How much do you tip at a restaurant?
How much do you tip at a restaurant?
To those who live in or who have visited the United States.
Growing up in the 90's, the "minimum acceptable" tip was 10%, average was 15%, and a good tip was 20%. These days, I just round to the nearest dollar and tip 20%, but I've heard these days it's not unusual to tip up to 40%!
What do you usually do?
I always tip 20%, more for exceptional service. I've worked as a cook for about 15 years, at various places from dive bars to fine dining. At some places the servers and bartenders make insane money, often more than the chef who is usually on salary and not eligible for tips. But at a lot of places, the servers barely make ends meet and live not only check to check, but hand to mouth, week to week depending on the business. I never assume anyone is making bank so I tip well as a professional courtesy and to make up for people who don't tip.
Increasingly these days, I've heard about and worked at places where the tips are split with the back of house crew, up to 40%. That ends up meaning that nearly 50% of our monthly pay is in tips, and that's a blessing and a curse. Having PTO is basically worthless because missing out on the tips hurts so much.
Here in Seattle, they just raised the minimum wage to just over $20 an hour, and tips and benefits can't be counted towards that. It's a step in the right direction, but because capitalism is going to capitalism, it means that's barely enough to live in the city with a single income source. So I still tip well regardless.
Most places in the country are not that fortunate, so I encourage everyone to tip their servers. If you think you're going to force owners to pay people more by not tipping, you're not only wrong, you're actively making life harder for people who will likely never make as much as you if you work any sort of office job.
The system sucks, and needs to change. Some people can't afford to tip generously, and that's fine. But if you don't tip out of principle, you're just an asshole.
Americans: "I don't care how bad the service is, you HAVE to tip a minimum amount."
Also Americans: "My experience at the DMV was bad. Fire all government employees!"
As a transplant I refuse the whole US tipping system and stick to the way of “rounding it up”. It often ends up around 10% of the bill but % tipping seems absolutely stupid as you are being punished for buying more. A few rare times I actually tipped 20% because the service was very good. Nobody tips me on my job and on average I make less than these people so I don’t see the logical connection of this whole stupid tipping culture
You make less than $2.13 an hour, the federal minimum tipped wage?
What? Your comment makes absolutely no sense.
20% for excellent service.
It goes down from there. Yes zero tip is acceptable if the service sucked. If I ordered medium rare steak and I get well done steak. I normally won’t deduct that from the tip since that is a hard one for the server to see. But if it’s something they could have seen and didn’t fix, yeah I’m probably reducing the tip.
The tip is for service above and beyond, not a required part of the bill.
If my food sucks and the service was good, I tip them specifically in cash and tell them not to mention it, so it looks like I didn't tip to the restaurant but it doesn't screw the wait staff. It also makes the restaurant pay just a tiny bit more in payroll.
Pretty much what I also do
0, after reading the comments I realised you do not want my answer, since I live in the EU
Appologies. My presumption was civilized places don't have such barbaric practices
😘
20%—I feel for tip-based workers, but I'm also not running charity nor am I in a financial place in life to be tipping much higher than that.
If 20% is not in the list I will enter 20%.
Followup question, how much do y'all tip your landlords /s
20% minimum even if service sucked since it's virtually always systemic reasons why the service sucked
I do the same as you with a few exceptions:
Laugh at my old man's jokes about the weather when we go out for our weekly breakfast? You get an extra buck or two
If I order water, an extra buck or so. It takes the same energy as bringing me a beer. Especially at night clubs.
Bring me back my change but didn't break up that fiver? I'll tip you exactly 18% and make you bring me back five singles
The bars empty, you're not making squat in tips and you hang out and chat with me. Could be an extra five bucks or so
Give me a free beer? I'll tip an extra five bucks
Nothing, I live in a country where it's the employer's responsibility to pay their staff a livable wage.
In us states with no tipped minimum wage (such as Oregon), we still tip 20%
Nothing I live in Australia
They're trying to make it a thing here. I refuse to participate.
I'm paying for a menu that has your decent wage built in already, I'm not gifting free money on top for just... doing your job?
Also wtf servers in places that do tip... you turn my words in to an entry in a tablet (or perhaps a piece of paper), then carry the food that other people created / prepared / transported / cooked all of 30 steps from the kitchen to my table and expect 20% of the bill? Insanity.
but I’ve heard these days it’s not unusual to tip up to 40%!
That seems pretty unusual to me.
I normally tip 20%.
