Think about it: if we weren't tipping our wait staff, service would be awful, yet, if we paid our wait staff a livable wage, the prices at restaurants would increase ten-fold.
This line of reasoning needs to come up a lot more, across a wide range of topics from universal health care to cab service and everything in between.
The US is unique in a few ways because it has oceans on either side of it, and is otherwise isolated. In most other respects, what works anywhere else should be expected to work there. If other nations can make restaurants work without forcing employees to take less than a pauper's wage from the owners, and thus depend on cultural norms and customer's generosity to live, then so can America. If other nations can get all their citizens health care, then so can America. If other nations can have elections without spending many billions of dollars, then so can America. And so on.
And if Americans for some reason can't make these things work, it is about time for its people to start looking for the fault within themselves, their government, and their society, rather than discarding the ideas as unworkable, because the rest of the civilized world has already proven them out.
I might have been exaggerating, but my point is that labor is the most costly thing to restaurants.
I've worked in restaurants and I've waited tables at a very high-level. There are your entry-level Applebee's servers who have no experience, are in the "survival career" category, or have no aspiration to do anything but work at Applebee's. They should earn 3-4x minimum wage, or about $24k a year.
Then you have your more respectable chain: Ruby Tuesday's. 4-6x or about $40k a year.
Something in the middle: Longhorn Steakhouse, 5-7x.
Above that you start talking about restaurant professionals, where they expect to see at least $80k a year. Prices are now 14x, but your server? They're damn good at their job. Never seen a professional in action before? Go to your city's equivalent to Manny's Steakhouse[0].