Tipping 10% of the bill seems a lot to me

[ElderAve]

I'm prepared to be flamed but let me explain my logic.

Now DC are grown up, when we go out to dinner we are usually 4 adults. We don't do it very often but like somewhere "nice" so when we do, two courses plus drinks probably cost £150-£200. We'll be in the restaurant say 2 hours and the waiter will typically have 5/6 other tables (?).

That's an awfully good hourly rate if everyone leaves 10%.

Would you leave £20 on a £200 bill for 4 people? If not what is a fair/reasonable amount to leave?

@HollowTalk
I've working in numerous restaurants, and everywhere I've worked chefs do get tips. They way its worked in the majority of places I've worked is all the tips go into a safe at the end of every day, then once a week/fortnight/month the tips are counted up and divided between front of house and kitchen staff. The more hours you've worked the more tips you get.

Tipping is outdated, feudal and discriminatory. Why tip waiting staff, but not shop workers or fast food workers?

It is also no longer necessary at a time when the minimum wage is about to increase to £8.72 per hour. That is a reasonable wage for unskilled service work. And yes, I have worked in pubs & restaurants myself...

I tip waiting staff, generally remove the service charge and hand it to them in cash. If I have no real cash then I'll leave it on the card only if the staff say they get the tips.
If a particular person has been particularly sweet/helpful then I try to split the tip a little, some directly to them and a general one with the bill, but that depends as so often staff flit between tables

Also tip cabbies....but that's usually cos I am in London with scottish notes and if you fork over a (generous) Scottish note for your fare and say keep the change they don't usually say anything. TBF though Londoners (esp cabbies) are usually okay with Scottish notes.

I probably wouldn't tip more than £8 out for a family meal

I wonder will people tip as generously in a years time when the waiters will be earning 26k or 30k?

I generally tip 12.5% to 15% if service has at least been vaguely OK, but I reduce this to 10% outside of London.

I wouldn't tip if a service charge was already included or if the service had been bad.

It's a societal norm. I factor in the cost of the tip when deciding if I can afford to eat at a particular restaurant.

In the UK I just round up if the meal was £46 I’d leave £50.we are not America who rely on the tips to make up their wage. When we go to the US we tend to standard tip 20% but to be honest I just don’t understand why it is a percentage of the value of the food you have ordered. If the waiter bought me over a salad but bought over the person next to me a steak the service would be the same but the tip more for the more expensive meal...don’t get it?

If you left 10% in a New York restaurant they woukd ask you what the problem with the service was!

I don’t tip and I always asked for the service charge to be removed as I think it’s grabby. I’ve paid for what i’ve had and it’s up to the restaurant to pay the staff properly, there’s no need for customers to subsidise the wage bill.

I don't tip for anything.

I generally tip close to 10% but with a bill of £200 I'd probably give around a tenner. I do think £20 is a lot.

I don't think 10% is unreasonable, most of the time it is split between everyone on shift. Also, while your waiting staff are on at least minimum wage, many are on zero hour contracts. The tips help more than you might realise. I will always tip more if the service was particularly good.

@SuperMeerkat - but what if the restaurant don’t pay their staff properly. I don’t think tipping should be necessary, that’s another story, but the staff depend on it.

It depends if there is a service charge. If there is I would still top it up if the service was good.

@StarlightLady in the UK they'll be paid NMW at least. Pretty much the same as most people. So we don't have to worry if they're being paid right.

There's nothing flashy about leaving £20 for a £200 meal. If you don't, you are suggesting that there was an issue with the food or service. (And that you are tight).

If the food and service was all ok, leave 10%, rounded up. More if service was fantastic for any reason. So any meal £160-£200 gets £20.

Having worked as a waitress as a student I always tip.
The set up where I worked was that I had to put money from my tips for the bar staff, then some for the cleaners and some for the chefs even if I had earned no tips I had to put that money in every shift.
Yes I did well out of tips but I also had lots of nights where my feet hurt so much that I would have preferred to wet the bed than get up for the toilet. And that is putting aside rude /letching /arrogant/ nasty customers.

We tip if service is good but honestly not as generously as when we're in the states or Canada - food is cheaper there so you add on 15-20% when budgeting. They don't have the minimum wage we have in the UK. I think London is different because it's so multicultural so the USA tipping style creeps over but out of context becomes rather high. In the UK I'd not tip more than 10%.

If you can afford £200 for a meal you can afford £20 tip. I am a waitress and share my tips with the rest of the staff. Take home £2-4 a shift if lucky. A few pence and a sincere thank you are worth gold. I fetch and carry and clear up baby sick and all sorts. I always tip when I am out because I know how much it matters.

If you can afford a £200 meal then maybe you've budgeted £200 and not £220! I hate people who assume those who can afford something should pay more as "clearly they can afford it". Going out for a nice meal as a family if 5 can easily head towards the £200 - we do it as a rare treat but that doesn't mean we're millionaires

If you can afford £200 for a meal you can afford £20 tip.

Wow. That's a fantastic level of entitlement you've got there.

Why do you think people should pay you to do the job that your employer pays you?

And I've worked in bars. And nightclubs.
So sick is a routine part of the job.

I tend to round up. So if the bill is £18 I'll probably round it up to £20.

But if it's £19.50, I'll still round up to £20. They win some, they lose some.

I'm not keen on tipping because the staff don't always see the tips. If they did, I'd be keener to do it, but rounding up the bill is fine.

Don't the chefs earn a lot more than the waiting staff? Not sure they need the tips.

Why would i tip? I dont tip the dentist,doctor, IFA or bank staff? No one tips me..

On a table of four adults, I’d usually expect each person to add a couple of quid or whatever loose change they had and leave it at that. I don’t think I’d work it all out to see if what we came up with amounted to 10 percent.

My problem these days is I’ve got so used to paying for everything contactless, I never have any blinking cash on me so I’ve sometimes left without tipping at all.