To tip or not to tip?

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Hello and welcome to The Food Chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander. While making last week's episode about what it's like to be a server... Tipping came up, and one of the guests, Fred Siriax, a French maitre d' turned TV presenter, made this point. I think there's so much to say about tips and service charge that we could have an episode just about that. So I'm not going to even go there and tell you my view there because it's going to take the whole podcast.

We are actually thinking of doing an episode on that. Fred, great minds. Yeah, this is one on its own. So here it is, a whole episode about tipping. We're going to look at the art and etiquette of leaving a discretionary payment at the end of a meal and how that varies around the world. We'll talk about where it's expected, where it's an insult and whether the practice is fair. That's our drinks menu. We've got our food specials there. I'll leave it there for you. Have a lovely time. Thank you.

It's lunchtime at El Gato Negro restaurant in Manchester, England, and the Spanish assistant manager, Ankur Suarez, and head server, Dan Ashton, are greeting diners, handing out the menus with a mouth-watering list of dishes. and a small detail, a 12.5% service charge. Well, we do believe that our staff works really hard in order to deliver the service our customers expect.

The 12.5 service share added to the bills is equally split between every single team member. It's optional. In practice, does anyone ever ask for it to be taken off the bill? Very few people, I have to say. I would say on a normal day, one or two tables during the whole day would ask to remove it. Considering we serve over 100 different tables every day, I think that's a really good number. Do people have a tip on top of that?

They do, yeah. People want the additional tip to go to that specific person sometimes. Our cash tips will all get pulled like the service charge and split on how many hours you work a month. So the service charge and tips, how much of your income does that make up? How significant is it? Very significant. Proportionally speaking, can you say how much of your pay it is? A third, roughly.

I mean, some people say, you know, that service charging tips creates a kind of like an awkwardness right at the end of the meal. You've had a lovely time, you've eaten really well, and then, ah, now you've got to decide what you do about how much you pay. Yes, especially the higher the bill gets and when it's a split between a lot of people. So yeah, it can get awkward, especially when...

A large party, everyone's pleading, and some of them want to tip, some of them don't, and you are standing next to them. It's a little bit like, where do I look, what do I say? At the end of the day, it's optional. It's like a reward to our service, so whatever customers feel is reasonable, I think. What's it like in Spain? The shipping culture is completely different. It's definitely not 10%.

It's more rounded up. Let's say if you spend 118 pounds, it would be rounded to 120. So then coming here and receiving... tips that can be from 10 pounds to 100 or even more. It feels like a blessing sometimes. It feels something to be really happy for more than feeling awkward.

But what does it feel like when you've, you know, worked really hard on the table that's been especially demanding and then they leave without the table? Disappointing sometimes. I wouldn't lie. Angol Suarez and Dan Ashton.

The optional service charge has recently been appearing on restaurant bills in India, where Debraj Day owns two eateries, What's Up Cafe and 99 in Kolkata. So honestly, in India, there is no standard tipping. And it's kind of a little chaotic because there's some people who like tipping, some people who don't like tipping.

You do not expect a tip all the time. And there's a lot of underreporting of tips. So tradition is always a war between, you know, like people in the front are always accused by people at the back of stealing their tips. So a lot of the restaurants recently have switched to charging service charge. And now the mistrust goes towards the owner because now the staff thinks that...

The owner is keeping a chunk of it himself. So it's a big, big confusion. So how do you manage this in your restaurants? So I decided to go ahead and just, you know, like include everything in the price of the food. And we have a no tip policy in our restaurants. So anybody... walks in, even if that person actually insists on a tip, we make sure that the server returns the tip. I'm really sorry, we have a no tip policy.

So you're really happy with us. We appreciate that. Why don't you give us a nice review on whatever, whatever, please. How does that go down with your servers? Because presumably, you know, they might like to earn a little bit of extra money. Why shouldn't they really? So we have a way of pooling in a percentage of the sales and which we distribute amongst the entire team in terms of points. So like the head chef will have more points than a sous chef or a server will have more points than a...

You know, somebody below him. This is like a hierarchy of points. So it depends on how senior you are. What is the service charge as a percentage? So it's 8%. So you always give that 8%. to your staff. It's just sometimes that 8% is a larger amount. You got it. Absolutely. Okay. I mean, how controversial is that, that you've had to create a hierarchy of points that, you know...

That went well with everybody because they thought that the hierarchy is proportionate to the responsibility each person takes. So the general manager who looks after everything has more responsibility. And everybody feels rewarded when the restaurant is doing good. So the larger the sales, the larger the cake.

In the United States, it's a completely different story. So there, the servers get a very low pay. In our case, it's $2.50 an hour, which is even below the minimum wages. And the whole system is built around such that it's expected that the server earns out of tips. That's the norm. So the way I have realized it is that the servers are like mini entrepreneurs within the system.

So they practically, they earn their own wages. So they have to go all out. They're actually trying to sell hard. They're trying to smile. They're trying to be courteous. They're trying to, you know, like... Even flirt sometimes, maybe, you know, because they're like mini business people inside the restaurant. Typically, how much do customers tip in America? Oh, it's at least 20%. If you're not happy with my service.

Tip me 20%. If you're happy... Really? Yeah. At least in Texas. I don't know about other states. So if you've tipped me less than 20%, I'll still smile. But trust me, I'm not happy with you. And if you're happy? Yeah, 30, 40, 50. Yeah, I've seen people tip 50%, 60%. Yeah, I've seen regulars come in Christmas and even give a $1,000 envelope. That smile, that hug.

that calling you Han or whatever, it depends on where it takes you. Which system do you think results in better service? I would say probably the US system, I would say. But it also has that problem of people judging you. How do you mean? So you mean the diner is judged by the server? Right, right, right. So the server... But the judging very often could be wrong. You have no clue. When I walk into a restaurant, you're just trying to look at my shoe or my...

shirt or whatever, or the colour of my skin or God knows what, and trying to judge whether I'm going to be a good tipper or not. You could be completely wrong. Why don't you do in Dallas what you do in Kolkata? Pay a fair wage so servers aren't reliant on tips. The servers don't want it. We tried it. So we bought over an existing restaurant.

But we sat with the team. We told them that, why do you have this? Because we were new to the American restaurant industry. We had no clue. Why don't you just take a straight wages? But then we realized that. The servers earn the highest in the whole team. And so they wouldn't want a wage within the structure. So the wage they expect is way higher.

And then we didn't want to go that far because that would, one, upset everybody in the kitchen and everybody else. That how could they get so many dollars an hour, one. And number two, we thought that that's going to probably might affect efficiency too. Because this is a structure that's already working for a long time.

We put a post on the BBC World Service Facebook page about this episode and one of the people who responded was Catherine in France. tipping, to tip or not to tip. In France, it's obligatory. It's compulsory. It's built into the price, as most people may know, and which is sort of an outdated version of the merit system because... What it does is it does not improve the quality of service.

because you're already tipping them anyway, so they can serve you however they wish. In North America, for example, where I actually do come from, they have another system which is equally disturbing because you have the option of tipping, but when...

the bill comes and you just want to hand over your credit card or the cash and pay, then you have to be interrupted and answer several questions about how much tip you want to give. Do you want to give it as a cash or do you want to give it in part of the bill?

percentage do you want to pay, whether it's a 5%, 10%, 15%, 25% of the bill. You have to find out how much that is. Then you have to add up the total. You're like... tipping for like five minutes and I really take offense to this kind of assumption that the server is standing there staring at you while you're making a judgment on their service.

So I don't like that idea either, and it's kind of too bad. I believe in the merit system, where if the service is great, you give whatever you want. And if it's not that good, the tip that I would give them is to tell them why I'm not tipping them in cash.

Meanwhile, Bernard in Kenya told us there's no tipping where he lives. And Jacob in South Sudan said the same is true where he is. Diners ask for change. In South Korea too, it's just not the done thing. Here's BBC correspondent Jake Kwan. I'm in Seoul's neighbourhood, right by the Seoul's palaces, and we can see many people walking about. There are many, many cafes and restaurants.

One thing you do not see is any kind of tip box or prompt on their screens saying, would you like to tip 15 to 20 percent? Or, you know, there's something that you see normally in the West where it says. Please choose your tip amount. Most people here do not tip. There is no such thing as tipping culture. In fact, people we spoke to today have told us that they do not want tipping as part of the Korean culture.

As a worker, I would of course be grateful if I was tipped, but I don't want people to pay out of a sense of obligation. I feel like our minimum wage is enough. I'm against tipping culture because I think many employers use it as a way to toss their responsibility to provide fair wages to the customer.

And of course, when it comes from a place of genuine appreciation, it can be a great gesture. But when the culture starts setting in and the expectations start getting enforced, I think that puts an unfair burden on the customer. When I was abroad, I was actually shocked at how expensive the bills came out with tips. I wasn't used to calculating ahead because I would just look at the number on the menu.

As a consumer, I hope it doesn't come to Korea. So why is there no tipping here? It's because by law, businesses must receive the money that was written on the menu. That means any tax or service fees must be included in the prices. Recently, some restaurants and cafes got into hot water because they placed tip box on the counter.

