The same meal can appear cheaper in one country and dearer in another while costing the diner a similar amount. What differs is how much of the labour cost is printed on the menu.
The menu price is a partial figure under tipping
Where tipping is customary, a share of front-of-house pay comes directly from customers after the fact rather than from the restaurant's own wage bill.
That cost is therefore absent from the printed price, which makes the menu look lower than the total the diner will pay.
Comparing a tipping market with a service-included one by menu price alone consistently misleads, because the two numbers describe different things.
Service-included pricing moves the cost onto the page
Where service staff are paid a full wage by the restaurant, that wage appears in the menu price like any other operating cost.
Prices consequently look higher, and the total at the end of the meal is closer to what was expected when ordering.
Restaurants that switch between models usually raise prices at the same time and have to explain why, since the visible number moves sharply.
Tipping distributes pay unevenly inside the building
Tips flow to the staff who interact with customers, while cooks, dishwashers and prep staff are paid entirely from the restaurant's own revenue.
That creates a persistent gap between front and back of house that owners try to close through pooling arrangements, which are themselves regulated and vary by place.
Kitchens facing recruitment difficulty often push for structural change for exactly this reason, since they cannot raise cooks' pay from tips.
Tip income varies with things unrelated to service
Studies of tipping consistently find that the amount left correlates weakly with the quality of service and strongly with the size of the bill.
That makes earnings depend on which section a server works, what time they are scheduled and how expensive the menu is.
It also makes income unpredictable week to week, which is one of the arguments raised whenever a change of model is proposed.
Service charges sit awkwardly between the two
An automatic service charge adds a fixed percentage to the bill, which stabilises income but is often mistaken for a tax or a tip depending on how it is described.
How that money must be distributed is set by rules that differ considerably between jurisdictions and have changed repeatedly.
The practical effect for a diner is that the final total, not the menu, is the only figure worth comparing between restaurants operating under different systems.