Tips about Tips

The Tip
The meal was delicious, the drinks were perfect, and the service was excellent. Your server offers to bring you anything else and you kindly ask for the bill. Every part of your meal went exactly how it should have. What do you tip your server? While I often hear that the average is 15%, I can tell you that most servers aren't jumping with joy when they receive it. tip: your server makes most if not all their money off of tips. Treat them well!

Here is how it works:
We get paid much less then minimum wage. My hourly wage is $3.30. No, that is not a typing error. Your server is earning just over $3 per hour. I'm not sure if all restaurants work the same, but at mine, management declares our tips for tax purposes and that money comes out of our paychecks. Most servers paychecks are either VOID or under $10. My last paycheck was $4.87. Keep this in mind when you tip your server, please. We make our money from tips.

Did you know...
Your server doesn't even keep all of their tips. Servers tip out the bus boys, the food runner, and the bartender. At my restaurant, after a shift I owe the bus boys 2.5% of my total sales, the food runner 1% of my food sales, and the bartender 5% of my bar sales. It adds up.

For example, an average dinner I may ring $600 in sales (including food and bar). For this example, I will pretend $510 was in food sales and $90 in bar sales. At the end of the night, I then owe the bus boys $15, the food runner $6, and the bartender $5. Over $20 of the tips I made during the shift are paid out to others (who deserve it and keep the restaurant running).

A good tip (in my book) is 20% of the bill.

The Verbal Tip

It happens much more then servers would like. Your table can't stop complimenting you on your outstanding service, the excellent meal, and their wonderful overall experience dining at your restaurant. I have been told I was the best server tables have ever had. They get up, you say goodbye and thank them, maybe even make small talk and tell them to ask for you the next time they visit the restaurant. You open up the check presenter and a terrible tip looks you right in the face. Why the compliments and the gratuitous attitude without the monetary compensation? tip: at a minimum, a decent monetary tip should follow the verbal one. If a server does such an excellent job that a customer can't stop raving about it, why not compensate them for it. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but we are not serving you for fun, we need to pay our bills too.