Summary
Tipping in U.S. restaurants has dropped to 19.3%, the lowest in six years, driven by frustration over rising menu prices and increased prompts for tips in non-traditional settings.
Only 38% of consumers tipped 20% or more in 2024, down from 56% in 2021, reflecting tighter budgets.
Diners are cutting back on outings, spending less, and tipping less. Some restaurants are adding service fees, further reducing tips.
Worker advocacy groups are pushing to eliminate the tipped-wage system, while the restaurant industry warns these shifts hurt business and employees.
Key cities like D.C. and Chicago are phasing in higher minimum wages for tipped workers.
The worst part is when you go to a place you need to pay before service is rendered.
If I go to the bagel shop and get a dozen I pay before I pick them out. TIP? Are you kidding me, what what, you have not served me yet.
A tip is to reward good service at a sit down place. I still think it shouldn’t be and if we have it, it should be back to the 5-10% like most countries that have tipping.
But if you ask for a tip before you render service i get a little angry.
Tipping was essentially an American invention to not pay black people. (Who were the majority of service industry workers in the late 1800s/1900s?)
Also keeps that servant/master power dynamic.
good work Americans, keep it up.
don’t stop until the rate is 0%. paying workers is the employer’s job.
Sometimes people try to bring tipping culture to NZ. We show them the door.
Whats funny is when Americans dont care about our non tipping culture and tip anyway
I once worked for an American company that had a requirement that if you’re using company money to pay for a meal, you tip at least 20%.
That was very awkward in some countries…
saw that once. The waiter said “I am not allowed to accept tips” and the american looked confused/offended. Thought it was quite funny
One time after a meal out in Wellington, the waiter chased us up the street - he’d just realised he overcharged us for wine, and was bringing us the cash.
Yeah! Thank you so much for punishing the servers and delivery drivers instead of business owners and making it harder for me to pay rent and feed myself! You’re all such wonderful people!
That’s like employers holding someone hostage and then claiming any harm that comes to them is your fault.
I feel like this is 90% of politics; a gun is held to someone’s head for a hostage demand, and to not give in to the demand is to be as bad as the shooter themselves.
“How could you shoot down my bill for a Coal Chugging Committee? It would’ve created so many jobs111”
You’re still not supposed to shoot the hostages.
Not according to Jack Traven.
You’re a victim of the system you’re protecting. Enough with the Stockholm Syndrome.
The ones funding my bosses and not me are doing a lot more to protect the system than I am. Not tipping has no effect on the employer and only punishes the person providing you a service.
Your employer is required to pay you minimum wage if tips don’t make up the difference. If people stop tipping entirely, it actually will impact your boss.
A. Wage theft is widespread and hard to fight without money
B. Minimum wage hasn’t been a livable wage since the 70’s
different problems. Maybe try to tackle those instead?
Sounds like you need a union.
Tipping only benefits your employer.
Not tipping has no effect on the employer and only punishes the person providing you a service.
We’re here talking about it
This makes absolutely no sense. Do you even think before you type or…?
They’re absolutely correct though and it makes perfect sense. This is a systemic problem. Don’t use the service at all if you want to make a statement.
Use the service, and then refuse to tip (100% of which goes to the driver btw), and you are doing nothing but directly hurting other working class people. Good job.
Customers fund businesses. Customers who don’t tip still fund businesses. Not tipping makes no impact on the business’s pay scale.
How about you be angry at the business owner for paying a shit wage? Tips should be a bonus you get for a job well done not something that makes your life liveable, that’s what your wage is for. We aren’t to blame if your boss is a piece of shit who refuses to pay you a liveable wage.
Yes, and the way to take that anger out on the business owner, is not by withholding a tip to the working class driver (who receives 100% of the tip, btw), it’s by not using the fucking service in the first place.
I assure you I am also angry at my corporate masters, but they’re irredeemable scum and aren’t on Lemmy. It angers me more when I see people cheering that food is being taken out of my mouth as though it’s some virtuous blow to my bosses. It’s not. You’re only further exploiting already exploited people
It angers me when I have to subsidize someone else’s wages because they’re not built into the price I’m paying.
Do you tip the cashier at the grocery store? The technology employee who recommended what TV to buy? The book store worker who helped you find a book?
