Minimum Wage for Servers in Ohio

A server is another name for a waiter or waitress. Suppose you opt for this kind of job. In that case, your work will involve welcoming clients and sharing information concerning the menu. It will also involve taking orders from patrons of the establishment, communicating those orders to the kitchen staff and delivering food to the customers.

You can work as a server in various establishments in Ohio and beyond. These include cafes, restaurants and even cruise ships.

Typically, server jobs are entry-level jobs. That means you don’t need advanced skills, much education or training to get the job. So, you can use it as a stepping stone to better jobs within the same business or other companies, or as a way of earning money if you are unqualified for other kinds of jobs currently.

However, that doesn’t mean everyone can work as a server. To do so successfully, you need to have several skills. Below are some of them.

• You must be friendly so you can interact comfortably with people and make them feel welcome.
• You need to be organized and calm under pressure so that even during your busiest days, you don’t get orders wrong and offend your customers.
• You should be a good communicator so you can share information concerning the menu correctly and relay the customer orders clearly.
• You need to pay attention to details to ensure that orders concerning those with food allergies are given correctly and that nearly similar orders are not given to the wrong customers. And if you have memory problems, the job may not be for you.
• You must be fit because you will be on your feet for long periods and you must maintain high energy levels while serving customers, even when the numbers are high.
• You should have social awareness so you can read facial and body language properly to determine how comfortable a customer is and whether they need something from you.
• Your time management and multitasking skills should be on point so you can relay multiple orders and serve multiple customers quickly and sometimes at the same time.
• You must acquire cultural awareness skills so you can successfully interact with people of various races, genders and ethnicities without offending their cultural sensibilities. For example, you should know better than to serve Muslims and Jewish people pork. If you are aware that your customers belong to these categories, you should tactfully steer them away from foods that contain pig-related ingredients.

Minimum wage laws are meant to protect workers from extreme exploitation by their employers. There exists a minimum wage for servers in Ohio, which is based on the state’s laws for tipped employees. That law ensures that servers in the state can keep all of their tips instead of sharing them with their employers.

However, your employer can take a tip credit o​f 50 percent​ by counting some of your tips as if they had paid them to you directly. In addition, you may need to contribute some of your tips to the employee tip pool.

Currently, the minimum wage for servers in Ohio is ​$4.65 per hour​​,​ which is far less than the ​$9.30​ hourly rate non-tipped employees earn. And employers can claim a maximum tip credit against a minimum wage of ​$4.65​.

By law, you are considered a tipped employee if you receive tips of ​more than $30​ while working in Ohio. So, that’s something to consider if you are not sure where you fall.

Despite the low minimum wage for servers in Ohio, the average server manages to make ​$11.30 per hour​, per the 2020 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, that translates to ​$452​ in wages for a 40-hour workweek. In a year, under ideal conditions, the average server may end up making approximately ​$23,500​ working full-time. Keep in mind that the tips a waitress gets will highly affect actual earnings.

While servers jobs are entry-level jobs, that doesn’t mean you cannot make money in Ohio. In a relatively successful establishment with decent patrons that pay well, you can make enough to live on and thrive. So, do consider becoming a server when you need a job quickly and with minimal work experience.