The Service Fee That Sparked a National Firestorm

Chef Geoff Davis opened Burdell in Oakland to cook the soul food his grandmothers made — a distinct American cuisine rooted in migration and adaptation rather than Southern tradition. In 2024, Food & Wine named Burdell the “Restaurant of the Year.”

On our recent California Sun podcast, he expalins how it was a 20% service fee at the bottom of Burdell’s receipts that recently started a national conversation about labor, class, and whether we’ve ever really reckoned with the racial history of tipping.

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