No, you don’t.
Why? Because their pay is already factored into the price of the goods being sold or the service being provided.
If anyone’s stealing food from your mouth it’s your employer.
“Do you tip the cashier at the grocery store?”
What cashiers? All of the cashiers have been replaced by electronic self-checkout systems.
Even if they have, that doesn’t negate the other two examples.
And every grocery store I’ve been to still has human cashiers even if they’ve implemented self checkout.
Good day, sir.
Yes, blame the exploited for their exploitation and never acknowledge your participation in it. You are a good American
the exploited are in on it in this case. Because, by federal law, “below minimum wage jobs” don’t exist. You either make minimum with tips, or the employer is forced to pay the full amount. So the problem is wage theft. That is not the concern of the clients, but of the relevant authorities, if the servers bothered to report, of course
Try to live off $7.25/hour, let alone raise a family. Servers make even less (~$3 something/hour?).
This shit is so fucking tone deaf and misguided.
A very good American.
It’s so much nicer travelling in places where service workers are valued by their employers.
I still support the anti-tipping people though - it’s the single best option they have to effect change. It’s something small, concrete, and moves things to the desired end-state.
Stop tipping and donate the amount to community organizations fighting poverty instead.
Or better yet advocate for a minimum wage that is actually livable so people don’t have to rely on charity organizations that often come with religious strings attached.
I’m with you, these replies are delusional. Saying that the employer has to pay minimum wage if the servers don’t get tips is so ignorant it’s insane. Servers make like ~$3/hr in a big chunk of the US. That’s slave labor in our modern economy. $7.25 is not much better.
They think they’re making some grand statement by tipping their UberEats driver $0, while in reality they’re just taking money directly from other working class people. And if they actually wanted to make a statement, they would not have used UberEats in the first fucking place.
Edit: To be perfectly clear, when I say servers make $3, I am referring to the federal minimum wage for servers, and yes it is different and much lower than $7.25/hr.
I also agree with you but i wanted to point out that if the worker getting paid $3/hr doesn’t make enough tips to cover the remaining $4.25/hr in tips then theoretically the business is legally supposed to make up that remaining hourly difference. -I’ve never seen that happen but a server making such a low amount in tips repeatedly is a server i’d expect to not remain working in that role.
You are mistaken. The US has two different federal minimum wages. Servers have a lower minimum wage. It’s like ~$3/hour.
I was a server in addition to an Office Assistant that adjusted payroll among other things in the hospitality industry here in the U.S.
-That additional amount is supposed to be made up for by the employer if the server doesn’t make enough in tips. If as a server you are not making at least 7.25/hr in wages or alternatively in combined pay and tips then you need to contact your local states Department of Labor because you’re likely having wages stolen.https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-employees-flsa
According to the DOL, an employer may not pay their employees less than $2.13 per hour even if they make enough tips that they’d still be making minimum wage just off of tips. So there is a separate, lower minimum wage for tipped workers.
At the same time though, tipped workers still have to make the full (federal) minimum wage. If your $2.13 per hour plus your tips only come out to $6 per hour, your employer has to pay the other $1.25 per hour.
Enforcement is another issue, of course, but tipped workers have the same minimum wage as everybody else. The tipped wage just allows businesses to count tips as wages up to a certain point. If a tipped worker is only being paid $3 per hour because they didn’t get enough tips, that business is stealing their labor and needs to be smacked.
nah, by law if nobody tipped, they’d have to be paid by their employer in full. You’re not punishing them, you’re just not accepting responsibility that, by law, is not yours
Paid in full to… checks notes, ~$3/hour (if they make server rates) or $7.25/hour (if they make federal minimum wage)? Wow. Not sure if they make the higher or lower of the two, but either way…
Also, lots of places straight up just won’t do that. They might eventually get caught, and pay a fine or whatever.
Refusing to tip, at the consumer level, will change nothing besides ruining the day/week of the person delivering your order.
there are no server rates. minimum is minimum. the server rate only applies if you tip.
I mean this is the better way to do it honestly. People generally tipping less means those positions basically pay less. The whole reason people work those jobs is because with good tips you can make some serious bank. Stop making bank, people will move elsewhere, can’t hire servers because tips don’t pay well enough? Then start paying them. If the alternative is everyone just stops tipping tomorrow then people would really be screwed, because they wouldn’t have time to transition.
Sure it sucks they’re getting paid less, but if the alternative is this “you better pay our workers so they can eat because we ain’t gonna do it” then I’d say it’s a pretty welcome change.
It’s also not like the tip amount dropped to 5% or something. Prices have been going nuts lately, so the tips are probably about the same cash amount as they have been, which is just a smaller percent of the now larger bill.
“I mean this is the better way to do it honestly.”
It’s not. The better way is for people who don’t want to tip to stop going out to places or using services where tipping is customary. That way nobody is increasingly encouraged to perform labor for less than they’re work is worth. If there are not enough customer’s because of this then the businesses will change or perish. All of this anti-tipping sentiment leads me to believe is that if these customers were to trade places with the owners then they’d pay their laborer’s just as little.
That way nobody is increasingly encouraged to perform labor for less than they’re work is worth.
You negotiated what your labor is worth when you took the serving job; below minimum wage. Don’t like it? Go find a non tipped job that doesn’t rely on patrons subsidizing your wages.
What other industry relies on paying for something and then having to pay more after you’ve already paid the agreed upon price?
there are no “below minimum wage jobs”. Minimum is minimum. If you don’t tip, the employer has to pay the full minimum wage. If you end up with less than minimum wige, then you were stolen from by your employer. The proper response to which is to go to the authorities, which take this kind of thing quite seriously, not guilt tripping the clients
yeah those are both ignorant of the law. No, the job pays minimum wage. If you don’t tip, the employer must.
Wage theft is what’s going on. Which is a different problem. And if that is solved and minimum wage isn’t enough, then that’s a minimum wage problem. Which affects everyone. Servers aren’t special. Neither require tipping.
You agree to tipping by using services and patronising businesses where tipping is customary. Let’s not act like you don’t understand this ahead of time. People only argue against tipping in these fields to this degree because they want to virtue signal as a cope for making waiters, bartenders, porters, delivery drivers, etc just as poor as they are. -Which is too poor to use or patronize these businesses in the first place.
–They could also simply be astroturfing to sow discord.
If you really care about the businesses paying their staff the full wages then you understand that either way the cost will still be passed onto the patrons, regardless, and the people that claim to be upset are arguing over a pedantic order of operations in the finances.
You agree to tipping by using services and patronising businesses where tipping is customary.
I do not agree but am forced into this crap system like shitty “healthcare” or Papa John’s pizza.
When all servers claim 100% of their tipped wages on their taxes then we’ll talk. Until then STFU. And this.
So I take it you see yourself as a guy in the tophat? because customers encouraging other customers to betray workers by refusing to pay for services rendered is a perfect example of a class-traitor.
You flew too close to the sun, you insufferable, greedy pieces of shit. Pay your workers a livable wage yourself, we’re done subsidizing your labor abuses.
American tipping culture is so pervasive, anerican POS software companies don’t even bother localising POS systems to remove the tipping step.
Like, why is this button here, practically no one is ever going to use it.
If we leave a tip, it’s in a tip-jar almost without exception, in cash. It’s where you put your poop change or a couple of gold coins ($1 or $2)
(Australia)
Grumble
I’ve been tipping more, but that’s mostly because I live in a relatively low-income area and I know people around here are cheap/frugal. I’ve also worked in food service before (though not deliveries) and I know just how awful it can be. I hope I can be the one delivery that allows the person to call it an early night and spend time with their family. Shit like that.
That being said, I don’t know what kind of notes the drivers get when they see my order pop up, but I will say that 99% of the time, my service has been impeccable. They know.
HOWEVER, don’t take this as approval for tipping culture. I hate it and would love to do away with it. Unfortunately, I understand that these people depend on my tips for a living wage and that sucks.
Make sure you’re tipping cashiers too then
Tipping culture and systems need to die off. Sadly, because they often get paid more via tips than they would by increased hourly wages, tipped employees are often against such reforms.
