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Should food service personnel verbally solicit a tip, rather than having customers do so passively on a tablet? – Eric B., St. Louis
This appears to be a relatively new development regarding tipping, hence the need to address it. The questioner had recently purchased items from a food truck and instead of being allowed to select a tip on the point-of-sale tablet, the staffer asked and personally entered the data. The customer felt that such behavior “is meant to shame customers into not saying no.” (We tend to agree, after experiencing a similar situation in which a server dropped the check with processor in hand and immediately asked whether any “service” was to be added on the spot. Did such action prompt a higher tip? Possibly.)
A little tip history puts this in perspective. In full-service situations, the check was dropped, the server briefly disappeared, and the customer considered whether to leave a tip. At fast-food chains, tipping was neither expected nor allowed. With the advent of fast-casual restaurants and coffee shops, tip jars began to show up on counters, passively asking the customer to consider a little something extra in cash. When iPads and tablets came along, the order was placed, the screen was wheeled around, and the customer was prompted to select a tip of a certain percentage, create one of their own, or select no tip. Such policy is still commonplace today. Remember that food truck workers aren’t specifically working for tips (like servers do), but good service is worth some consideration.
Regardless, we always recommend carrying a little “tip cash” for those occasions when the customer is unfamiliar with the establishment’s level of service and pre-service tipping feels uncomfortable. And to address the original issue, our response to the tip request would be, "not just yet," indicating that tipping revolves around service—which has yet to occur—and choose to tip (or not) in cash after service has been rendered.
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