I tend to tip right around 20%. For one thing, the math is easy: double the total, drop the last digit, round to nearest convenient figure.
I worked third shift at a Denny's in college. Minimum wage for tipped employees was only about 2/3 of minimum wage for other roles; there were nights when traffic was so low that tips didn't make up that difference.
I'm entirely in favor of "the price is the price" and eliminating fees and especially tips. I see it as easier for everyone and far more fair for the employees.
I'll be the contrarian here. I'm tipping less these days. I'm getting lousier service across the board (and it's getting to be too late in the game to keep blaming "the pandemic"). I'm also increasingly insulted at the places where I'm getting asked to tip. No, I'm not paying you extra for taking the doughnut off the shelf and putting it in a paper bag. We need to work together to fight back, or else there is going to be a tipping screen for every transaction ("Would you like to tip your bank teller? 18%, 20%, 25%?"). As for the server side of things, if you don't like low wages dependent on tips, find a better job. The sort of service worker jobs that rely on tips have never been intended as long-term careers (ditto for minimum wage jobs).
I've always tended to tip around 25%, simply because it's easier to calculate. I've sometimes tipped as high as 50% if I'm just getting a beer or two. I also hardly ever went out even before the Pandemic. Food has also always been more expensive in Boston -- I think I've always paid more for groceries than my parents did when I was living at home with them.
It's not just fancy restaurants in Europe -- even fast food workers get paid better, and the company has to provide benefits and the food isn't any more expensive. Possibly subsidies are involved, or tax rates are high enough that businesses would rather have a reduced profit than a higher tax bill.
I typically tip generously because I know restaurant work is challenging.
I live in a city that is ending its tipped minimum wage and restaurant owners are concerned about their ability to maintain margins. The little socialist devil on my shoulder too wants to make sure everyone is paid a high bar, but the concerns of the owners are real too - not many businesses could keep doing exactly what they’re doing while having to pay out an additional 40% in wages.
I’d have no problem with restaurants more clearly communicating price increases alongside expectations for tipping from their customers.
The question I’ve had alongside this - a factory or a store couldn’t get away with paying their employees less than the minimum wage. What about the restaurant business in America makes the margins such that you are often only successful when you pay your employees a tipped minimum wage?
My husband and I have 3 tiny kids….. so eating out now is both logistically more stressful and financially doesn’t make sense, being a one-income family (unless we’re talking ChickFilA or Chipotle). But when we do go out to an actual restaurant, whether us two or all of us, our mindset is “we already decided we’re spending all this money so might as well tip generously.” Like 25% at least.
My husband likes to eat out and I like to cook, so we usually eat out a few times a week for meals at different times of the day (in Richmond, VA.) On a higher priced bill, which is usually when my husband and I go out together for dinner or with a group (and we often split checks), we usually stick to 20%. On a lower priced bill for myself, again where my girlfriends and I get separate checks, I usually determine 20% and then round up a bit.
I'm most likely to leave a higher percentage tip at a lower priced restaurant. Getting close to 20% feels like plenty - especially when the bill is over $100. Round to nearby $5 increment. This is Michigan life.
My brother is a career restaurant employee (yes, there are more careers blossoming out there than you might realize). He was a server for years and now manages a fine dining restaurant. He always instilled in me the idea that 20% should be the minimum for anything other than abysmal service (not just an abysmal experience, which can be the fault of the kitchen or the cleaning team or the laundry service or what have you, not just the server). I've always tended to tip 10-15% for takeout, and a similar amount for counter service, although the counter service place I visit most frequently provides so much service at the table that I routinely tip 20% there as well.
Tip creep has definitely happened since the pandemic, and I think one of the big factors has been that more and more restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, etc have gone to the Square/Clover/Shopify POS systems to support contactless payments. These make it easier for the establishment to suggest tip percentages, and also make it easier for customers to add a tip. When I hear people complain about this, I always remind them that you can decline to add the tip on the screen, just the same way you could always pay for your coffee with cash and not add a dollar to the tip jar. The server may be disappointed, but you're an adult and you get to make that choice.
Service charges added to the bill are a somewhat thornier issue for me, especially if I'm not clear about the purpose. I remember seeing these for the first time years ago in San Francisco in response to a city mandate that restaurants start providing health insurance or other benefits to staff. In this case it was usually described this way on the bill. Now the ones I see locally are just to cover "increased costs," as if every business in this country isn't facing increased costs over the past few years. One of my favorite places now adds 3% if you pay with a credit card, which I would never be able to think about doing at the retail store that I manage.
I think there's been a breakdown in tipping as a form of merit pay that plays into this. I can't imagine a realistic situation where I would tip anything other than 20%. There are no considerations: slow food, bad service? I don't have enough information to know whether it's the server's fault. Great service? Maybe the problem is my standards but I don't know what that would look like either unless I was someone expecting a lot of modifications (I'm not), in which case again it's not clear that the server is really the responsible party.
