#NewRules: The Complete Guide to Tipping in 2013

Experts break down the etiquette for tipping in every situation imaginable, from cocktail bars to delivery during a hurricane.

Regan Hofmann

We’re living in a new and dangerous era of eat and drinking out. For every new dining format that claims the zeitgeist, the question of how—and whom—to tip looms ever larger. What do you do if you’re dining at Del Posto, where at least six different people are assigned to look after you and you alone? Or sitting at the bar at wd~50, where the restaurant’s combined expertise and skill is consolidated into the same guy who’s topping up your water and mixing your drinks? What about a 20-plus-course tasting menu at Brooklyn Fare handed to you directly by the chef?

The very concept of tipping has been slammed a lot lately, with big-deal chefs and restaurants kicking around the idea of doing away with the system altogether. After all, it’s pretty much just us and Canada left, and the reasons most people tip well have nothing to do with how good the service is (women get better tips than men; tell someone your name and they’ll feel guilted into tipping more).

The issue is that in many states, New York included, minimum wage is lower for tipped employees; the Department of Labor factors in a “tip credit” that they calculate will make up the difference, so employers don’t have to pay up. Depending on where you are, your server could be making as little as half the minimum wage, with the expectation that you’re going to make it up to him with your gratutity. For restaurants to do away with tipping altogether, they’d have to cover the increase in costs themselves, passing the buck back on to you in the form of higher prices. In the end you’re forking over roughly the same amount—it’s all about giving you the illusion of control.

Since there’s so much riding on your shoulders, your main goal should be to make sure everyone is making a living and you don’t look like an asshole. Much of this depends on how much you trust the restaurant management to be giving their staff a decent wage, and to be tipping out appropriately. If you’re in a Danny Meyer joint, you can pretty safely assume they’re not running a modern slavery racket out of the kitchen and everyone is being treated fairly. If you’re somewhere where your waiter is drawing smiley faces on tabs, touching your arm desperately whenever you interact, and upselling you at every turn, know that they’re making dirt and you’re their only hope. Don’t give that place your business again – but while you’re there, tip well anyway.

To help you navigate this confusing game, we’ve broken down 15 scenarios that require tipping, from getting your morning coffee to a dinner out with eight of your closest friends, and rounded up a group of professional eaters, writers, drinkers, and servers to drop some real knowledge. Forward this to your grandparents, your boss, and your cousin who just moved here from Michigan who can’t stop complaining about the price of cocktails here. But first, read it yourself to make sure you’re doing it right.

The Expert Panel

Ryan Sutton, Bloomberg New York food critic; founder and editor of The Bad Deal and The Price Hike
Rosie Schaap, Drinks columnist for the New York Times Magazine; bartender; and author of the memoir Drinking With Men
Lizzie Post, author, the Emily Post Institute; great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post (yes, the Emily Post)
Jimmy Carbone, owner, Jimmy’s No. 43, a craft beer bar and restaurant; founder of Food Karma Projects, an organizer of socially conscious food events, including the annual 5Boro picNYC and Pig Island
Tyler Martin, retail operations manager, Roasting Plant Coffee

RELATED: How to Tip at a Cocktail Bar

RELATED: How to Drink at a Wine Bar

Delivery

How much? 15%-20%, but never less than $2 total Why? Let's be real: With players like Seamless, GrubHub, and now Yelp running the delivery game online, there's no way you ordered that pad thai over the phone and are scrounging up enough singles to pay the dude when he gets to your door. So why does your tip still just round up to the next buck or two? Delivery guys work incredibly hard—arguably a lot harder than a waiter walking 15 feet from the kitchen to your table—and they deserve proper recognition. If the place you're ordering from is around the corner, figure on 15%. If it's a mile away or you're in a sixth-floor walkup, 20%. In any case, even if you just ordered the $5.99 lunch special, never leave less than $2. If you really can't afford that, you should probably just walk to the restaurant yourself. Pro tip: "Even if there’s a delivery surcharge, you still leave a tip, though it’s not full-service the way a restaurant is—they’re not with you all the way through your meal." — Lizzie Post
Delivery in Inclement Weather

