I host a monthly Russian dinner as a volunteer for a local nonprofit, which is held at a restaurant of my choosing and attracts all kinds of Russian-speakers, ranging from high-powered lawyers and MBAs with 6-figure salaries to poor 19-year-old college students. I try to keep the restaurants of modest cost if one orders carefully, but I run into 2 problems: the high-powered lawyers sometimes forget that not everyone makes six figures or ordered the appetizer, seafood entree, two glasses of wine, dessert, and cappuccino, but offer to split the bill evenly. The other issue is that there is only one Russian restaurant in town that won’t give you food poisoning, but it’s on the pricey side ($15-20 for entrees, $5-10 for appetizers IF you don’t order the caviar, and the cheapest glass of wine s $5-6 on up the scale). Of course, I try to have the dinner there maybe once a year and at cheaper non-Russian places the other times (we’ve done everything from Chinese to Turkish to Italian on other occasions, which tend to be cheaper anyway), but again many of the more interesting cheap ethnic restaurants are of cuisines that not everyone enjoys (Thai, Korean, Indian, Vietnamese, etc.; you haven’t seen misery until you’ve seen a native Siberian bite into a particularly aggressive curry) and are located in non-centrally located neighborhoods (I’ve tried holding the dinner in non-downtown locations a couple of times before, but on those occasions attendance generally takes a beating).
I try to stick in gentle reminders about cost disparities and such when the check comes, and I don’t mind paying $20-30 once a month now that I have a decent job, but I remember when I was a $16k/year nonprofit employee or a broke college student. On the other hand, there aren’t many centrally located restaurants with widely enjoyed food which will run much below $20/person for dinner with tax and tip, so why should I rule out the nicer places just because maybe 20-30% of the attendees don’t want to spend that much? And on still another hand, some of the people with the least cash would make the most interesting conversational contributions to the dinner (native-speaking graduate students and such). (And as Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof, I”I have no other hands!”)
So what’s a considerate person to do? How can I seamlessly balance everyone’s interests, and maintain the mission of the organization, which is promoting international understanding and knowledge of foreign affairs?
I have been in this situation on many occasions!
In my case as the poor student. Plenty of times some dipstick (or a number of) have been knocking back the wine, 3 courses, aperetif, etc, and then suggest splitting the bill. Had I had the option of not attending, I would have chosen to skip the dinners knowing that this would probably happen.
A couple of times I lucked out (but felt fairly crappy) when somone let me off, “don’t count Iteki in the split, she didn’t drink wine”… yeah I also ate for 150 francs you glib bastads…
What would be good would be if you could have people split their bills in groups perhaps. An easy way to do this would be to let people split bottles of wine, and those wanting to eat cheap and cover their own bills could pay separatly (and order by the glass if they wanted wine?).
It’s a pain for the help, but you could request separate checks. Sometimes restaurants will do that.
The only other fair way is to pass the final bill around and request that each person calculate his actual costs, plus tax & tip if applicable, and put that much in the “pot.” Before anyone leaves, the host counts up the total to be sure it’s enough.
The obvious answer is to take it upon yourself to be the accountant and enforcer. Get the bill, do the math, and tell everyone what they owe. You’re hosting - make rules.
If you’d rather not, then when the bill comes around, you could say, very obviously yet with humor, “Hey, I had a good month, I’m kicking 2X” and hope that some of the rats who ordered everything on the menu and then wanted to “split” the bill catch your drift and fatten the kitty so you can then say, “we only need 1/2 X from you, you, and you.”
Also, you might want to slip away and ask the waiter to put wine and bar on a separate bill.
Separate checks for a large table is not nice. Especially if I’m sitting in the same restaurant, waiting for a second drink while your sever spends 30 minutes running credit cards through.
Your right to an enjoyable, affordable time in a restaurant does not supersede anyone else’s.
I’d say do separate checks or do the math yourself. If you tell the waitress up front (make sure to tell the members of your group up front too…), it shouldn’t be THAT big of a problem.
The group option seems good too, but somewhat devisive. You’d get all the businessmen sitting together and all the college students at one table. There’s also the increased opportunity for screwups.
One place I worked would allow for big groups to have set menus. They would give a choice of several appetizers, some of the more popular meals and a dessert to be shared by two people (they were rather large desserts). There was a set price for each person which normally included gratuity for the servers. It actually worked out better to do it this way since the kitchen knew what they could prepare ahead of time. It kept them from falling too far behind and brought the food out fairly quick.
They also offered a discount for this.
As for bar drinks, IMO the polite thing to do is to pay for your own, not split it with some one who is not drinking either because they choose not to or can’t afford to. Ask them to either run a tab at the bar or with their server. As long as the server knows that it will be separate before they start ordering there shouldn’t be a problem with individual tabs.