Tipping on your morning coffee

Touch screens asking whether you’d like to tip $1, $2, or $3 for that latte have “been spreading like an infectious disease,” said Seth Kugel in The New York Times. “I usually do tip when I order a coffee and find a screen turned toward me, but that’s in part to avoid the pang of embarrassment that comes from hitting ‘No tip.’” Toast, a company that sells point-of-sale systems, found that 48.5 percent of customers left tips at cafés with a digital tipping option, and 46.5 did so in fast-casual restaurants. The average tip was around 17 percent. A recent survey by CreditCards.com was similarly split: “24 percent of Americans ‘always tip’ baristas, and 27 percent ‘never tip.’”