It was last July that, after I felt coerced when I got takeout food at a restaurant and was asked on the credit-card screen if I wanted to tip (and even given suggested amounts), that I wrote a post called “Tipping at counters.” Now I tip pretty well when I sit down to dine (minimum 20% unless service was abysmal), but until last year I have never heard of tipping counter people when you take out food. But the practice is increasing, and it seems coercive. The screen is turned towards you, and everyone behind you can see how much you leave. And little value is added when the cooks just hand out a container for distribution. Do you tip at McDonald’s or Taco Bell? I didn’t think so.

My solution has become pragmatic: unless I am in a generous mood, or think that the counter people aren’t getting a decent wage, or they do something beyond just handing me a bag of food, I leave nothing. I’ll even admit that two weeks ago I used cash at one of these places simply because there’s no coercion when you get your change. Others, in the comment section of my post, disagree, remarking for all to see how generous they were.  But as I wrote at the time, I don’t like the whole practice of tipping to begin with.

I note that in places where I go often, and where they know me, I leave a tip in the tip jar every second or third visit. But why should they have to know me? I don’t do that to get any extra service.

The solution, as always, is to pay servers a decent wage so that tips are not expected, and where one tips as a thank-you for especially good service: as in New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) France. I would gladly pay higher prices for my food so that servers, cooks, and other workers could make a decent wage, for then one would not be faced with the dilemma of how much to tip. In France, for example, the gratuities are included in the price of food, and that’s stated on the menu. In such cases, as in bistros, I leave a few Euros—pocket change—as do the French.

Everyone would be much better off if servers were paid a decent wage and anything you leave them wouldn’t be an obligation, but a genuine “thank you” for good service.

Now the New York Times has copied me with this article appearing today (click on screenshot):

Author Seth Kugel did an informal survey:

So, is leaving a tip wherever you’re asked now the norm? Four years after the Portland incident, 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,” which would be visible to the person behind me in line and often behind the counter as well. But I’m still not sure if that’s the right thing to do.

I set out to resolve this issue by speaking to customers on a sticky summer Saturday at Stumptown Coffee Roasters in New York City’s Greenwich Village. They did not help much.

Nope, people were divided. So Kugel asked the pros:

So if people could not resolve the issue, could data? Toast, a Boston-based company that provides point-of-sale platforms to thousands of restaurants and cafes around the country, provided me with 2019 tipping statistics for customers paying with cards in establishments that had activated a tipping module, the vast majority. In cafes, 48.5percent of customers left tips, and for fast casual restaurants, it was 46.5 percent. The average tip for both was around 17 percent.

A recent survey from CreditCards.com also found Americans split on coffee-shop tipping: 24 percent of Americans “always tip” baristas and 27 percent “never tip.”

I almost never use baristas (I have my own espresso machine with a milk steamer), so that’s not an issue. It goes on:

Clover, a Toast competitor, provided data for tipping at tens of thousands of American restaurants under the category “fast food,” which includes cafes and fast casual restaurants. In May 2019, customers paying with cards tipped 42 percent of the time that tipping was available to them.

It’s telling that the turning point for more tipping was when restaurants switched from signing a slip where you can add a tip to the digital screen, which is more coercive. And there are others besides me who resist this system:

But non-tippers are still a sizable bunch. And they have defenders, including Mark Roth, the chief operations officer for Chanson, a combination counter service and full-service cafe in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood known (at least by me) for its buttery kouign-amann pastries.

Chanson uses a point-of-sale tipping system, and 60 or 70 percent of customers leave tips, Mr. Roth said, but they shouldn’t feel obliged to do so. “It’s more up to the individual guest,” he said. “If they have a really great experience and want to recognize that, that’s a wonderful thing. But I certainly don’t think that in a counter service paradigm, it’s a requirement or onus on the guest to have to tip.”

A great experience when they hand you a bag of food? And what would that be? (I don’t go to Starbuck’s, so there’s no possibility of remunerating someone who makes me an awesome pumpkin-spice latte LOL).

What’s the solution? I don’t know, but I hate coercion. It would help enormously if they had a sign on the wall giving the hourly wage of the waitstaff as well as the counterpeople. But it will be a cold day in Hell when they start doing that!