Tipping at a restaurant? Sure. But it feels like American consumers are now being asked to tip more than ever, at places they haven’t traditionally before.
The pandemic made consumers more generous, said Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior and marketing at Cornell University and an expert on tipping. A sudden drop in business highlighted for many customers that “service providers were facing an increased risk and they kind of deserved hazard pay.”
But “people are tipping more because of the increased request for tips,” Lynn said, thanks to touchless pay and digital point-of-sales apps that make adding gratuity seamless.
The prevalence of tip screens created a lot of pressure and caused a lot of confusion for consumers, said Lizzie Post, etiquette expert and co-author of Emily Post’s Etiquette, The Centennial Edition.
“You were starting to see tip screens in places where you weren’t typically prompted for it, beyond just that tip jar,” Post said.
Data from Toast, a restaurant management system that also supports online ordering and delivery services, suggests that customers at quick service restaurants are choosing to tip via card or digital payment method more frequently than they were in 2020. According to Toast’s analysis, about 48 percent of transactions using these payment methods in the last quarter of 2022 included a tip, up 11 percent from 2020.
Many businesses can also designate a recommended tip for consumers at the point of sale.
The traditional tip jar “felt like a lot less pressure on most patrons and customers as opposed to a screen where you’re actually being confronted with the question of, ‘Would you like to tip?’ Whereas the jar just kind of sits there nicely as a quiet option,” Post said
All of this has contributed to tip inflation, or the “creep upward” in the amount people are expected to tip, Lynn said — which is not a new concept, but one that seems to be moving at a faster pace. While there’s not great data on how tipping today compares to before restaurants adopted new technology or systems, the anecdotal evidence suggests people are tipping more, he said.
Recommended tips may play a big role in how much people tip too, Lynn added. A 2020 study he co-authored tested how customers of an app-based laundry service responded to tip recommendations — large and small amounts, and percentages versus dollar figures. The research, published in the journal Management Science, found that larger tip recommendations increased the size of tips as well as overall tip revenues.
So what do consumers need to know about tip expectations?
“Restaurants, you’re really expected to tip. It’s not appropriate to walk out of a restaurant with less than 15% left as the tip. This is really a minimum, it’s not an option.” Post said.
For discretionary tips at places like coffee or sandwich shops, Post said customers should consider factors like the location, the service, and the order.
Emily Post’s tipping etiquette guide offers suggestions for how much consumers should tip for a number of services. Illustration by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour.
“We want to think about if our own order was really complicated or at a busy time. Did you just ask for an 18-instruction latte during the morning rush? That’s what I’m really going to leave a tip on,” Post said. “If you get a small coffee to-go, no big deal. Quick in and out. That’s one where maybe if you don’t have the extra change on you, you choose not to.”
Norms can also differ depending on where you live. Tipping “tends to be higher in urban than in rural areas, tends to be higher on the East Coast than the West Coast,” Lynn said
Post recommends consumers “feel confident knowing how often you frequent this place, the order and the time of day that you place your order, and what kind of an impact that might have on the staff,” the next time a tip screen is flipped towards them.
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