Generally keep a baseline 20% unless service is either outstanding or abysmal.
But if your owner decides that they’re gonna nickel-and-dime service fee me on the tab and indicate it poorly, I’m probably not going to come back to the restaurant in question.
I’m usually 25 and round up. Probably closer to 30.
15-25% usually 20%. I have worked for tips so I get it.
My wife tipped 25% at an ice cream parlor last night. Which I thought was ridiculous considering he just pulled three pints out of a freezer behind him.
It's too many places now.
always 15% regardless of service. best or worst, i don't care. im not going to judge anyone. i just want a meal and consider the 15% to be a convoluted tax for meals here in the US.
I was going to answer, but then you clarified on the body of your post that you only wanted answers from people in the US, lol
When I have been in the us I used to tip around 15%. Accepted that as a weirdness of the us.
On my home country tipping is just weird and unheard of, so 0%.
Edit: last time I was in the us was like 15 years ago.
I'm almost always a 25%. I used to work in the industry in a previous lifetime, and tips were what kept me afloat. Now I'm an overpaid professional, and have no qualm paying it forward.
The only situations I will tip much less is if:
- Service was just absolutely fucking abysmal due to very clear negligence.
- It's one of these new hipster restaurants that keep popping up, where you order and pay for your food upfront and are expected to tip then as well, without knowing how service will be. I'm not talking about food carts or kiosks either, these are actual restaurants. I hate the expectation that I should just pay an extra premium without even having a chance to evaluate the experience.
I did round up a few times. It seems strange to base the tip off a percentage.
I avoid restaurants that require tipping. When I do have to tip, I give way too much if the service was good. IMO, good service is to not try to talk to me too much, and to be responsive to what I need done (refilling drinks, taking additional requests). Bonus tip if I know they're overworked and handling it well.
15% floor. Throw an additional $10 sometimes. Always direct to the worker because these places steal tips. Also I tip cooks sometimes.
But I avoid going to these restaurants.
I don't live in the US but I tip around 20%, sometimes more or less depending. Tbh I'm never sure what tipping etiquette is supposed to be here, but if it's obvious how much the worker is getting (eg ride shares or food delivery where you can see the delivery fee), I tip them how much I think is reasonable to be paid for that job, which is usually quite a bit more than I'm charged for the service. And ofc not all of the initial charge goes to the worker anyway.
Typically 20-25 at a restaurant. I’m not a fan of tipping for transactions where I’m not served. I only tip when someone does something.
15% flat always. Canada has sadly embraced tipping culture so I'll not deny anyone the going rate or judge them at their workplace - but Vancouver is also expensive as fuck and anything over 15% starts putting meals close to the 100$ mark.
Don't pay it. In Australia they're trying, and I remind them they get paid well, get paid overtime, get paid a pension, and get paid more to take holidays. After being paid all that, why is the shitty machine prompting a tip?
Zero. I believe that the negotiations of an employee's market value are between the employee and their employer. I don't believe that it is my responsibility to charitably subsidize a company through the subsidization of their employees' wages.
Your choice not to tip will make no difference to the company, but every difference to a person who suffers through customer service for a living.
"I don't want to subsidize a company" is just you inventing a convenient way to justify what is essentially theft. Why stop at not tipping? You could probably get away with stealing IDK, playground equipment too.
in Canada, usually 15%, if the service is outstanding or i'm a regular I'll tip 20%
Growing up, and even after working in foodservice, I was always told to tip at least 20% (almost) regardless of service.
There's been maybe two times I didn't tip 20% and the lower tip was definitely earned.
I usually try to tip relative to the cost of the food. If I bought something really cheap (few dollars) for a few dollars I might tip up to 40% but if I got something more expensive I will usually tip like 15%. I try to consider how much effort the server has put in since I think it makes sense that way. If I only see the server 3 times but they deliver a really expensive plate of food I don't think they deserve as much as someone who might have delivered multiple plates or had to do extra work like splitting the check.
0%. We do not have a tipping culture, nor will I ever move in the direction of us having one.EDIT: I'm not in the U.S so my answer does not apply
Still a good answer 😆
15% typically, more if it warrants it. Food keeps getting more expensive, so the percentage doesn’t have to go up.
