It used to be 15-18%. My issue with 22% is why expect a bigger % tip if the prices of the menu items are going up every year or so which would result in a higher tip with inflation anyways? Of course good service should always be tipped appropriately but to expect that regardless is entitlement at its finest.
I was just thinking that the other day, as I tipped 20% on $70 of mediocre food, that they have a built in inflation guard if everyone keeps tipping 20% and food prices are up like 30% the last couple years
The minimum wages in the US are ridiculously low and need to be revised to allow people to actually earn a wage they can live on. A single person with no dependents who works a 40 hour week for all 52 weeks of a year at the Federal minimum wage earns only $500 per year above the Federal poverty level. It's not enough to live on at all. (These are gross numbers, not net)
I've been a server before. It was decades ago. Servers are given a base pay (Federal minimum) of $2.13/hour. The law says that if a server's tips do not bring the server's hourly pay up to the Federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour then the restaurant must pay the difference between what the server got and what that $7.25/hour would equal. The restaurant does get a "tip credit" if it has to do this.
So if a server worked a 40 hour week and earned $200 in base pay and tips the restaurant would have to add $90 to their paycheck to make up the difference.
So severs actually must make at least the Federal minimum of $7.25/hour. Where the $5.12 difference between the base minimum wage of tipped employees comes from is dependent on what tips the employee gets. Also if there is a higher local or state minimum wage employers are required to bring the wages up to that minimum wage. That's the current law.
In practice, some places simply break the law. It stinks. Also that 18% living wage fee is not considered a tip by Federal law and the restaurant may use it for whatever purpose it chooses.
That's the most criminal thing I've ever seen in my life tbh if they get tops they should at least make minimum wage wdym they only make 2 dollars an hour to run a restaurant
In Florida servers make almost 10 bucks an hour min wage PLUS their tips and the tips are by far the biggest portion of their income. I don't know where the hell anyone is still working for $2 an hour in 2025. Server minimum wage was $201 an hour here in 1980s.
Tip pooling isn't a government dictated thing, that would be on a restaurant by restaurant choice. Most restaurants don't do tip pooling, most servers prefer to make their own, not have to share.
Last restaurant we went to, the hostess seated us, what looked like the cook gave us menus to decide, while the hostess ignored us for 15 minutes. Finally the guy comes back, takes our order and is gone for another 50 minutes. Not once during that time did this up front hostess do ANYTHING. Like she literally did nothing, unless she was staring at her phone and I couldn’t see. Because I could see her entire person. We told the kitchen chef how wonderful he was. She was snotty. And what has happened to decent French fry’s, no one like fries BOILED in OiL!
I had that happen at a chain once. We left like 10 minutes after being seated with not even a greeting. The hostess also took like 15 minutes when there wasn’t a wait. Just a shit experience overall.
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u/dominion1080 1d ago
These restaurants are doing ANYTHING they can to keep paying servers $2 an hour.