In this thread, “fast food” will mean any restaurant where you order at the counter and then bring the food yourself to the table or out the door. So a Mom & Pop joint could easily count as a “FF” restaurant if the above qualifiers are met.
For me, it’s a no. I also think it’s kind of messed up I have to tap “No tip” on the POS screen as the cashier stands there watching me.
0 voters
There’s a cafe where we’ll have breakfast occasionally - in addition to the line on the receipt for tipping the server, they have a tip jar at the register for the cook! Really?? Sorry, guy, scrambling an egg and popping toast in the machine won’t get you a tip from me.
Since the start of the pandemic, always.
My best friend really does not like it when we have to buy motor fuel in Oregon because she perceives the attendant as a server whom one should tip (they are feeding your vehicle). In my youth, I worked in an Oregon gas station and got tips maybe one or two out of a few thousand customers (and that is counting that one guy in the black Nova who always handed a clump of fresh grass, clover and mushrooms every fall).
Yeah. Not as much as at a sitdown restaurant and never at mega chains, but I’ll usually tip around ten percent these days at local places. The pandemic really highlighted for me how precarious it is for both the employees and the owners of local businesses. I should have been tipping all along.
It depends - I don’t tip at McDonald’s or similar places, where everyone orders at the counter and carries the food either to a table or out the door. I do tip at places where you either get sit-down service or you order takeout from the bartender or a server. There’s a in-between sort of place, where there is an entirely separate takeout counter that might sell bottled sauces or dressings and T shirts in addition to take-out orders and the people working at this counter are not also waiting on tables. I usually tip at these places just because I’m not sure if the counter people are inappropriately being treated as tipped employees (inappropriate because I know most people I see do not tip them)
I voted no since that’s the case 99.95% of the time. I tip for dining service and fast food is essentially just retail sales. Exception that comes to mind was visiting a local burrito dive when it was about a trillion degrees inside with one useless fan in the outside today. Threw in a tip for having to work through that.
I’m not sure I understand why anyone would be (or feel compelled to be) tipping in that situation. That seems to make about as much sense as tipping the cashier at the grocery store (which, I can confirm, does happen, but not at all regularly).
I’ve tipped at Subway several times, but can’t exactly say why; it just felt right, is all.
I always throw a dollar in the jar when I pick up Chipotle, I guess because I go there fairly often and I want them to associate my name with “nice customer”. It wouldn’t occur to me to tip at McDonalds or other burger chain.
I don’t eat fast food all that often but if it’s a McDonald’s / Burger King / Taco Bell, then no. But we do family pizza night every Friday which I pick up, seldom do delivery, and it feels right to throw a couple bucks in the tip jar. On the rare occasions I opt for pizza delivery, I give a more generous 18-20%.
I always tip at Subway. They make my sandwich. That’s worth a tip. Yesterday I tipped a few bucks at Panera.
Based on your qualifiers, I had to vote “Sometimes/Depends”.
I am not Mr. Gotta-Tip-Everyone-Everywhere, but tipping just “feels right” at certain kinds of places and “not right” at others. There’s no cold logic to it, really, and it’s not much associated with whether or not I get sit-down table service.
Full table service restaurants: Tip invariably.
Table service restaurants that also do a brisk take-out business: Generally, the finer the establishment, the less take-out they do. Around here, this class of restaurant (table-service place also with lots of take-out orders) is very popular. In my own restaurant days, I was taught that 10% was an appropriate tip for take-out service. These days, if it’s a place I’m taking out from for the first time, or somewhere I’m just passing through and unlikely to return, I might go with that 10% rule still. If it’s one of our go-to places where I want the staff to remember me fondly when I come back, I tip 15%-20% on takeout.
Small-chain and mom-&-pop counter service: Similar rule as the above, but more in the range of 10%-15%. If it’s a bare-bones place with few or no tables (IOW, their counter service is their bread and butter … and they don’t wait tables but you can take your bag and eat at their dusty plastic booth if you want), I mentally deduct a bit for that. Not fair or logical, maybe, but there you go.
Established chain fast food: No tip. The few times I’ve seen a tip jar put out at a fast food place, it feels like an affront and I avoid that place for a while. I’ve never seen a tip line on a debit-card receipt from McDonalds, Wendy’s, Subway, Taco Bell, Popeye’s, KFC, etc. I am curious if others ever do.
Coffee, donuts, ice cream, smoothies, etc.: These places kind of have their own thing going on with tips. Based on absolutely no logic (except maybe a barista is kind of an expert coffee-drink maker?), I’ll tip around 15% at these places. Around here, this class of business almost always does have a tip line on their debit-card receipts.
I take part of this back – Subway does have a tip line on their credit/debit receipts around here, and I have left tips there. $2-ish or 10-15%, whichever is more.
The one I go to also has a tip jar for cash.
This never computes for me. You want a sandwich, You ask for the sandwich, they give you the sandwich, they are literally doing the thing you are paying for them to do.
If I went into a book shop, asked for a book and was given the book then would we ever think an extra charge was warranted?
makes no sense.
In answer to the OP, no. Never.
To make that a valid comparison, the bookseller would first have to print and bind the book before handing it to you.
There is a tradition of tipping service but not retail commerce. Fast food blurs that line and different people will draw that line in different places.
That’s true for all tipping. You pay for a haircut, they give you a haircut. Still, many people tip. Or even a restaurant meal: you ask for a steak dinner, they bring you a steak dinner.
I tip every chance I get. I make a ton of money, they make very little. A few bucks moved to their column from mine seems like a nice thing to do
I’ve sometimes seen these at Subways, as well.
That’s my bottom line, as well. If you can afford it, you should tip as generously (and discreetly) as possible.