And, to be fair, for most restaurants, it would be really hard for them to pay their wait staff appropriate wages in many cities where rent is extremely high and the cost of the food products they use to create their meals is rising as well. It’s not a simple matter of “the employer should pay their employees’ wages, not the customer.” The industry is built around tipping, and that’s not something that can be changed overnight.
Still, I firmly believe it needs to happen. And if that means increasing the price of restaurant meals, so be it. I suspect people eat out too much these days anyway and should learn to cook themselves. I used to eat out a lot until I did some calculations and realized I was spending way too much on it. Since learning to cook, I’ve saved a lot of money and now prefer my own cooking to a lot of restaurant fare out there (although not the really good stuff—I’m no professional chef).
If you can’t make your business work without paying people below the minimum wage than you have a bad business.
In my city restaurants have just gotten more expensive. It’s also led to better conditions for staff and these places are more desirable to work at. It works. I don’t go out as much because I pay often $200-$300 instead of $80-$150 like I used to but so be it. Going out to eat is a luxury, we budget accordingly.
I’d rather we just eliminate wait staff in most places. There’s almost zero value to a person over a tablet.
I don’t really agree that restaurants couldn’t make it work. It’s just going to have to take all or nothing.
Getting away from tipped wages is the real problem. Give all restaurant workers fair livable wages, they won’t be on tighter budgets on would spend more going out.
Workers can’t live paycheck to paycheck just for the profits to sit in some CEO or owners back account. The economy is heathy with an exchange of money. More money in the pockets of the people the more they will spend.
Of course it won’t work if one restaurant (or any single company) does it differently when everyone is still on tight budgets. You won’t get the business from your own employees but need others to have the means to come to you too.
“Corporations and Restaurants refuse to pay waiters a living wage, subsidizing their salaries with their already drawn thin customers’ depressed wages.”
There, I fixed the title so it identifies the actual problem rather than causing divisions in the working classes.
People tip more than 10%?
Are you American? If so, yes.
It’s $1 per drink at a bar (in most major cities though this is not universal), 20% at sit down restaurants (even if it’s not super nice), it gets ambiguous outside of that.
I’ve been tipping 10% at restaurants for the last decade and don’t tip anywhere else. Shrug
10% is insultingly low. Have you worked in the service industry?
Nope, but I’ve worked for minimum wage.
Not the same thing.
Are you American? If so, yes.
Lol, as an American those tip rates can get fuckef
🙄
Good! Tipping culture is NOT generosity; it is a symptom of an exploitative economic model that values capital accumulation more than basic human dignity.
I swear when I was a kid in the 90s 5-10% was standard.
Anyone else remember this?
Im 40. It had always been 15% as long as I can remember, and my memory of it goes pretty far back. When I started learning percentages in math class my parents made me the tip calculator whenever we’d go out so that would have been 8 or 9 years old?
10 bad, 15 average, 20 good service. I’ve always gone above 20, having worked plenty of years relying on it for income myself
Yup and tips were only for a short list of things like waiters or cabbies.
“Let me tip the taco time drive through”
- Statement from the deranged.
No, it’s been 15% as standard for food.
For whatever reason you can go lower on things like haircuts, and drinks were always a dollar (finally getting down to 15% now)
I grew up waiting tables in the late 90’s - early 00’s. The state I was in had a mandatory 8% tax claim on total sales for the day. So if you did $2000 in food / liquor sales, you had to claim $160 in additional, taxable wages within the time keeping system at the end of your shift. We also received a base wage that was equivalent to the state minimum wage at the time.
Based on my experiences working everywhere from small chaim restaraunts in mill towns to hipster bars in metropolitan areas, that 5-10% was pretty accurate.
However, there were usually one or two anomalies every shift that meant you’d clear an overall net closer to 20% for the day.
The smart ones budgeted around a 0% take home and treated their tips as a supplement, the rest of us lived together so rent was cheap enough we could still waste our money on drinking and partying after shift.
Blame the companies, not the customers. I bought a $12 water at a concert and the attendant acted offended I didn’t tip. Don’t get mad at me.
Yea, we’re getting exhausted from being constantly barraged by demands for tips.
I would never go back to that venue. $12 for a water…
You’re fine with getting overcharged for the concert and the water, but paying the worker for their time is where you draw the line?