How much? Add 5% on top of your standard delivery tip if you’re ordering in just because you can’t bear to be outside yourself; 10% for a full-fledged weather phenomenon (thunderstorm, heatwave); 15% or more if the weather’s been given a first name. Why? Luxury tax. You're asking someone else to suffer through what you don't want to go through yourself, whether it's a massive rainstorm or 100% mid-summer humidity. Think about how much worse that weather is when you've got a hot bag on your back and you're biking madly across town to get somebody's club sandwich to him before he gets cranky. Pay up, be nice, and never give the guy shit if he's late. Pro tip: "I had Ali Baba delivered to me right when Sandy was hitting that Monday in October. I left at least 30%—probably more than that. I'm sure as I tell that story more and more, 30% will gradually creep up to 40% or 50%."—Ryan Sutton
Pickup Order at a Restaurant

How much? 0–10%, depending on how nicely packaged your food is. Why? There’s not a lot that service staff does for a pickup order, other than answer the phone and hand over a bag. If you wait for the order at the bar with a drink or they really put some heart into putting that bag together—our favorite diner wraps to-go coffee with plastic wrap and a double lid before putting the whole thing in another plastic bag; it's totally spill-proof—go ahead and add a few bucks. But in this case, there's nothing wrong with leaving the tip line blank. Pro tip: "If you want to tip for a pickup order, think of it like a tip jar left out on the counter. It’s not the same kind of service as a waiter might provide, so you don’t have to tip in the same way."—Lizzie Post
Serious Coffee Bar

How much? $0–$1; you should only feel obliged to tip if you were especially demanding or you are a regular fostering a good relationship with the staff. Don’t leave the seven cents you got as change—nobody wants to roll your pennies. Why? When you've stood for 10 minutes and watched as a painfully sincere dude swirled water in complicated patterns over a Chemex to give you a cup of coffee, it can feel like you owe the guy your first-born child. But let's take a step back. Not to get all Grampa Simpson on you, but we remember when Starbucks was considered complicated. Now, its concoctions are as standard as the word barista, and the idea that you'd owe someone extra cash for making you a half-caf red eye is ludicrous. As third-wave shops like Blue Bottle and Stumptown continue to proliferate, the same normalization will occur—after all, that attention to detail is the person's job, not a special favor she's doing just for you. If you're a die-hard regular or you've been picking the staff's brains about which single-origin roast you'd like best, leave a buck, and always leave a dollar when you redeem a buy-10-get-one-free card. Pro tip: "There's a perception at third-wave venues that because there is more of a seeming 'craft' at play and you're often waiting longer to get a handcrafted drink, you should feel compelled to tip. Not to be reductive of barista art, but I think that's crap, personally."—Tyler Martin
Craft Beer Bar

How much? 20% Why? Watching a bartender at a beer bar, it may seem like a pretty sweet gig. Pulling pints, cracking cans, chatting about hops varietals—it's hardly work at all! We call bullshit. For every beer nerd who wants to swoon over saisons, there are 10 dudes who've never had anything more complex than a Bud Light, or guys who want to have something like this great IPA they had once but they can't remember the name or where it was from and maybe it wasn't an IPA? Sussing out each patron's preferences, pouring complimentary tastes, and analyzing feedback on the fly—a good beer bartender's job is two-thirds education, one-third mind reader. And that's not even considering the amount of skill it takes to actually pull a proper pint. Tip as you would any good service. Pro tip: "Much of a bartender’s work is not just making a drink—it’s setup, cleanup, interacting with customers, etc. Staff depend on tips for their main income in bars and restaurants. It's the added cost of going out, but the service is why we go out at all."—Jimmy Carbone
Dive Bar

How much? $2 per drink. Why? The wage reduction for tipped employees is the same whether they're wearing sleeve garters or a Hooters half-shirt—you don't get to decide who's worthy of a living wage based on whether or not your feet stick to the floor. Most dives won't charge $10 for any single drink, but leave two bucks a drink anyway, at least for the first two rounds. It's more than 20%, but look at it this way: You know the old guy asleep in his Jameson at the end of the bar hasn't tipped at all since 1978. Consider your excess a credit to the universe. Pro tip: "All bartenders—whether they work in dives or serious cocktail bars, whether they're pulling pints or shaking up labor-intensive Ramos Gin Fizzes, need to make a living. I know many people who've tipped a dollar a drink for 20 years, as though bartenders are not subject to inflation."—Rosie Schaap
Serious Cocktail Bar

