Local Group Develops Website To Help Servers And Bartenders
Liz Ragan had just lost her job as a server when the Blackwolf Run restaurant in Kohler, Wisconsin abruptly closed due to the coronavirus threat. A single mother with mounting bills, Liz was searching the Internet for help when she came across a new site that offered customers a way to tip unemployed servers in their local communities. Liz registered for the site, expecting nothing to come of it. But the next morning she was delighted to find a tip waiting for her.
It wasn’t much: only five bucks. But in that moment, it meant much more. “The restaurant and bar industry is really the heart of this nation,” she explained. “People look to us to celebrate, to get together, to be happy, and I can’t wait to get back to work. So that five dollars meant the world to me.”
The new site responsible for connecting Ragan with her tip was developed here in Chattanooga. It began when Victoria Marie Morgan, a former employee at the Moxy hotel, tweeted her intent to Venmo tips to her favorite bartenders whenever she had a drink at home. The idea caught the attention of Jen Gregory, founder of the Chattanooga Beverage Alliance, web developer Dan Ryan and technical wizard Don Sayers. They built an early incarnation of the site which grew more quickly than anyone could have imagined.
You can see their work, and help the local service industry here in Chattanooga, at serviceindustry.tips/en/tn/chattanooga/
The team quickly expanded to include Laura Devilbiss and Matt Corley on the technical side. Celebrated Chattahooligan and Prideraiser.org founder Galen Riley pitched in to help with community organization. Local bartender/triviamaster Eddie Bridges became the first “city administrator” responsible for approving the applications of local service industry employees. In less than two weeks hundreds of additional cities were added across all 50 states. The site quickly drew 5.4 million pageviews and registered nearly 60,000 service workers.
All the work needed to maintain ServiceIndustry.tips is done by a team of volunteers -- from the City Administrators across the country to the web developers here in Chattanooga. Donors are randomly matched with a server in their community, and tips are made directly through Venmo or CashApp. ServiceIndustry.tips connects the two parties, but at no point acts as a financial intermediary. The site collects no fees, and they do not sell their members’ data. The amount of each tip and any messages sent between users are all kept private from ServiceIndustry.tips.
This makes it difficult for them to know exactly how much money has been distributed through the site, but the total number of tips has already exceeded 85,000. Anecdotal evidence suggests the average tip is at least five dollars. That would mean the volunteers behind ServiceIndustry.tips have already distributed almost a half a million dollars directly into the accounts of unemployed service industry workers around the country. And those numbers continue to climb.
“We’re in uncharted territory. Immediate action is needed for immediate relief,” explained Don Sayers who in addition to maintaining ServiceIndustry.tips also runs Chattanoga’s iFixie Computer Repair. “It takes all hands on deck to make the most of efforts like this, and all donations––big or small––make a difference. This will not completely solve our neighbors’ financial challenges, but we have been told again and again by our server and bartender friends that it is a great morale booster to see a sign that someone cares.”
Liz Ragan of Kohler Wisconsin definitely felt that way when a tip unexpectedly arrived in her inbox. She has no specific plans for the five bucks, but expects it will go towards any number of bills.