I am with you and others; make the price the price. The service charges that may or may not go to the servers and the ilk are annoying. What I hear is that the restaurant owners don't think people will pay $40 for a chicken dish. This topic is covered a lot in Tom Sietsema's WashingtonPost.com weekly discussions.
I tip well (at least 20% unless the service is horrid) and am fine tipping when I eat in or take out. For take out, someone still needs to put the food in containers, add utensils etc. and bag up for the customer. Unless the wage is raised considerably, restaurants will not find servers if tipping is eliminated.
I don't mind tipping. I think of it as a good way to practice what Pope Benedict described as a spirit of gratuitousness. Plus, it means I'm helping subsidize folks who can't afford to tip, in a way. Not to mention the workers themselves.
Re. the screen that pops up requesting tips for ordering at the counter…that really seemed to take off as a result of COVID. We were tipping everyone higher during lock down bc dine-in service was nonexistent and it gave those who had to go into work “hazard pay.” And then the whole tipping thing in general just seemed to escalate and become mainstream. Hard to walk it back after that.
My husband spent years in food service, whereas I never did. Pre pandemic we generally tipped 20% except for abysmal service, in which case we would tip nothing and talk to a manager. Note that in nearly 20 years the no tip happened 3 times. And we would usually tip 10-15% on carry out at sit down restaurants, depending on the type and how often we went. When you get Thai at the same place once a week, the staff remember people who tip carry out!
Post pandemic we still tip 20% at sit down unless it is exceptional, then we might do 25. During the height of covid we tip carry out 20% just to help out our local restaurants but we've gone back to the pre pandemic levels.
The fast food places like Panera or Noodles or Subway are ones that piss me off. They are not working for tips, they get full hourly wages. So no, I am not going to give an extra 15% to take my order and make a sandwich.
Ultimately I would like to just pay a non tipped price like they do in Europe. If that means that every meal goes up by $15 but I am not tipping on top of that, great. As it is, eating out is getting ridiculous.
The big thing I've found is that my wife and I still go out for fancy meals but most of our family nights out have become either order in or frozen meals. Our dinner out at a burger restaurant went from $40 to $60+. At $40 for the meal I don't care that much if my kids poke at their food.
I tend to tip right around 20%. For one thing, the math is easy: double the total, drop the last digit, round to nearest convenient figure.
I worked third shift at a Denny's in college. Minimum wage for tipped employees was only about 2/3 of minimum wage for other roles; there were nights when traffic was so low that tips didn't make up that difference.
I'm entirely in favor of "the price is the price" and eliminating fees and especially tips. I see it as easier for everyone and far more fair for the employees.
I'll be the contrarian here. I'm tipping less these days. I'm getting lousier service across the board (and it's getting to be too late in the game to keep blaming "the pandemic"). I'm also increasingly insulted at the places where I'm getting asked to tip. No, I'm not paying you extra for taking the doughnut off the shelf and putting it in a paper bag. We need to work together to fight back, or else there is going to be a tipping screen for every transaction ("Would you like to tip your bank teller? 18%, 20%, 25%?"). As for the server side of things, if you don't like low wages dependent on tips, find a better job. The sort of service worker jobs that rely on tips have never been intended as long-term careers (ditto for minimum wage jobs).
I've always tended to tip around 25%, simply because it's easier to calculate. I've sometimes tipped as high as 50% if I'm just getting a beer or two. I also hardly ever went out even before the Pandemic. Food has also always been more expensive in Boston -- I think I've always paid more for groceries than my parents did when I was living at home with them.
It's not just fancy restaurants in Europe -- even fast food workers get paid better, and the company has to provide benefits and the food isn't any more expensive. Possibly subsidies are involved, or tax rates are high enough that businesses would rather have a reduced profit than a higher tax bill.
I typically tip generously because I know restaurant work is challenging.
I live in a city that is ending its tipped minimum wage and restaurant owners are concerned about their ability to maintain margins. The little socialist devil on my shoulder too wants to make sure everyone is paid a high bar, but the concerns of the owners are real too - not many businesses could keep doing exactly what they’re doing while having to pay out an additional 40% in wages.
I’d have no problem with restaurants more clearly communicating price increases alongside expectations for tipping from their customers.
The question I’ve had alongside this - a factory or a store couldn’t get away with paying their employees less than the minimum wage. What about the restaurant business in America makes the margins such that you are often only successful when you pay your employees a tipped minimum wage?
My husband and I have 3 tiny kids….. so eating out now is both logistically more stressful and financially doesn’t make sense, being a one-income family (unless we’re talking ChickFilA or Chipotle). But when we do go out to an actual restaurant, whether us two or all of us, our mindset is “we already decided we’re spending all this money so might as well tip generously.” Like 25% at least.
