As a European, I can safely say that tipping in American restaurants is one of the most unusual things I remember about America. The amount of tips is huge and they are demanded of you everywhere
This is what I don't get about tipping percentage based. It makes no sense to me. The serving effort is exactly the same between a 10$ salad and a 100$ steak. Take plate, bring plate, place plate on table, smile and check back. That's it.
It gets even more obnoxious when dealing with drinks. A 20$ bottle of wine requires the same effort as a 200$ bottle of wine. (well, except that pretentious bs about breaking the glass, but that's ridiculous anyway)
Same goes for drinks at bars. 5$ shot of your cheapest whiskey takes the same effort as a 50-500$ of a top shelf / ridiculously rare whiskey. Tipping a percentage of that makes absolutely no sense at all, and people defending it with "you get better service" really should visit high end restaurants in London / Paris etc. and see what "great service" really means.
Of course it makes sense and I think you understand it even if (very reasonably!) you don't like it: it's a rough but effective effort at a progressive taxation/extractive pricing scheme. They're trying to extract the maximum amount of money from each customer for each individual transaction [0], orthogonal to effort or value. They aren't a government of course though and don't have full visibility of anyone's exact income or personal psychology. But as a simple proxy somebody buying a $200 bottle of wine is more likely to either have a lot more money or (just as good here) simply be in a mood/occasion to splash out and due to how humans tend to judge relative expenditures they're a lot easier to convince a $30 tip is acceptable if it's 15% of the price instead of 150% the price. Even if they aren't rich and/or are typically value-oriented, on a "special occasion" it's probably going to be easier to squeeze them harder while not framing it as getting squeezed. Once people commit to paying higher numbers that frames the rest of their economic decision making for the transaction.
And clearly it does work for a lot of places, at least in the short term, same as other exploitive human economic hacks (like the predatory rise of microtransactions in video games). It lets the businesses (including not just owners/managers in this case but many employees as well) make a lot more money.
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0: Ie, treating it as a non-iterated game theory situation, which probably is rational for a lot of restaurants and particularly tourist ones where odds may be that they will only ever see any given customer once (or perhaps single digits, close enough) in a lifetime. In an iterated game, where a large/critical percentage of business depends on local repeat customers, it can make more sense long term to build loyalty by not feeling exploitive and have lower-per-transaction profits that are steady over years/decades. And I have seen that play out to some extent. Some places may also split the difference, such as by offering special local discount scheme sort of things, or having very different pricing/offerings certain days of the week when statistically very few tourists are there vs locals.
In Switzerland a lot of the restaurants that have moved to tablets for payment, and the payment screen pops up a "suggested tip" window with a few options. They might be a bit lower than the standard American tips but it's still there and it never was before.
There's no custom of tipping that much at any of these places, but I feel cheap just clicking the lowest (no tip) of 4 options. Maybe all the time I've lived in the US plays a role here but it seems like it might just be the decoy effect [1] applied to tipping. It will be interesting to see if consumers see this as a dark pattern and push back.
You dining experience is affected more by other people: person who actually prepared the dish and person who cleans the toilet. Their poor work can easily ruin your dinner experience, but tips are expected to the person walking with plates.
A lot of restaurants have "tip sharing", "tip out", "tip pool" where the waitstaff share some portion of their tips with the hostess, foodrunners, cooks, etc. So the customer is really tipping all the workers except the managers.
https://www.google.com/search?q=waitstaff+share+tip+share+ti...
Poor latinos are working overtime on minimal hourly wage as dishwashers, basic food prep, etc and no tips for them.
That is my experience, it would be great if other places are more fair.
Tipping appears nowhere in the Bible. However, the practice of fair and honest trading appears many times.
Combine that with the fact that tourists everywhere are more difficult and time-consuming to deal with and it’s a recipe for resentment.
Just last week I saw a group of Spanish visitors to NYC create a confusing maelstrom of orders at a coffee shop and then override the tip to zero, all while shouting across the room to each other.
The servers and bartenders are always very explicit about the tip being included.
This feels much more fair to me.
Taxes also aren’t included in the menu price.
I can’t imagine any of the servers who don’t like the status quo or that would come out better even if they made $20 an hour.
That's insane as well. Why aren't they?
>>If they say up front on every menu that the tip is included and the servers/bartenders are up front and you can actually remove it (I guess you can put less on the bottom line), what’s the issue?
Nothing. Some restaurants in London started doing this now, the menu says a service charge of 10% will apply unless you ask to remove it and very few people have any issue with it.