Usually 20-25% unless the service is inexcusably bad (like 1-5% of the time, and even then I'll tip like 15%). I'll typically approximate 20% and round up to the nearest dollar, then maybe add a dollar or two. I remember 15% being standard with it being acceptable to go down to 10 or up to 20; 18% was sorta my standard at the time, and I'd only go as low as 15%. I've only ever asked to speak to a manager three times that I can remember, and both times were due to what the kitchen sent out to me. I still tipped fully to the server since it wasn't their fault. I was a chef for years, so I know how stressful it gets back there, but there's still no excuse for the dishes I've sent back. There's usually an offer to cook something else, but if I'm sending food back it's because I don't trust the kitchen to send out food that won't give me food poisoning.
Tipped minimum wage here (and therefore all tipped wage) is $2.17/hour. I believe that these businesses should be forced to pay proper wages, but stiffing your server doesn't achieve that. These people are on their feet running around for hours and they usually don't have enough support or leadership to do their job as well as they'd like to, and then they're too exhausted and broke to study or work to break into another industry. We're gonna have a lot of 30-50 year old servers living paycheck to paycheck until their knees and back give out. I'm down with tipping an extra couple bucks so they can get some Dr Scholl's.
brazilian restaurants tipically charge a 10% optional service tax, it's up to you to give it or not. my problem with it is that we don't know if it goes to the waiter or the owner cashes it to its pocket.
I have generally tipped at least 20%. But tipped workers in my state just fought to keep their sub-minimum wage, because republicans convinced them that people would stop tipping if they were paid more. Tipped minimum wage was going up to $6, but now it's only going up to $4.74. I've been tipping too much, and will bring it back down to max 15%.
Typically somewhere between 15-20%. I do a rough mental calculation figuring out 10% by moving the decimal, then either double that or figure out what half of that is and roughly add that amount to the 10% amount, then go with a nice roundish number (to the nearest quarter) in that range. Usually a little higher than my rough estimate for 15% if I’m on that low end just so my rough math doesn’t inadvertently shortchange the server.
I make my calculation based on the total with tax included. I know some people go on the pretax amount.
BONUS: If I’m doing a delivery service like DoorDash, I look up my distance to the restaurant and make sure the tip is always at least equal to the mileage. I used to drive for them and $1/mile was always my minimum. DoorDash at least would typically only kick in $2/delivery, unless there were bonus promos. Since the driver might not be at the restaurant I figure that’s probably enough to get them to the restaurant, then the tip will get them from there to me. Actually, at home my house is several miles from any restaurants, so I usually go $4 above that to make sure the driver doesn’t lose money getting back to civilization. If I’m at a hotel close to restaurants I won’t necessarily do that. If it’s something where I’d like to try to get the best service I’ll go higher; they typically offer the highest pay orders to their top rated drivers first.
Usually 20% and round up the change. Less of there are server issues. A buck or two more if service is super. I don't tip if I'm standing up when i order.
If i was still there I'd still tip 20% cash preferred. (Card/electronic transactions are more often stolen by management)
15 pct is what I do now on average. No tip for takeout.
I’m a good tipper, having waited tables before, so usually ~30% but it’s certainly not expected. 20% is the standard tip.
When I lived in the US, 15%. Now 0%, feels great.
I give $2 for a pizza, $1-2 if I’m picking up to go. Usually I go 15-20% for standard service but rarely tip over $30 a server unless the meal was outstanding.
In the USA: 20%. In Europe: 10%. If service is exceptional or bad, I adjust up or down.
Please don't fucking tip in Europe, tipping culture isn't normalized there and servers actually get a fair wage.
As a Romanian, tipping here does very much help Hospitality/Delivery workers, as our wages are deep down the toilet.
Our tipping culture is (or was, at least) pretty similar to the US's, 10-15% as a standard tip, 20% if you're flush and the service was notable (checking up on you occasionally, helping you make sense of things if need be, polite, nothing over-the-top). Same thing goes for delivery people.
Nowadays, I suspect people have somewhat maintained the ratios, although this comes mostly as an anecdotal observation - I started tipping 20-25%, or even double that if I'm ordering groceries (because I stock up for weeks, so it's quite a bit to carry), and a LOT of delivery people have remarked that it was the largest tip they'd ever received (as an average example, about a 20RON ~ $4 tip to a 100RON ~ $21 food order).
Stop tipping in EU. Last time someone asked me to tip in Germany got a 1 star review.
I do what I want.
Tipping in restaurants is normal in Germany; here's the German Wikipedia article on the subject. Staff asking for a tip doesn't seem normal though, and I'd find that rude.
100-200% depending on how good the service was.
Downside to this is I can't afford to go out as often. :C