The era of tipping: Then and now

It's hard to go nearly anywhere today without being asked one question: Would you like to leave a tip? While the answer is usually yes in places like restaurants or nail salons, there are more establishments now you might wonder why are asking.

"The places that draw attention are settings where you don't feel like you're receiving any service and yet you're compelled to tip because of a technology that's saying, do you want to leave $1, $2, or 3 dollars or a 15, 20, 25 percent tip."

University of New Mexico Sociology Professor Eli Wilson calls it the 'Tip Creep Phenomenon,' the idea that tips are now present in various retail environments, not just service. Wilson says tip creep has expanded in the last decade, even though tipping has existed in the United States since the 19th century. The conversation has essentially started a movement on social media.

"It's really in the U.S. that tipping has been picked up, plugged in, and fueled by the capitalist machine. A grim way to put it, but it's accurate," Wilson said. "There's been this tip creep not just in the type of establishments but also how much we're tipping."

Think about the last time you sat down at a restaurant; how much did you tip the server at the end of the meal?

Depending on the service, you probably tipped around 20 percent of your bill, which is the average nowadays. But Wilson says that's a lot more than what it used to be.

"In restaurants, if you look back at the early 1900s it was pretty common to see tips around 10 to 12 percent," he said. "As the decades marched on, we saw that get up to about 15 percent as the norm by the mid-20th century and then crept to 18 percent by the late 2000's entering into this century, we're seeing tips now somewhere between 18 to 20 percent of the bills in restaurants, sometimes even higher."

While Wilson believes there will eventually be a natural cap on tips because consumers will likely push back if it becomes 30 percent or more, he does think tip creep will grow in other ways.

"It's being fueled by technology, but also there are two strange bedfellows that both seem to benefit from there being a greater ask of tips. It benefits management (owners) and benefits workers," he said.

More tips mean more money for tipped workers, but for management, Wilson says tips are a way for owners to supplement a worker's wage by offloading the cost onto consumers.

"If I walk into a store as a consumer and a hamburger costs $10, but then I feel compelled to tip an extra $3, it's extra earnings that will go back to workers. But the important point is that money management doesn't have to take out of their coffers and away from their profits to pay workers something they can live on," he said.

Wilson says the bottom line: management is deeply invested in using any technology or strategy at their disposal to keep worker salary overhead minimal. "Until consumers start leaving these establishments en mass, the systems will keep expanding because of the interest it serves," he said.

According to news outlets, nearly a decade ago Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer tried to get rid of tipping altogether throughout his restaurants to make pay more equal for workers. However, five years later, the restaurateur changed course on his decision.

Wilson says tipping has a murky history dating back centuries with no set timeline on when it started in Europe, specifically Western Europe. Back then, it was a wealthier class of people dishing out extra money to the servant classes, such as Butlers or Bellhops, later finding a home in the restaurant industry. While tipping is widely accepted now, Wilson says it wasn't always that way even at the turn of the 20^th century. According to Wilson, organized groups believed tipping was 'undemocratic' and were looking to abolish the practice.

"The idea that we dole out small bits of money to a poorer, servant class, that's not what we stand for as Americans. You would hear that language more commonly 100-plus years ago than we do today, which is interesting," he said.

While history has shown some people have been frustrated with tipping for a long time, Wilson says it's manifested differently over the years. Instead of groups, he says the resistance is more individualized today and rooted in consumer culture with people voicing their frustration on social media. "It's like, me as a customer, I am outraged at being asked this tip prompt," he said. "That's an important distinction between what's behind people's frustration with tipping then and now."

Tipping was brought to the forefront again during the 2024 presidential election with President-Elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris saying they wanted to cut federal taxes on workers' tips during their campaigns. Wilson says at first it seems like a good idea; If it helps restaurant workers or other tipped employees, then that's a win. However, he's become more critical of it lately, saying it comes back to this issue of who should pay for labor or employment conditions for workers to be secure.

"Trump's policy would certainly put more money in tipped workers' wallets but it's money that's still coming from consumers at the end of the day," he said. "That may be fine, but I worry this is a way to offload costs from restaurant owners instead of demanding that they pay fair and livable wages to their employees."

Wilson says this is seen as a competing policy since prominent restaurant worker advocacy groups have suggested raising the federal tip minimum wage instead.

Professor Eli Wilson says restaurant workers tend to be from disproportionally marginalized groups, addressing that in one of his books: Front of the House, Back of the House: Race and Inequality in the Lives of Restaurant Workers. "As a Sociologist and somebody who cares about these issues, that is what is at stake when we're thinking about tipping and making better for those folks who depend on tips," he said.

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