Restaurants Have Evolved, Tipping Should Too
As someone who frequents a lot of fast-casual food places around Fort Collins, I have found myself getting increasingly more annoyed with how tipping is viewed as the expectation instead of a reward for the exceptional. Every time I find myself faced with a screen of different tipping options and a cashier waiting for me to input my response I wonder what the tip is actually for. Considering I have already paid for my food and this payment is the last interaction I will have with anyone who works at the counter, what is the tip really covering. My annoyance with having to tip has little to do with the nice workers I encounter and more to do with the fact that these people are often paid less than minimum wage with the expectation that tips will make up the difference in their wage. Personally, I would much rather pay slightly more for a product and not tip rather than have to play the guessing game of what an appropriate tip is.
The notion of increasing food prices and eliminating the tip is something that has been floating around for many years. It is mainly spurred on by the differing tip norms in Europe that seem to create a more equitable system for customers and employees alike. Tipping as it is done in modern times closely relates back to legislation that came about around the 1930s. With minimal updates or reevaluations of the state of tipping, the practice has started to become outdated without anyone noticing.
Personally, most of my frustration with tipping comes from my frequent visits to fast-casual restaurants. Rising in popularity over the last decade fast casuals like Comet Chicken and Fat Shack have become a pillar of the food community with counter service becoming a normal part of most dining experiences. This meteoric rise in independent fast casual dining has also been accompanied by a new trend of touch screen modules that customers use to choose from a few different tipping options. With almost half of all customers faced with this dreaded screen tipping around 17%, counter service produces tips that are somewhat comparable to sit-down establishments.
As some one who has been on both sides of these touch screens, I know how helpful a good night of tips can be. The issue I often ran when I was working at a fast casual was that because non-cash tips are split among staff, tips were often nominal. And yes, in some cases a good night of tips, especially cash tips, can make a long night of work seem worth it but the fluctuations shift to shift are more inconvenient than it’s worth.
“It’s kind of an unspoken fact that as a black woman, I won’t get as many tips as some of my other co-workers,” said waitress Tamar Hunt when asked about her thought on tips.
On top of all of that tipping leaves a lot of room for patrons biases to control how they tip rather than the service they have received. Especially in fast-casual settings where there is only a short amount of interaction between customers and employees, a factor behind why people tip the way they do is solely based on superficiality. There is no way to enforce fairness when it comes to tipping and its variability only causes irritation for customers and servers alike.
But is it really more viable to increase menu prices right now? Yes. Charging a little extra can make service workers wages more consistent and over time higher. The key is informing customers and changing their perceptions of what things should cost once tip is included.
