How much do you tip at restaurants?

[Anonymous]

20% is my base for dine in, going up or down depending on service quality.

No tip for carry out or fast casual.

[Anonymous]

20% unless the service was awful

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We stopped eating out. I'm sick of being nickel and dimed. Fast casual is where my real beef is. They are not paid a tipped wage and still want tips.

Restaurants just need to include the price they want for the food.

Ok, stay home Debbie Downer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm back to work part time and saw 'I'm not tipping 18-20% anymore, because you all make minimum wage' only once since I started a month ago. Two young people left me $5 on $110. From that sale, $2.50 goes to runner, $2.50 to busser, and $2.5 goes to bartender. This table cost me money, but I'm glad they came, because they had 4 drinks. The establishment need money to be able to pay us.
The other was two in their 50s businessmen. They spent $140 and tipped $20. This was for no reason other than ' we know you get paid minimum and I'm letting you know by tipping less'.
The bigger problem right now is that the workers we have now don't compare to what to workers we had 25 years ago. The business has to have extra 1-2 servers to do the same job, but service still suffers. They are on the phone, playing/horsing around, arguing about tables instead of going there, and something else I'd rather not mention, because parents would be up in arms. It is so hard to find good workers. The resumes we get are horrific with 10 job changes in short time.
Please come out to drink and eat. When it comes to tipping, do whatever. We give most people a chance to work, but this also means we get many bad apples.

I know nothing about the restaurant business- but if everyone is making minimum wage (runner, busser, bartender), why is waitstaff still tipping them out now that waitstaff are min wage? And if it's still a good system, why does waitstaff not tip out an equal percentage of the tip THEY GOT rather than the bill or a fixed amount?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:idk why tip keeps creeping up! menu prices keep creeping up, so, naturally, tips would also creep up because of that. idk why we have to keep increasing our tip percentage.

Because you are the colonizer and the oppressor, obviously!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm back to work part time and saw 'I'm not tipping 18-20% anymore, because you all make minimum wage' only once since I started a month ago. Two young people left me $5 on $110. From that sale, $2.50 goes to runner, $2.50 to busser, and $2.5 goes to bartender. This table cost me money, but I'm glad they came, because they had 4 drinks. The establishment need money to be able to pay us.
The other was two in their 50s businessmen. They spent $140 and tipped $20. This was for no reason other than ' we know you get paid minimum and I'm letting you know by tipping less'.
The bigger problem right now is that the workers we have now don't compare to what to workers we had 25 years ago. The business has to have extra 1-2 servers to do the same job, but service still suffers. They are on the phone, playing/horsing around, arguing about tables instead of going there, and something else I'd rather not mention, because parents would be up in arms. It is so hard to find good workers. The resumes we get are horrific with 10 job changes in short time.
Please come out to drink and eat. When it comes to tipping, do whatever. We give most people a chance to work, but this also means we get many bad apples.

I know nothing about the restaurant business- but if everyone is making minimum wage (runner, busser, bartender), why is waitstaff still tipping them out now that waitstaff are min wage? And if it's still a good system, why does waitstaff not tip out an equal percentage of the tip THEY GOT rather than the bill or a fixed amount?

Legal minimum wage for these jobs is like $2.15

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:15-20% on dine in. None for carry out except rare occasion.

Ditto

20% for dine in - but off the pre-tax amount. Usually $1 on carryout lunch, and maybe $5 for an expensive carryout meal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm back to work part time and saw 'I'm not tipping 18-20% anymore, because you all make minimum wage' only once since I started a month ago. Two young people left me $5 on $110. From that sale, $2.50 goes to runner, $2.50 to busser, and $2.5 goes to bartender. This table cost me money, but I'm glad they came, because they had 4 drinks. The establishment need money to be able to pay us.
The other was two in their 50s businessmen. They spent $140 and tipped $20. This was for no reason other than ' we know you get paid minimum and I'm letting you know by tipping less'.
The bigger problem right now is that the workers we have now don't compare to what to workers we had 25 years ago. The business has to have extra 1-2 servers to do the same job, but service still suffers. They are on the phone, playing/horsing around, arguing about tables instead of going there, and something else I'd rather not mention, because parents would be up in arms. It is so hard to find good workers. The resumes we get are horrific with 10 job changes in short time.
Please come out to drink and eat. When it comes to tipping, do whatever. We give most people a chance to work, but this also means we get many bad apples.

I know nothing about the restaurant business- but if everyone is making minimum wage (runner, busser, bartender), why is waitstaff still tipping them out now that waitstaff are min wage? And if it's still a good system, why does waitstaff not tip out an equal percentage of the tip THEY GOT rather than the bill or a fixed amount?

Legal minimum wage for these jobs is like $2.15

But not all employees are making $2. The host and busser might make more. It's impossible to tell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My friend’s DD works at a popular chain restaurant and runs their monthly receipt reports and has told me their average tip percentage is down from 20% to 17% and more of their servers report being tipped 0 at the end of service. Are you tipping less and what is your go to tip percentage?

Completely depends on the bartender or server. Good ones that comp me free food and drinks on occasion get around 25% to even 50% sometimes on smaller tabs.

Mediocre service gets around 10% at most. If it's surly or not paying attention, they get 0%.

[Anonymous]

I tip about 20% — of the price of the food — at sit-down restaurants. More if I’m hanging out for a bit after the meal, less - 15-18 - if the server didn’t do much. I round up though, so it’s usually a bit higher than the percentages, but never less than that.

[Anonymous]

15% for Chinese. They are alway cold and robotic. Not friendly at all.

20% at most places.

I recently tipped 30% when I stayed longer to catch up with a girlfriend. It was a Sunday at 2 pm. We had a late lunch and the restaurant was not busy.

[Anonymous]

I usually tip 20%. Went down to 16% the other night for a server with a bad attitude - rolled her eyes, sighed heavily, etc. I wanted to go lower, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It’s a restaurant I go to every once in a while, and I don’t want to be marked as a bad customer - even though I am a good customer and that particular waitress was bad!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:20% is my go-to. However, if service is awful, might go down (would have to be really bad due to server, not due to the kitchen being backed up), and if service is great, go higher

Same. I rarely go lower, it would have to be pretty bad service.

[Anonymous]

Generally 20% post-tax minus any fees/service charges. but if a restaurant is charging 15% or more in fees that's all they get.

If they want to make their fee the price of a reasonable tip, then as far as I'm concerned they're telling me that's the tip.

[Anonymous]

Depends on the service, and whether it’s a place I frequent.

20% is my set default. But with all the service fees and wage increases it doesn’t really seem to make sense anymore. Particularly confusing at places that have the message about how “the line item service fees included cover living wage … tip not required but appreciated.” No idea what others do at these places. It stresses me out.

Handing over a 20% tip to someone who barely looked up from their phone before tossing my pastry in a bag and then pointing to the card reader? Hard pass.