Tipping at partial service restaurants

[Pegasus]

We typically tip ~20% at full service restaurants and partial service restaurants alike. Just wondering if most folks tip less at partial service restaurants, like buffets where you fetch your own food or a Mongolian grill where you collect all your raw ingredients and take it to the grill cook.

[Parrothead]

Well,if all the wait staff does is bring me a drink and maybe a refil i'll tip 10-15%. Full service gets 15-20%.

[AnIslandGirl]

Sure, the waitresses are still working just as hard. Getting drinks, clearing extra plates, etc.

20% is just common courtesy, at least here in America. Overseas where a waitress makes an honest paycheck, that's a different story.

[SarahW]

Depends on if they are getting paid as a "tipped employee."

 

I don't think cooks and bussers can count as "tipped" but if you frequent a particular restaurant you could ask a manager just to be sure.

[magnificent_baby]

We usually leave $2 at a buffet style restaurant. Probably should be leaving more now that I think about it.

[Ali in OR]

We have restaurants where we literally do most of the work. We order pizza at the counter, someone brings it out to us, we bus our own dishes at the end. There are a couple of restaurants in town with bussing stations set up for customers to clean their own table. You get your own drinks too. And in Oregon all of the workers are making minimum wage of $8.95 per hour. In these places I might tip a couple of bucks when I'm in a good mood; I might tip nothing if money is tight.

[Seasider]

We usually leave $2 at a buffet style restaurant. Probably should be leaving more now that I think about it.

 

 

At a common cafeteria style place where the waitress just brings drinks and maybe takes your dishes, a dollar or so per person at the table.

 

I rarely tip for over-the-counter service unless it is an owner-run establishment and I might sit and read a while (like a little local coffee shop).

 

[Amber in SJ]

In California waitstaff makes minimum wage. Here in the Bay Area that is $10/ hr. At the places where we order at the counter, get our own drinks, pick up our own order and bus our own table, I don't tip.

[Mergath]

I tip less at places like buffets, maybe ten to fifteen percent. I would probably tip more, but at the only buffet we ever go to it takes them a good ten minutes to get the drinks out even when the place is almost empty. I just can't bring myself to tip more than that for someone who takes ten minutes to get a glass of water.

[Georgiana Daniels]

If they aren't actually taking the order and bringing the food to the table we only usually leave $1 per person. (We rarely go to these places. Seriously, I can do all the work myself at home, lol.) If it's a regular restaurant and the service is great, we tip 20%+ but if the service is bad, 15%.

 

Being a server is really hard work, so when in doubt we try to err on the side of tipping higher.

[MrsBanjoClown]

In college, I worked at a Luby's. I would refill drinks, get condiments, bus tables, etc. We made $2.15/hr plus tips. Minimum wage at the time was $5.15 I think. We had to report our tips at the end of every night and if it didn't add up to minimum wage, they would make up the difference on our paychecks. Most people did not tip, because it was a cafeteria-style restaurant.

[Tita Gidge]

I spent my formative years working in the restaurant business, front and back.

 

I always tip generously, wherever I go. I can, and I remember those days LOL.

 

We have a standing weekly date at the Mongolian restaurant here in town. We have "our" waitress. She brings our food, drinks, comps the kids dessert from time to time, and is just a real treat both at work and when we see her around town. She's pleasant to the people, even the dismissive ones, and her bad days are better than the good days some of her co-workers have. Her kids have drawn us cards thanking us for sending them to summer camp :D but really and truly, she's just that good. We generally tip her 40-50%.

 

Every other self-serve type place, I tip 20%. If money was tighter, I'd feel 10% was reasonable for standard service, 15% for good. Sure I could do it myself at home; but if I've given myself the night off and the server earned it :) we both do! If it's a counter-type place and I do everything but ring myself up ... I might put a few dollars in the tip jar if it's a place I frequent. The presence of a tip jar generally annoys me, though, so I otherwise ignore it.

 

I will over-tip before I under-tip, unless service is very poor. I don't know what servers make in my state (min. wage or reduced), but if they're making minimum wage, good on 'em. Maybe I'm in the wrong job LOL.

 

To the Bay Area poster -- I flew through SJC the other day and was talking to a young employee in the Club. He said that the airport mandates a "living wage" as opposed to the "minimum wage" so restaurant workers at the physical airport will make even MORE than their counterparts on the outside. To see that the outside people are making $10/hour leaves me curious what SJC workers are earning! I eat at that Gordon Biersch everytime I fly through, no wonder they remember me and are always happy to see me. I must be the only schmuck who didn't know they were already making so much! LOL

[Butter]

We tip abut 15% if they are filling drinks and stuff but we are getting all our own food. We tip about 10% if we do everything but clean up the table at the end. Tips at partial service retaurants also depend on if they get paid like a regular waitress or if they actually get paid minimum wage or higher. There used to be two buffet-style restaurants in our town. My sister worked at one of them for a while. They paid minimum wage. Tips were a bonus. The other one paid what a typical waitress made and so they needed those tips. I always thought there was something wrong with paying a waitress at a buffet place - one who does nothing but clean up at the end - like a regular waitress. They are not doing the job a regular waitress does and most people are not even going to consider that they aren't getting paid minimum wage.

[SarahW]

 

To the Bay Area poster -- I flew through SJC the other day and was talking to a young employee in the Club. He said that the airport mandates a "living wage" as opposed to the "minimum wage" so restaurant workers at the physical airport will make even MORE than their counterparts on the outside. To see that the outside people are making $10/hour leaves me curious what SJC workers are earning! I eat at that Gordon Biersch everytime I fly through, no wonder they remember me and are always happy to see me. I must be the only schmuck who didn't know they were already making so much! LOL

 

 

To be fair, in many places in CA $10/hr doesn't go very far at all. And I've seen some people try to calculate a "living wage" as the amount a first-year elementary teacher makes in the county (and then pick the lowest amount). I suspect that your servers aren't getting rich any time soon.

[Tita Gidge]

 

To be fair, in many places in CA $10/hr doesn't go very far at all. And I've seen some people try to calculate a "living wage" as the amount a first-year elementary teacher makes in the county (and then pick the lowest amount). I suspect that your servers aren't getting rich any time soon.

 

 

I didn't expect that they were, I was just surprised LOL.

 

One of them is just the funniest lady. They're all Pinoy, and she's a grandma. I asked her why she's still working, why not retired already, and she says her grandkids are "too much" so instead of staying home with them while Mama works (which isn't uncommon for the culture), she lets Mama stay home instead (while she/grandma works). I always tip her extra, and even if she does get rich off of it - good on her, I say!

 

My sister graduates from Stanford in a few weeks, so we know what it costs to live out there. The COL is comparable to where we're from, and I'm amazed at how people who aren't from there (or other high COL areas) can ever afford to move there!

[chiguirre]

Hmmm, the only place that we eat at that falls into this category is Pei Wei. They don't have a space for tips on their credit card forms and I've never seen anyone leave money on the table for the bussers. OTOH, you get your own drinks and serviceware, they bring your food and bus tables. Our Chik-fil-a also brings food to your table almost every time, but you bus your own table, I've never seen anyone leave a tip.