An online debate ensued. Do we want tipping in Korea? And I think the answer is a resounding no. I remember the first day I arrived in Korea after spending many years in the US and Canada. And I was taking a taxi from the airport to Seoul. And just like habit, I handed the taxi driver an extra 20% in cash as a tip.

He took the money, but he looked at me confused. He asked me, what is this? And I said, it's your tip. The driver actually threw the money back at me, saying, I don't need it. He sounded upset that I would offer him what he thought was charity. Jake Kwon in Seoul. For some travellers, a no-tipping culture can feel liberating. When I'm in Japan, it's such a relief where there is no tipping anyone ever. It is such a pleasure.

not to have to think about how much should I leave, what's right, what's fair. It's just a relief to think, okay, we are on an equal footing, right? They are not beholden to you in any way. It's much more comfortable.

This is food writer Ruth Reichel, who's based in New York. I've been writing about food and restaurants for almost 60 years. I was the restaurant critic of the LA Times, the New York Times, the editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine, and I now write books. And before all that, Ruth was a waitress. I was working my way through college and I was working...

in the library shelving books. And at the time, the minimum wage in the United States was a dollar an hour. So I would work a 20-hour week and make $20. Then my boyfriend said, you know, I've just got, there's this fancy new restaurant that's just opening in Ann Arbor and I've got a job as a waiter there. You should try and get a job. And my first night I worked a...

Less than four hour shift. And I came home with thirty five dollars in tips. So almost twice what I made for a 20 hour shift. So I thought this is the greatest job in the world. But. I remember at the time thinking, you know, I have no experience and I got to know the people in the kitchen pretty well. And I discovered that they were making a lot less than I was and they were trained.

and they were making closer to minimum wage. After a couple of years, Ruth got a job serving cocktails and discovered another problem with the tipping culture. Men were handsy. And how you got tips from those people was very different than how you got tips in a fancy restaurant. So they were groping you, you mean? They were. And they would do...

Do you know what a Pousse Café is? No. I haven't seen one in years, but it's this very complicated drink. It's layers of different liqueurs, which have different weights. So it's very beautiful. It's like a rainbow. It's very complicated to make, and you have to carry it very carefully because you really don't want those different layers to get mixed up. So these men would think it was very funny.

to order like five pousse cafes, and then you would come with your little bar tray. And then they would, you know, like tweak your skirt or something to try and make you trip. And... They would think that was hilarious, and I would not think it was hilarious. And if you said, stop that, what would happen? You wouldn't get a tip. And you were working for tips, and that is one of the problems of tipping.

You have no agency. You know, they can take up your time all evening and then walk out and leave you nothing. It is one of the real problems. So, you know, on the one hand, in the fancy restaurant, I was making this fortune. And on the other hand, you were completely at the mercy of the customer. You basically have to put up with behavior that you really hated so you could get paid. Yes, exactly. And especially because in the United States...

There is something called a tipped wage. In many states, because you are being tipped, they consider that part of your wage. And your actual wage can be as little as $2.13 an hour. So if you're working for $2.13 an hour and some jerk decides they're not going to tip you, you work a really long day and you walk away with nothing.

The thing is that when people talk about tipping, most of the time they're talking about high-end restaurants. The truth is that most people in the United States who are servers are working at modest restaurants. You know, middle-aged women with three children in the middle of the country who are working at pancake houses and diners and modest restaurants. And they are making $2.13 an hour.

And they often don't make more than that. And that's not right. And then you think still today people would be having to put up with all sorts of... difficult behaviour from customers because they need the tips. Absolutely. I mean, if your kids are depending on that for their food, you will put up with an awful lot. There is something really wrong. I think, with the whole tipping experience. Ruth Reichel. So what does it take to work for tips in the US?

I've been talking to Matty Rangel, a bartender and actor in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin, about how important tips are to him. They're vital. So in Wisconsin, minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. I get paid fairly more than that. Everything costs so much. So livable wage in Wisconsin is $24.57 an hour. I don't make $24.57 an hour as my wage from my employer. But with tips, I definitely make well over that. And I would say it's...

It makes the service industry worth it because I don't think I would do this job for less than $30 or $40 an hour. So with tips, would you say you're relatively well paid then? Yes. Absolutely. So what proportion of your pay do they represent? I would probably say at least two thirds, maybe three fourths. And what's the best?

tip you've ever had the biggest one the the biggest tip i've ever gotten it was probably so we have gambling machines in wisconsin somebody won a couple thousand dollars on on the game before and they they gave me i think about 200 bucks it was yours lucky day too yeah yeah and how are you earning your tips what does a bartender do to justify a tip so at least in my

instance, we have Midwest Hospitality, which is you try to go about presenting yourself in a really nice way and manner. And I think the tips reflect that. I've had bad days behind the bar as well. And it's tough to have a bad day as a bartender or a server because that can reflect how much you take home. I bartended. When my family members were passing away and I still had to put on that face because if I didn't, I wasn't going to make rent. So I kind of liken it to.

giving up performance no matter what you're feeling and sometimes that's it's a big toll but that helps facilitate good tips a lot of the time does it feel like a fair way to get paid or do you sometimes wish you just had A livable wage. I'm one of those people where, as a bartender, I would rather have the option to take a lower paying wage and bet on myself for those tips.