How much? 20-40% Why? In a bar like Dead Rabbit or the Library at the NoMad, the cocktail menu can go on for 10-plus pages, each drink topping out at six or seven separate components. At places like Evelyn Drinkery and Booker & Dax, bartenders are playing Bill Nye and constantly experimenting with new techniques. And no matter where you are, the only thing separating your complicated drink from overmixed, unbalanced, too-sweet disaster is the skill of the person making it; in many ways, the bartender is playing the role of chef and server at the same time. Recognize that skill with the basic 20% for good service, creeping even higher the longer you've spent at the bar and the more you've called upon your bartender's expertise. Did you switch to bartender's choice at some point? Get offered a pour of something unusual, or asked to taste something not on the menu yet? Tip up—it's a sign the bartender likes you, and wants you to stick around. There's no relationship more sacred. (If you end up getting comped a ton of drinks, a good rule of thumb is to tally up half of what it would have cost, and leave that as a thank you to the staff.) Pro tip: "I have a bar that I go to here that has made it their personal goal to make me happy with something new every time I come in. There I’ll tip 50% – the tab always ends up under $20 anyway!"—Lizzie Post
Open Bar Event

How much? If there’s a clearly marked tip jar, $2 per drink. Otherwise, you're free to keep your hands out of your wallet. Why? Bartenders at catered events are a different animal from the ones down at your local dive. Most event companies charge the host a service fee to cover their staff, so the guy pouring your Yellowtail isn't dependent on you to make his night. That said, some companies are stingy bastards, or try to undercut their competition by eliminating that charge and passing the buck (literally) to you, the guest. Take a hint from the staff—if their bosses let them put a tip jar out, it's because they need the tips. Fork it over. If there's no jar, stop worrying about it and start getting tanked enough to lead the Cha Cha Slide at cousin Hannah's bat mitzvah. One exception is if the open bar is super busy and it's tough to get a drink; in this case, you may strategically slide one of the bartenders a little something at the beginning of the evening—say, $20—to establish a rapport and make sure you're taken care of for the rest of the night. Needless to say, this is a pro-level baller move. Pro tip: "If you see a tip jar at a private event or open bar event, assume the staff is not getting paid much or at all and are counting on the tips. So tip them!"—Jimmy Carbone
Your Basic Restaurant Experience

How much? 20%. All the time. Really. Why? Remember that wage reduction? It gets applied to a whole host of restaurant staff, including bussers, bartenders, and captains. At the end of the night, those staff you don't interact with directly are tipped out from what your waiter has received (some establishments pool tips and pay everyone out from the pool, but the principle is the same). If you left a 10% tip because your steak sat at the pass getting overdone or your drink was taken away before you'd finished it, you're penalizing a number of people who had nothing to do with that mistake. Besides, most of what we see as poor service is really the result of poor service policies, which are handed down to the waiter from on high. Just like in kindergarten, the best way to deal with a situation is with your words; talk to a manager if you had a real problem, or just don't go back. Try not to take it to Yelp though, okay? Nobody takes those guys seriously. Pro tip: "You aren’t going to do anything to change the server’s work ethic if you leave a bad tip; you’re just going to look like a jerk or a cheapskate."—Lizzie Post
Drinks at the Bar, Dinner at a Table

How much? 20% on the final bill if they transfer your tab; otherwise, feel free to reduce your usual tip at the bar, then tip normally on your meal Why? Good service at a restaurant is all about making the diner's life as easy as possible, anticipating your needs before you have to ask, ad taking care of you in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. If, for whatever reason, you end up waiting at the bar before you can be seated, it shouldn't be a separate transaction from the meal that's about to follow. It's not like you went to the bar across the street for 15 minutes; the same people are getting your money in the end. If your tab is transferred seamlessly and added to your final bill, factor that cost into the 20% calculation you're doing for the tip—the bartender will get tipped out from that. If you have to settle up before you can sit down, weigh how much of a hassle it was to get that tab, and maybe scale back your tip on the drinks accordingly. Pro tip: "If the restaurant doesn't transfer tabs, I usually tip $1 per drink. That's the penalty tipping rate for making me fight through the crowd and find the bartender while my table is ready. It's one of the most inhospitable things anyone at a restaurant can do."—Ryan Sutton
Dinner at the Bar