Most people going to concerts can’t exactly leave the building, find a different store selling water, buy it, then bring it back in through the concert venue. (Nor are they capable of magically knowing the prices inside beforehand) The reason the price was so high was likely because the venue knew they had a captive audience, and when people need water, they need water. If someone is just forced to pay $12 for water, asking them to subsidize your worker’s wages on top is a shitty move, and if nobody tips, then maybe that company will realize that they can’t subsidize the wages they pay with tips, and stop relying on them.
Then the attendant gets paid fairly from the get go, and they don’t need to be offended if someone doesn’t tip, because why the hell should anybody have to subsidize a corporation’s wages? If they want workers, charge what’s required in the price to pay those workers, no tip required.
I know I’m being redundant, but again: they are okay paying money to Ticketmaster (or another billionaire), they are okay paying money to the venue, but they refuse to pay someone who actually works for a living? It’s not complicated…
The company has to pay the worker enough… it’s not complicated. Just like any other job.
They’re refusing to encourage the venue to underpay the person while using tips to make up for it. In practice, it’s not the same thing.
The immediate direct implication is, yes, not giving that person money, but if people as a whole continue to engage in that behavior, companies can go ahead and tell their workers “sure we aren’t paying you a living wage directly, but everyone will tip you enough to make up the difference” and that will allow them to keep more of the sale proceeds for themselves as profit, rather than paying it to the worker.
However, the more people refuse to tip, the less and less the employer can use the excuse that “they’ll make up for the difference with tips,” and will then be forced to pay the employee directly without making their income dependent on guilt-tripping people for extra cash, because otherwise, that employee will simply quit because they’re not getting paid enough, and no new employee will fill that position if it’s clear there aren’t enough tips to cover the difference between their actual wage, and a livable one.
The only reason tips as a concept exist is to allow employers to pay people less, then promise other people’s generosity will bring that pay up to par. If it’s too expensive for the business to offer fair wages with their current prices, then they should just incorporate tips into the price if it’s going to be necessary for their workers to receive tips anyways. If the business is making more than enough, and is simply using tips to subsidize what they would otherwise pay their workers, then a lack of tips necessitates them slightly cutting into their margins and paying their workers fairly.
The inherent act of not tipping in itself is denying the employee a payment in the moment, but the goal of such an action is to discourage the behavior by the corporation, to then make it necessary for that corporation to pay a living wage directly, which is objectively good for all parties involved (workers know how much they’ll make and get stable, livable wages, and customers know what they’re paying without feeling bad if they can’t afford making their $12 water $15.)
The longer you allow a system like this to exist, the more you’ll see what’s already happening, companies pushing it in where it traditionally was never present, minimum suggested amounts going up from 10% to 12% to 15% to 18% etc, and wages staying low as companies try using your generosity to subsidize wages they would otherwise have to pay themselves to retain workers. Not tipping is inherently a rejection of this system, and the only way you stop such a system from expanding is by rejecting it.
You all are nuts for how much you tip these days.
It used to be you tipped waiters at restaurants (not register jockeys), your hairdresser, the valet guy, the hotel maid, and maaaaybe the delivery guys if they went above and beyond hooked stuff up and you made them carry something heavy up 10 flights of stairs. That’s it.
The waiter got 10-15% for good service. I dunno about hairdressers but I think around 10% was normal. Everyone else got a few bucks to a fiver (unless you drove a Lamborghini)
Tipping landlords - are you kidding me? Tipping when you weren’t served? - gtfo Do you do it because you’re afraid of conflict? You’re doing it to yourselves - it was bad enough before and you all are just feeding the beast.
Tipping landlords
Nobody does this.
The final straw for me was 5 Guys. They added a gratuity on (wtf for idk coz I got my own EVERYTHING) the ticket, then had the audacity to have a tip jar. Never going back.
Stop tipping culture. Pay your workers.
Tipping is beyond fucked up.
Guy at home depot loading your heavy ass lumber into the truck? No tip.
Some dipshit behind the counter punching numbers on a screen, you better believe that’s a tippin!
STOP TIPPING unless somone is actually serving you!! Ask yourself, is this service closer to the guy loading the lumber, or the gas station attendant sitting behind the register?
STOP TIPPING
unless somone is actually serving you!!FTFY
Also good!
