A new East Nashville restaurant has opened its doors in hopes of serving the community with good food and fun times, all while enforcing a "no-tipping" policy.
"When you get your bill, that's how much it is," Ryan Bernhardt, co-owner of TKO along with his wife, said. "You don't have to figure in: Were they good? Do I get them 15%, 20%? It's just, that's what it costs and it's done. You sign your credit card receipt and you go home."
The hope is the policy will remove any hesitation or guesswork for guests at the restaurant, and that it will help foster teamwork within the workers at TKO, a restaurant serving southern-inspired Chinese food.
"We want to be able to pay our employees a proper wage. Servers make like $2.15 an hour, they should make more than that," Bernhardt said.
TKO is a restaurant put together by a couple with a focus on the community and serving good food.
"We've got no investors. It's my wife and I's project, our life's work, our life's savings, everything going into it," Bernhardt explained. "We are giving back to the neighborhood that we really love and have been apart of for the past decade."
At the end of the day, Bernhardt said he simply wants his customers to have a good experience and for his employees to feel like they're appreciated.
"We're going to have a good time here, the food's going to be fun. We want to build a community with our customers," he said.
TKO is located at 4204 Gallatin Road in East Nashville and is open Wednesday through Sunday from 6 to 11 p.m.
