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.
Well, we past our tipping point in the US a while ago, so…
I’m not in the best health so I do a lot of order at home.
GrubHub/DoorDash/etc. all calculate the tip based on the order + their fees, not the order itself.
If I order a $60 dinner, I’m tipping 20% of $60. Not 20% of $60 + your delivery fee and your service fee.
Tipping has always been a stupidly arbitrary thing to base tips on anyway, especially for delivery drivers.
As a driver, I accept runs based on dollar per mile because that’s what actually factors into my income. I don’t care what you ordered unless it’s 100 items at the grocery store with cases of water bottles. The price is always irrelevant
When was a kid in the 90s, tip was 10% of the $20 bill. By the time I was eating out a lot in my 20s we left 15% on the $35 because we liked the servers. Now the check is $50 and the “recommended” is creeping past 30%.
Yes this irks me to no end. The tips were going up on their own, so why did the percentage go up?
Because wages didn’t go up
Wages don’t matter. Nobody working for tips wants to exchange it for wages. The money is in the tips, and that kept going up.
Wasn’t trump talking about making tips tax-free? It’s only going to make the problem a lot worse. Maybe the problem getting so bad will reach a breaking point and we’re seeing some of the effects of this aggressive push to shove tipping everywhere now.
I’m sympathetic to tipped labor, but I can’t imagine why they shouldn’t pay taxes on it. These are their wages and if they get paid so little that they need to not be taxed but still pay them we need to either adjust the progressive taxation tiers or to figure out something else. Because this feels more like an attempt to normalize removing taxes than an attempt to alleviate the burdens on the poor
Yes… Donald Trump, a man famous for keeping promises. /$
Right, it’s assuming he keeps that particular promise, but it was a proposal so seemingly popular that Harris’s team adopted a version of it but with restrictions on what kind of tips would be exempt (I think it was restricted to waitstaff or something along those lines). Trump’s version is so much more open to abuse that it could be used as a sort of wink wink nudge nudge way to avoid taxes if you simply agreed to pay in part as a “tip”. Given the popularity among those who rely on tips to live and also the rich who can find ways to use it intentionally to avoid taxes, I feel like it’s not impossible that Trump would actually go through with it.
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.
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.
I would never go back to that venue. $12 for a water…
Yea, we’re getting exhausted from being constantly barraged by demands for tips.
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.
i actually give everyone a 600% tip because i want to show everyone that i love american lifestyle
I used to love ordering pizza for delivery, and I’d give like 5-10 bucks as a tip which might be 30 or 50% just depending. But now nobody does their own delivery anymore, I pay extra for the food because they’re outsourcing to Door Dash, and it takes two hours to get a pizza.
Delivery is dead as far as I can tell. All that’s left is going through the fast food drive-through which is like 12-15 bucks nowadays. I’d rather just eat at home.
The only time I go out nowadays is when I’m with a friend.
I pay extra for the food because they’re outsourcing to Door Dash, and it takes two hours to get a pizza.
It takes 2 hours because they’re sending a bid to drivers for your delivery contract, which may also include someone else’s delivery on the same route, for a base pay of $2 plus your tip. After enough drivers decline that, they add 25 cents and send it around again. This process repeats until someone (hopefully) eventually accepts it. And – whoops – the merchant’'s contract with DoorDash requires the driver to have a pizza bag. So the bid only even gets seen by the subset of drivers who do.
That’s $2, plus your tip. And that’s if the merchant was nice enough to actually pass that tip along when they outsourced the delivery. They aren’t contractually required to do so, and some don’t.
As an unpaid independent contractor, if I can see it’s an outsourced order (placed through the merchant instead of through the delivery marketplace), I won’t even accept it, because it’s also going to mean losing 10-20 minutes of unpaid time standing around waiting for the merchant (who sent out the contract way too early) to actually start making your pizza, that they already lied about being ready when they sent a notification to you and to me. It’s nearly always a disaster.
Edit to add: Just order from Domino’s, they do everything in-house.
I think at some point we need to agree as a society on a no-tipping day in which we stop paying tips, and just keep it up. After that point, no tipping for anything, and rather than not tipping being a stigma, tipping becomes a stigma.
Just stop going to places that expect you to tip their workers. It’s easy, as those are often the most expensive places to go to.
Not tipping doesn’t fix the problem, it just hurts those barely getting by who are also victims of a shitty capitalist system.
Going Luigi on those furthering income inequality would be better.
You can look at what happens when you actually go Luigi by looking at what happened with Luigi. They’re the ones with the real guns and thanks to advertising dollars and social media ownership, control over the media narrative. Violence is the excuse they need to crack down.
