As tipping options grow, so does resistance
Last year, Anna Johnson found herself using an electronic screen to pay for a pickup order at a bakery in Phoenix, a normal enough experience at many food businesses she frequents. But this time, she was bewildered when the machine recommended that she tip as much as 35 percent — on cookies.
“It just surprised me that they’re asking everyone for that,” said Johnson, 66. “People can’t afford to keep on paying more, more and more.”
Tipping fatigue like Johnson’s is real, and it is widespread.
In the thick of the pandemic, Americans like her dug deeper into their pockets to recognize the hard labor and health risks taken on by workers in every corner of the food business — servers, cooks, cashiers, delivery workers. For many customers, adding 15 percent or more for a takeout meal or grocery delivery felt like the least they could do to help essential workers.
COVID-19 cases are on the rise again, and the risk to restaurant workers is still elevated. But as business has returned to something more like normal, many customers and experts in the hospitality industry say that deciding how much money to leave, or whether to leave a tip at all, has become a tougher decision — complicated by new technology, and requests for tips at food businesses of all types, from bakeries and yogurt shops to food trucks and juice bars.
Customers, including some who have worked in the food service business, said they felt uncomfortable with the many requests to tip and pressured into giving more. Higher menu prices, a result of inflation, have raised the amount of a traditional 15 percent or 20 percent tip. In some cases, restaurants are adding service charges and gratuities to the bill that some diners may not notice right away.
The mechanics of tipping have also changed in many smaller businesses, where the tip jar on the counter has been replaced by touch screens, which have become even more widespread during the pandemic. Leaving an amount that doesn’t fit the suggested percentages takes extra time and effort. And as the customer decides, the food service worker is often standing there, looking on.
Some diners said that tips allow business owners to deflect the responsibility for paying a living wage. Gabriel Ramirez, who works in a Los Angeles smoke shop, said he would prefer that labor costs were reflected in menu prices rather than leaving it up to customers to tip.
“It is our social duty to make sure that the person that is feeding us feeds themselves,” said Ramirez, 24. “Employers shouldn’t be looking at the tip jar and saying, ‘This is how my employee is going to make it this month.’ ”
For many workers, particularly those in places where businesses are permitted to pay a lower wage to employees eligible for tips, the extra money is a lifeline. And there’s evidence that the pandemic has made customers more acutely aware of that need, as staff shortages and impatient diners make food service jobs even more difficult.
Bryan Solar, who manages restaurant products at Square, one of the leading point-of-sale tablet systems in the food service industry, said people were more generous in tipping early in the pandemic at its client businesses in the United States. In April 2020, the average tip at a quick-service food business was 23.5 percent, up from 19.6 percent the previous month.
But that figure has steadily fallen since then, to 19.8 percent last month. (At full-service restaurants with Square systems, the decline has been less sharp, to 20.7 percent last month from 21.3 percent in April 2020.)
Solar said that in general, the new touch-screen technology encourages tipping. He recently helped El Arroyo, a decades-old Tex-Mex restaurant he frequents in Austin, Texas, acquire the Square system.
The restaurant owner reported tips increased by 50 percent, he said.
Anxiety and social pressure play into the tipping decision, Solar said.
“The act of being in front of someone while they have that screen — they know if you tip, don’t tip or go into custom screens,” he said. “People in that moment are much more likely to be generous and to tip.”