How much? 20% Why? When you're eating at the bar, you're basically consolidating all of the service staff's duties into one person, who incidentally is making all the drinks for the dining room at the same time. It can be one of the best ways to get to know a place, to eat alone, or to snag a seat at this week's new hotness. But it won't be the same kind of experience as you'd get at a table, and you have to be okay with that. You'll probably get a more personal connection with your server—bartenders, after all, are usually built for chatting—but you won't be the center of his universe. Be at peace with the pros and cons and tip as you normally would in the dining room. Pro tip: "If I'm eating at a bar, I tip 20%, the same rate as in the dining room. They're charging me as much as they are in the dining room, and the service quite frankly is usually just as good, if not better, in the bar."—Ryan Sutton
Restaurant When a Sommelier Helps You with the Wine

How much? For above-and-beyond help, 20% of the value of the wine, handed over directly. Why? Sharing tips and spreading the wealth is all well and good, but sometimes there's one person who really makes an effort just for you, and they aren't the one you're handing your cash to at the end of the night. Sommeliers often end up in this category—with the right guidance, they have the power to lift a meal from decent to mind-blowing. If they pull together a pairing just for you, or steer you away from that whale bait toward a cheaper gem you never would have found on your own, consider handing them a tip separate from the main bill. Pro tip: "Pull the person aside and say, 'I just wanted to thank you, you really did a great job,' and extend your hand with the cash folded up in it. You don't have to have a secret handshake; just let them see the cash in your hand and they'll understand what you're doing."—Lizzie Post
Dinner with a Large Party

How much? Enough on top of the autogratuity to bring the total up to 20%, or 25% if you're out with babies or fools. Why? Sometimes a restaurant thinks they’re getting one over on clueless diners by tacking on an autogratuity for large parties. But the truth is, it's pretty stingy at 15% or 18% of the total bill—enough to cover their staff adequately, but not so much as to set off alarm bells for the unenlightened who think 20% is too damn high. If you're out with a large group, try to wrangle control of the check when it comes and make sure to supplement the charge with enough to bring the tip up to 20%. Out with all your college buddies who still make dick jokes to the waitress and try to split a check six ways on four credit cards? Throw down an extra 5% to apologize for those bums. Pro tip: "If a restaurant autograts me 18%, I'll tip an extra few bucks for service that isn't awful to bring the number up to 20%."—Ryan Sutton
Discounts, Coupons, and Comps

How much? 20% on whatever the total would have been (guess if you have to). Why? We're going to go ahead and assume you already know that if you're using a Groupon or other discount deal, you have to tip on what the cost of your meal would have been, not what your cheap ass is doling out on top of that piece of paper. They're not giving you half the service because you're only paying half price, after all. But let's dig deeper: What if your server brings out an extra dessert because it's someone's birthday, or a round of appetizers is comped because they took so long to come out of the kitchen (or because you know someone at the restaurant)? Those freebies come at the server's discretion, and potentially at their expense, because they're working to make you happy. When the check comes around, factor the cost of those items into your calculations to show your server that you appreciate what they did for you. Pro tip: "Always, always tip on what the total cost would have been."—Lizzie Post
Everybody Else

How much? Probably nothing. Why? Sharing tips exists for a reason, and it's because it's unwieldy, complicated, and uncomfortable for a diner to go around tipping every person in the restaurant individually. Are you really going to slip the busser a five because he cleared your plates quickly? The captain because he folded your napkin when you went to the bathroom? Don't drive yourself crazy. If every member of the staff went out of his way to make you happy, reflect that in your tip and trust that it'll find its way to the right people. You can't police the economics of the whole service industry. The Exceptions: If a host really does perform a miracle to seat you on a crowded night, or gives you an especially great table on a special occasion, slip him $10 as you're seated—never beforehand. You're thanking him for his service, not buying a table. And if you check your coat, hand the person who gives it back to you $2. Touching other people's stuff all day is just gross. Pro tip: "This isn't Goodfellas, where I'm coming in the back of the Copacabana and I need to palm everyone $20. Only exception is I'll always try to give a few bucks to whoever handles my coat check, because I get a guilty conscience if I don't, and because I usually have a pretty heavy bag. I never, ever tip that guy in the restroom handing me towels. I can get my own towels."—Ryan Sutton

#NewRules: The Complete Guide to Tipping in 2013

The Expert Panel

Delivery

Delivery in Inclement Weather

Pickup Order at a Restaurant

Serious Coffee Bar

Craft Beer Bar

Dive Bar

Serious Cocktail Bar

Open Bar Event

Your Basic Restaurant Experience

Drinks at the Bar, Dinner at a Table

Dinner at the Bar

Restaurant When a Sommelier Helps You with the Wine

Dinner with a Large Party

Discounts, Coupons, and Comps

Everybody Else

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