My husband likes to eat out and I like to cook, so we usually eat out a few times a week for meals at different times of the day (in Richmond, VA.) On a higher priced bill, which is usually when my husband and I go out together for dinner or with a group (and we often split checks), we usually stick to 20%. On a lower priced bill for myself, again where my girlfriends and I get separate checks, I usually determine 20% and then round up a bit.
I'm most likely to leave a higher percentage tip at a lower priced restaurant. Getting close to 20% feels like plenty - especially when the bill is over $100. Round to nearby $5 increment. This is Michigan life.
My brother is a career restaurant employee (yes, there are more careers blossoming out there than you might realize). He was a server for years and now manages a fine dining restaurant. He always instilled in me the idea that 20% should be the minimum for anything other than abysmal service (not just an abysmal experience, which can be the fault of the kitchen or the cleaning team or the laundry service or what have you, not just the server). I've always tended to tip 10-15% for takeout, and a similar amount for counter service, although the counter service place I visit most frequently provides so much service at the table that I routinely tip 20% there as well.
Tip creep has definitely happened since the pandemic, and I think one of the big factors has been that more and more restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, etc have gone to the Square/Clover/Shopify POS systems to support contactless payments. These make it easier for the establishment to suggest tip percentages, and also make it easier for customers to add a tip. When I hear people complain about this, I always remind them that you can decline to add the tip on the screen, just the same way you could always pay for your coffee with cash and not add a dollar to the tip jar. The server may be disappointed, but you're an adult and you get to make that choice.
Service charges added to the bill are a somewhat thornier issue for me, especially if I'm not clear about the purpose. I remember seeing these for the first time years ago in San Francisco in response to a city mandate that restaurants start providing health insurance or other benefits to staff. In this case it was usually described this way on the bill. Now the ones I see locally are just to cover "increased costs," as if every business in this country isn't facing increased costs over the past few years. One of my favorite places now adds 3% if you pay with a credit card, which I would never be able to think about doing at the retail store that I manage.
I think there's been a breakdown in tipping as a form of merit pay that plays into this. I can't imagine a realistic situation where I would tip anything other than 20%. There are no considerations: slow food, bad service? I don't have enough information to know whether it's the server's fault. Great service? Maybe the problem is my standards but I don't know what that would look like either unless I was someone expecting a lot of modifications (I'm not), in which case again it's not clear that the server is really the responsible party.
I am with you and others; make the price the price. The service charges that may or may not go to the servers and the ilk are annoying. What I hear is that the restaurant owners don't think people will pay $40 for a chicken dish. This topic is covered a lot in Tom Sietsema's WashingtonPost.com weekly discussions.
I tip well (at least 20% unless the service is horrid) and am fine tipping when I eat in or take out. For take out, someone still needs to put the food in containers, add utensils etc. and bag up for the customer. Unless the wage is raised considerably, restaurants will not find servers if tipping is eliminated.
I don't mind tipping. I think of it as a good way to practice what Pope Benedict described as a spirit of gratuitousness. Plus, it means I'm helping subsidize folks who can't afford to tip, in a way. Not to mention the workers themselves.
Re. the screen that pops up requesting tips for ordering at the counter…that really seemed to take off as a result of COVID. We were tipping everyone higher during lock down bc dine-in service was nonexistent and it gave those who had to go into work “hazard pay.” And then the whole tipping thing in general just seemed to escalate and become mainstream. Hard to walk it back after that.
I have not seen it, but it has been reported that some self checkout machines are asking for tips too.
My husband spent years in food service, whereas I never did. Pre pandemic we generally tipped 20% except for abysmal service, in which case we would tip nothing and talk to a manager. Note that in nearly 20 years the no tip happened 3 times. And we would usually tip 10-15% on carry out at sit down restaurants, depending on the type and how often we went. When you get Thai at the same place once a week, the staff remember people who tip carry out!
Post pandemic we still tip 20% at sit down unless it is exceptional, then we might do 25. During the height of covid we tip carry out 20% just to help out our local restaurants but we've gone back to the pre pandemic levels.
The fast food places like Panera or Noodles or Subway are ones that piss me off. They are not working for tips, they get full hourly wages. So no, I am not going to give an extra 15% to take my order and make a sandwich.
Ultimately I would like to just pay a non tipped price like they do in Europe. If that means that every meal goes up by $15 but I am not tipping on top of that, great. As it is, eating out is getting ridiculous.
The big thing I've found is that my wife and I still go out for fancy meals but most of our family nights out have become either order in or frozen meals. Our dinner out at a burger restaurant went from $40 to $60+. At $40 for the meal I don't care that much if my kids poke at their food.