International fans visiting the US for the World Cup have become frustrated by the culture of having to tip servers, telling the BBC that tipping fatigue has set in.
Generally the historical rule is sit down restaurants only, where someone serves you, or tip a driver if your food gets delivered.
So even if you sit down, if you got up to collect your food and/or bussed your dishes yourself then it’s not expected.
At bars generally you tip on all drinks, though I’d say less if all they did was open something and/or pour. Definitely tip on cocktails though.
That being said two things have happened in the past 6 years:
there was a lot of community support to tip on take out orders during Covid to help local places survive. A lot of places still expect this on take out nowadays which is a shame. That being said I still like supporting local places so tip when I can, but less than I would sitting in and dining there.
with everyone moving to electronic point of sales systems the owners of lots of places of “fast food” or coffee shops these days are now setting them up so they ask for tips after any transaction, and in many cases where they previously didn’t ask, those tips are not going to staff, just being collected by the owners which may be illegal in some places. Not to mention they always have three suggested tip rates, and there’s no legal rule they be set to anything specific or they be in any order. So one place may be 15%, 18%, 20%, and another place may be 25%, 23%, 20%. So if you’re used to hitting the first option (generally used to be 15%) automatically now you’re way over-tipping your usual amount. This results in customers just not returning if they realized what happened, hurting the overall business. But like most owners / marketers they can’t see past the next quarter or so of transactions and don’t care about long term.
Do you have to tip at McDonald’s, or BK, and the like?
No.
Generally the historical rule is sit down restaurants only, where someone serves you, or tip a driver if your food gets delivered.
So even if you sit down, if you got up to collect your food and/or bussed your dishes yourself then it’s not expected.
At bars generally you tip on all drinks, though I’d say less if all they did was open something and/or pour. Definitely tip on cocktails though.
That being said two things have happened in the past 6 years: