It used to be that tipping was a private affair between dining patron and the establishment.  Swiveling screens and mobile card readers render tipping a public exposition, especially when the server hovers waiting for you to enter the tip percentage, while you await the server’s immediate response after observing the tip amount.  Talk about post-dining financial pressure that typically guilts diners into tipping more than desired than if the tip was a private affair on a slip of paper with the server long gone!

The Covid-19 pandemic caused many permanent changes in restaurant behavior, including the grief-inflicted gratitude of diners over-tipping restaurant workers who witnessed their livelihood evaporate almost overnight in March 2020.  Now that restaurant gratuities are contactless, restaurant-specialty payroll companies report a 20% increase in average tips.  Moral questions therefore arise: do you tip the cashier for ringing-up your to-go order?  If not, are you depriving a minimum wage worker the largest part of her income (in Delaware the cash minimum wage is $2.23/hr.; $13.25/hr. cash for tipped employees)? If you tip the cashier who did nothing other than accept your credit card, are you a sucker? 

Some restaurants charge a credit card fee, often 3%; others charge convenience fees for large parties, the tip’s spiritual cousin.  Do you tip on top of those extra fees?  How about liquor?  In your parents’ era, diners tipped on food service, not on liquor consumption; today, most just tip on top of the entire bill, no matter what it includes (pity New Yorkers, who pay a combined 8.875% state and local tax on restaurant bills, creating an extra tipping dilemma).  What about discounts, for instance, do you tip on the amount the bill would have been absent the reduction, or do you tip on the discounted amount?  And, of course, what about the cost of the dish you or others ordered?  Should you tip less on a plate of $23 pasta relative to a $75 crab-encrusted filet, when both plates weigh the same and take the same effort to serve, creating an unintended wealth tax?

Service, of course, is a big determinant, because a ‘tip’ derives from the notion, ‘to insure prompt service,’ but morphed (some say, curdled) into an expected gratuity no matter the level of service.  Restaurant owners have long treated tips as a means to transfer wage obligations onto consumers.  And, restaurants are constantly being sued for mismanaging or collecting employee tips, with some owners paying hefty fines and settlements.  While most restaurants pool tips, taking care of front and back-of-house workers, legally, only food service workers are entitled to share tips, but how they are defined is always a restaurant-by-restaurant quandary.  A gratuity is an expression of gratitude, but what if the service suffers so much that no tip is warranted?  Are you still required to pay a subsidy? 

Around the Delmarva beach towns, tipping is varied because the clientele is varied -  daily tourists, locals, week vacationers, weekenders, and all types, ages, and background of visitors in between.   Some avoid generous tipping knowing they will never again see the server; others recognize that most servers get by only on tips, and remain as generous as possible even in the face of ineffective service; others stay at the hard 20% line no matter the level of service; and, still, others treat 20% as the top line, rarely earned in a seasonal service resort town where servers treat the job as a hung-over chore rather than a noble profession.  Visitors will observe that the stars in these reviews typically follow the level of service; the lower quality the restaurant, food, and experience, the less likely dedicated servers care to approach the job with conviction and, therefore, a lower percentage of tips – bartenders excluded because their economy is based on a wholly separate customer dynamic.

So, while common practice dictates that all diners ‘remember their servers’ upon departing and considering a tip amount, we suggest you also ‘remember your level of service,’ rewarding restaurants which honor promptitude in their treatment of patrons and do not take your volunteer expression of gratitude for 20% granted.

Happy dining!