more then century-old tradition of tipping in U.S. restaurants. 
 
 Critics say the tipping system allows restaurants to pay some staff a pittance and puts the burden of labor costs largely on customers as opposed to employers. 
 
 An employer of a tipped employee is required to pay a minimum of $2.13 an hour in direct wages, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. An industry group added restaurant owners are required to make up any difference from tip income and hourly wages to meet federal minimum wage requirements. 
 
 Tipping appears to have the support of customers, with a 2015 poll on behalf of the National Restaurant Association showing that 65 percent of those surveyed support tipping. 
 
 “It is very much ingrained in our culture. Consumers really like being able to reward good service and the spirit of hospitality,” said Christin Fernandez, a spokeswoman for the industry group. ||||| Joe's Crab Shack, the first national chain to test a no-tipping policy, is sharply curtailing the experiment, saying it cost them customers at a majority of the locations where it was tried. 
 
 "We are reducing the no tipping units to four restaurants from the 18 we had previously had done," Robert Merritt, chief executive officer and director of Ignite Restaurants (IRG) told analysts in a call last week. "Our customers and staff spoke very loudly and a lot of them voted with their feet." 
 
 On average, foot traffic at the no-tipping restaurants fell 8 to 10 percent, he said. 
 
 The no-tipping policy is continuing in the handful of stores "where it actually worked very well," Merritt said. "We're going to try to figure out why it worked in some places and why not in others." 
 
 Ignite Restaurants in November said it was doing away with gratuities at 18 of its more than 130 Joe's Crab Shack restaurants in more than 30 states, with then CEO Ray Blanchette calling tipping "an antiquated model" that most American businesses had migrated away from over the past 50 to 100 years. 
 
 But Blanchette didn't remain at the helm long enough to see his pilot program through. Six days after unveiling its "forward thinking policy," the company, which also owns and operates Brick House Tavern & Tap, announced that he was departing to "pursue other interests." 
 
 In testing its no-tipping policy, the seafood chain hiked menu prices and said it would increased hourly wages for servers, hosts and bartenders at the pilot sites. 
 
 But company research found that 60 percent of the restaurants' customers did not like the no-tipping policy because they didn't want to lose control of the experience by removing the service incentive. Patrons also didn't trust management to pass along a share of the higher menu prices to employees, which is supposed to offset the elimination of tips. 
 
 The casual-dining chain is not alone in reviving tips. Fedora, a New York City eatery, said this week it was tossing its no-tipping policy four months after adopting it. 
 
 But owner Gabriel Stulman held out hope for a gratuity-free system in the future. "We continue to believe that it has the potential to change hospitality for the better," he wrote in a letter to customers. "We hope it's the future for more restaurants, including our own." 
 
 Other establishments that have done away with tipping have report more success. 
 
 Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group in November rolled out a no-tipping policy three of its 13 restaurants, including the Modern at the Museum of Modern Art. Meyer said in a podcast that December had been the most profitable month in the Modern's history.
– The first full-service national chain to get rid of tipping is, for the most part, reinstating the practice that its former CEO once called "antiquated." Joe's Crab Shack, which had tried out the gratuity-included model in 18 of its 130 or so restaurants across the country, is going back to the old way of doing things in 14 of those restaurants, CNNMoney reports. The reason for the backtracking was made clear in the company's first-quarter earnings call last week: "Our customers and staff spoke very loudly [about the policy], and a lot of them voted with their feet," said Bob Merritt, the CEO of parent company Ignite Restaurant Group. Test eateries—which had compensated for the lack of gratuities by raising menu prices and giving increased, fixed wages to staff—lost between 8% and 10% of their customer base, per the New York Times. Reuters reports that some workers at the test sites got a $12-an-hour minimum, and that menu prices were boosted less than 20%; advocates of the no-tipping model say it allows servers to count on a fixed income and eliminates patrons' need to do math. But about 60% of the chain's customers didn't take to the new model, company research revealed: Patrons apparently didn't think the waitstaff would be as motivated to provide decent service if they couldn't count on a tip, and they were also wary that management might not share the extra money being pulled in through higher menu prices with staff. So why is Joe's keeping four of the test restaurants on the no-tipping system? Merritt says the model actually worked in those locations, though they're trying to figure out why. (Tipping is un-American, says this no-tipping advocate.)