But they can’t make us keep paying them.
We can do both. And the first encourages the second, as well as encouraging unions.
The whole threat of workers suffering without tips is the financial equivalent of terrorism. “Fork over the cash or these innocents get it”.
It needs to end, and it’s not going to end by giving into those demands.
Sorry, I don’t agree. I’ve worked hospitality and a lot of my friends work hospitality. A sudden dry spell of tips would mean unpaid medical bills, no clothes for a kid, no food on the dinner table, no gas to get to work. People have to try and budget just for the shortfall that typically occurs in January.
I’m not opposed to changing the system, but I think you underestimate how many people live day to day or week to week. Suddenly nobody tipping at all won’t magically make people unionize or their bosses pay more.
What needs to happen first are steps to kill the massive and ever-increasing wealth divide.
This isn’t a sudden dry spell though, it’s something that is slowly changing over the years. Part of that is because everyone is in financial pain right now. But that should be your expectation if you’re going into a job where your wages are dependent on how well others are doing, you should expect and prepare for the inevitable times where others aren’t doing great.
What needs to happen first are steps to kill the massive and ever-increasing wealth divide.
Yes, we need to solve that. But people just rolling over and accepting 30% tips at the self serve mini market isn’t the solution here.
You can bet there was some more tolerance for it when there was some guilt for office workers staying at home while service roles had to stay on site during the height of covid.
The fact that so many point of sale make it a default thing to put it directly out there for someone to tip before any service is done and with that decision in view of everyone around doesn’t sit well either
I was in SoCal several months back and ended up in a candy shop. Nothing but drawers of candy on the walls and one desk in the middle with a young woman sitting behind the checkout tablet. I had a question or two, but she was neither helpful or knowledgeable (it’s candy. not a difficult topic). She seemed very disinterested in engagement.
Well, I finish my selection, she scans and the tablet shows the totals with the big tip screen (NoTip-15-20-25%). I was taken aback that her job would get tips and wondered if she was paid enough before I smashed the NoTip button to finish up since she hadn’t done a thing to merit one.
And the default options are 20, 25, 30 some places.
Ive been at multiple places starting at 30. Fuck that.
Would you like to tip 5000% so I don’t shit in your coffee?
- 2045 barista
I’m so fucking done with it, that I just assume everyone behind me is too. I happily hit that “No tip” button. Unless you provided an active service for me, or went above and beyond to get me something, then why do you deserve a tip? I have to pay you extra money for you to do your job correctly?
I only tip at restaurants and when I get my hair cut. All of this new tipping stuff, I have always assumed was just a generic update to enable it basically everywhere… I’ve always hit no tip… I don’t feel bad for it… You’re not getting paid 2 dollars an hour working at some random place that’s not a restaurant… I’ve heard stories of employees not even getting those tips… It’s a push for greed… That’s it
Yeah, It was one thing during covid when the waitstaff were all doing takeout but their bills hasn’t changed, but it’s no longer covid, if I wanted to tip I’d sit my ass down or order delivery. If I come to the counter for my food I don’t tip.
It’s actually driven moreso by the point-of-sale vendors. They enable it by default, because they make a percentage of the transaction as a processing fee. The merchant has to request that it be disabled.
You think you’re tipping the worker, you’re actually tipping Jack Dorsey.
Not a POS technically but a previous vet had a jar on the front desk to tip the receptionist. They even stuck a QR code on it in case you don’t have cash.
I’m totally down with tipping for good service. But it’s backwards. I’m suppose to tip before service. Personally, we have cut back going out with a lot of times thinking that it’s too expensive. The worst is when there’s a line behind you and the lowest tip preset is at %25. You have everybody looking at you while you try to set it lower.
Why are you tipping if there’s a line? The line implies self service.
Fast casual
When I go out, I usually tip well. My sister used to be a bartender and waitress and she relied on tips.
That said, tipping is really screwed up now. I went to a stadium for a game once and the employee said that they don’t receive the tips when you tip for buying a beer or whatever unless it’s cash. That’s messed up if true.
I used to think Mr. Pink was an asshole, but he was on to something. I wish tipping was eliminated completely.
she relied on tips.
That’s the real problem.
No employee should rely on the arbitrary generosity of their customers.
Employers need to pay their staff properly for the job they’re doing.
And if some staff member happens to go above and beyond, a customer can optionally choose to reward them for that extra level of service with no societal pressure or guilt…
Mr. Pink was definitely an asshole
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 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).
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.
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.
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.