I could have six hours where I don't make anything except for my rate of pay. And then the final two hours, it skyrockets. You know, the birthday party comes in or something or all my regulars come in or it's happy hour, things like that. Do you think the fact that you're so dependent on customer tips to earn a living wage, do you think that leaves bartenders, servers in general, vulnerable?

You know, maybe you might sometimes have to put up with questionable behavior just to get the tip. Yeah. I think the biggest reason why I would advocate for myself getting the wage that I get. is because of that type of behavior. Not necessarily that we have to turn a blind eye to it, but that behavior is always going to happen. If I'm making

just a set standard wage and not living for those tips, I think a lot of people would not be getting service. I wouldn't tolerate, I would say, at least half of the stuff that I have to go through and tolerate. What kind of behavior do you have to tolerate? For me, a lot of the times it's the rudeness and the entitlement. There's a select amount of people that believe that

Because they're tipping that you work for them personally. I don't even see it as I'm working for the person that owns the bar that pays me hourly. I'm working for myself. And the... Arrogance of people sometimes, of them thinking that they're my employer, is kind of really high with that mindset. There are people listening all over the world to this.

What would you want them to know? Just be kind. And I think part of being kind is saying thank you with a tip. In the UK, it's common practice for customer tips to be split equally, so everyone from the head chef to the pot washer gets a cut. So we have some festive specials at the moment. We have some paella, goat's cheese, tiguenos. And that's the way it's done in El Gato Negro Tapas Bar in Manchester, where I've been speaking to head server Dan Ashton and assistant manager Anko Swann.

I do believe every single person working in a restaurant takes part on the final result, which is an incredible meal. From the kitchen porter, having your plates ready.

from your bartenders, your servers, your line chefs, even your managers. If you could design how servers are paid, would you design a system with tips and service charge, or would you... get rid of it all i would absolutely keep it i think it's great it is a minimum wage job however that service charge included in your monthly pay is amazing

and it does make the job a lot more worthwhile. I think hospitality since COVID has been at the edge of the line in terms of how much we're spending on labour. So if you are going to remove service share, then pay more to the staff. it would still be reflected on your bill, just in a different way. So when you receive a cash tip, obviously it's nice, everyone likes to receive money, that's nice. But is it more than the money? Well, there's no need to know.

Good job. I personally take a lot of pride in my service. It's a really nice gesture. I would like to add that I think service should never be something to take for granted. It should always be an incentive.

I think staff do take it for granted. Not here, but, like, for example, you go and get a couple of pints in a bar and you get shoved a gratuity screen in front of your face and they've not... even spoken to you yeah that is a new thing isn't it i was buying a sandwich yesterday at the counter and taking it away and they did put a screen in front of me i'm afraid i i went for no tip did you really like the sandwich

I did. It was really good. You're right. Maybe the chef made it. Well, I love a dip. However... And you can see the kitchen there. It is an open kitchen. Okay, next time I'll tip double to make up. Thank you to Ancol Suarez and Dan Ashton and to everyone we've spoken to for today's programme. Do let us know what you think about tipping.

Also, do you have a cure for the hangover? We're making an episode about that scourge of the festive season that's approaching in some parts of the world and would love to hear your tried and tested methods. and the ones that didn't work too. To get in touch with us, please email thefoodchain at bbc.co.uk. From me and the rest of the team, producers Lexi O'Connor and Izzy Greenfield, and editor Sarah Wadeson. Thanks for listening and join us again next week.

The one with the answers or the one asking the right questions. At Aramco, we start every day by asking how. How can innovation help deliver reliable energy to the world? To get to the answer, we first need to ask the right question. Search Aramco Powered by How. Aramco is an energy and chemicals company with oil and gas production as its primary business.

Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. But for millions of businesses, Shopify is the ultimate partner. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. From household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started.

Build a stunning online store with Shopify's ready to use templates. Boost content with AI-powered product descriptions, page headlines, and enhanced photography. Marketing is easy with built-in tools for email and social media campaigns. Plus, Shopify simplifies everything from inventory to shipping and returns. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side.

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