Has giving gratuities reached a tipping point?
NEW REPORT SHEDS LIGHT ON CHANGING ATTITUDES IN FOOD SERVICE
Long a contentious issue, tipping has become even more so during the pandemic. Delivery drivers and others in food service have essentially become front-line workers. In recognition of the potential risk they face in making and delivering meals, ethicists have advised showing appreciation with a tip — and, if you can afford it, a heftier one than usual.
Simultaneously, a new crop of restaurants is experimenting with going tip-free.
Tipping is more complex than simply adding 15–20 per cent (or more, during the pandemic) onto the bill.
Data has shown that tipping can perpetuate inequalities of class, gender, race and sexuality. It has also been identified as reinforcing a dynamic of servitude — only one constant in the guest-server equation has the power to give or hold back money as they see fit — and contributing to the social stigma of hospitality work as a stopgap, not a career.
“No matter how you do it, tipping hits BIPOC workers in the pocketbook, it exposes more female workers to sexual harassment, and it keeps all workers from making a steady, solid salary,” Canadian chef and anti-tipping advocate Amanda Cohen of New York City's Dirt Candy told Eater in September 2020.
The pandemic has provided an opportunity for people to rethink the way forward, and some restaurants have adopted no-tipping policies in an effort to make workplaces more equitable.
Toronto's Avelo, Burdock Brewery, Richmond Station and Ten have all gone tipfree over the past year.
“It sounds radical, but it really shouldn't,” Emma Herrera, head chef at Burdock Brewery, told NOW Magazine in August 2020. “We're just aiming for the most basic acceptable professional level, the same as all other industries. We don't want our staff to have to rely on the whims of guests to make sure they can pay their rent.”
These conversations about equity are occurring alongside those supporting the status quo, says Poppy Nicolette Riddle, research associate at Dalhousie University's Agri-food Analytics Lab (AAL), and lead author of a new preliminary report examining Canadian perceptions of tipping habits.
As social norms shift and people start to imagine what emerging from the pandemic could look like, she adds, the timing was right to focus on attitudes toward tipping.
For the report, the AAL surveyed 990 Canadians in April 2021 and found that though most Canadians see tipping as being beneficial — “in the form of social relatedness, a feeling of being in control and perceiving that tipping has a positive impact on others” — only 20 per cent intend to tip more after the pandemic.
The researchers asked respondents about their perception of tipping as part of food service or food delivery, and found that few support no-tipping policies: 34 per cent say that tipping motivates workers; 30 per cent believe it makes the job worth doing; 19 per cent feel it should be regulated; and 17 per cent think the practice should be prohibited.
In combining the last two groups, however, the report suggests that a large minority of Canadians (36 per cent) feel negatively toward tipping, which could be an indication “that social support may be there when the food service industry is ready to change.”
On the one hand, says Riddle, Canadians recognize that there's a group of people who have tip-dependent careers or income, and see tipping as part of social engagement.
“Conversely, we could also have that exact same conversation and go, `The restaurant industry is still not evolving, business models are still not changing.' They're trying to go back to the exact same structure that was before, and it's putting this exact same population at risk when the next largescale crisis comes,” she adds.
“So it is a really complex discussion and … there's not an easy answer out there right now.”
The AAL report builds on previous research by Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, which focused on spending and happiness, and the “warm glow of giving.” People feel good when they think they're giving money to someone who could benefit from it; the process of spending satisfies “one or more core human needs.”
When we order takeout from a favourite restaurant and tip generously, for example, “we get a little shot of oxytocin,” says Riddle, which contributes to this warm glow. On the other end of the spectrum, when we have the opportunity to spend but hold back, “we get a shot of cortisol,” and can feel shame.
Riddle was most surprised when it came to the data around whether people anticipate their tipping habits to change due to the pandemic and perceptions of their own happiness when they tip.
Most Canadians see tipping as an act of generosity, although that 53.4 per cent is closely followed by those who feel it's either entirely or mostly an obligation (46.6 per cent). Nearly half (48 per cent) feel that the social obligation to tip well has increased during COVID-19, and most (71 per cent) don't anticipate changing the way they tip after the pandemic.
Of the respondents who anticipate tipping more after COVID-19 (the aforementioned 20 per cent), 58 per cent reported feeling happy when tipping.
“That was quite surprising because some of the other questions that I had leading into it gave me the sense that (people had) a negative feeling when anticipating having to tip more,” says Riddle, adding that the results are in line with previous studies suggesting that prosocial spending yields happiness. “But I was surprised to see it so much in tipping, and to see that there's still so much support for it.”
Restaurants operate on notoriously low profit margins, with the average falling below five per cent, explains Riddle. As conversations continue around no-tipping models and livable wages in food service and food delivery, her next step may be to investigate Canadians' awareness of and attitudes toward issues of equity in the industry.
With food and labour costs rising, diminishing worker availability and hygiene rules increasing as a result of the pandemic, she anticipates that the very nature of full-service restaurants will need to radically adapt.
“It's going to have to change just like all other businesses are going to have to change. Just like education has had to change,” says Riddle. “When we're at the cusp of going back to normal — we're getting our immunizations and provinces are relaxing restrictions, and we're starting to get this glimpse of what we want to go back to — we do have a choice. We have a choice in what we want to go back to.”
WE DON'T WANT OUR STAFF TO HAVE TO RELY ON THE WHIMS OF GUESTS TO MAKE SURE THEY CAN PAY THEIR RENT.