No one’s brought it up, so I’ll mention my tactic.
If the bar is a crazy-busy, popular kind of place that makes relatively unattractive men like me wait longer for their drinks (i.e., the cool kids and hot chicks get priority of service), I have had GREAT luck with the following:
Fixate on the oldest-looking bartender (i.e., I make a stereotypical assumption that they’re the most experienced/most professional/least likely to be enamored by the “cool” people)
Order my drink(s)
Pay for the first round in cash
Leave a LARGE tip-- even for a $2 beer, nothing less than $5, if for a round of beers, $10 or more.
Then hand him my credit card and say, “I’m gonna run a tab for the rest of the night if that’s okay?”
Tip well at the end of the night.
Step #4 is the winner here. Your first tip should always be your best tip. You catch the attention of the bartender for the rest of the night that way. I don’t find that the my tips are any more expensive in the end, but the difference in quality of service is significant, especially in the trendier places (which I tend not to frequent all that much anymore because I’m no longer as trendy as I once was).
Depends. If we go to one particular place, $5 per bucket. A bucket is 6 beers, it costs $16.50 (or $18 - it depends on the bartender :rolleyes:). If we get two buckets, we tip $10.
The other place we go to doesn’t do buckets, and it’s the owner who usually serves us. We don’t tip him (he’s the one who told me, “You don’t tip the owner” so it isn’t like I’m being a jerk). When his kid works, we tip the kid $5 per “afternoon” or “evening” that we spend there.
When I did make the rounds of the bars there were a couple of smaller, friendlier places I’d usually go to. The barkeeps knew my name, the waitresses would bum a ride at the end of the night if needed, that kind of thing. First thing I’d do sitting down at the bar was to drop a 5 in the jar. Bartender kept the change on drinks, and I’d drop another 5 or 10 on the way out.
Service was great. I’d get to be the guinea pig for new drinks at no charge. A win-win for everyone.
My favorite places around here all have (good) beers for $3.00 or so, and there’s usually a $2.00 special. If I have four beers, that’s $8 to $12. I can’t imagine putting a $15 tip on that.
I tend to drink good tequilas, which sell for $5 to $7 around here, so I’d certainly tip heavier on that, but if I was drinking well tequila (gak!) for $2.50 or $3.00, I’d be tipping a buck a drink.
No, I’d tip more for a $10 drink. Except that I would never in a million years order a $10 drink. In fact, most of the bars I go to do not even serve liquor and wouldn’t have a $10 beer in stock.
I think you must have been drinking in the wrong places, at least as far as a pint of beer goes. If I’m going someplace like Martuni’s or Zam Zam or Bourbon & Branch, where there’s a lot of effort and expensive booze going in the glass, then yeah, it might be pricey. But seriously, $4 a pint is roughly standard anywhere worth drinkin’ in.
It’s been a few years now, but if you hung out in the gay bars in the Castro during happy hour, you could get well drinks two for one, or a double for the price of one, which made the price $2/cocktail.
I was thinking about this just yesterday, because I was out at a bar and when I cashed out my tab, it turned out that my drinks had been unusually cheap. (I guess it was happy hour? It seemed a bit late for happy hour, though. Anyway.) I had a coke and then two mixed drinks and fries, and the whole tab came to about ten bucks. Considering how much I’d gotten, 20% seemed pretty lame.
Our group used to have a place like this. We were able to grab good bar real estate during crowded happy hours, good seats near the big screens during football season, usually get away without paying cover, and the bar/wait staff usually put up with all our bulls**t without notice. And boy, did we get away with stuff. Without going into detail (i.e., confessing to laws broken, both civil and moral), total debauchery was enjoyed on many levels. Most of us would tip well over 25%. Even more if I was verrry drunk. On more than one occassion, I have had waitresses try to return part of their tips because they felt guilty accepting them.
Several times, the party would get carried away and end up in another location before the night was over. Sometimes I would accidentally leave without paying my tab for the night. It was cheerfully offered back for payment the next day. And if this were the case, the tip was always *much *more generous.
Unfortunately, times change. The No-Smoking in bars law was passed, the bar changed owners, and lots of the good staff left with the old owner. Nobody hangs out at this place anymore.
I don’t drink at trendy or expensive places. One of my oldest friends owns an Irish-themed pub with a great beer selection and this is where I drink 95% of the time (when I’m drinking out of the home.)
If I go in with a good chunk of cash I’ll always tip $1 a drink (which at this place averages out to around 33% tip), or if I’m running a tab I’ll tip 50% at the end of the night.
The main reason I do that is because I’d say on average 1/3 drinks are free for me there, both the bartenders and the owner regularly send free drinks my way. When I’m paying cash I always give a tip even on the freebies, so when I’m paying off a tab I bump up my percentage to make up for the freebies I didn’t tip on throughout the night since I wasn’t using cash.
From what the bartenders have told me though, it isn’t uncommon that some of the worst tippers pay with cards since they can stiff the bartender at the end of the night and not feel as guilty as they would if they continually stiffed them over the course of the evening.
I had mentioned this in the other tipping thread, but it looks like it would apply better here.
I went to a bar on Friday where you had to pay cash per each drink, and they had an automatic 15% gratuity added on to the price. (And food as well.) I didn’t think I should have to pay an additional $1 per drink on top of that. Has anyone else ever been to a place that does that?
Not only have I never heard of a bar like that, I would never work in one; as a bartender, for every blankety blank customer that stiffs you, you have really awesome customers who tip really well. I would never want to work at a place where it’s an automatic gratuity per drink. That’s rude and IMHO counter-productive.
Can I ask what kind of bar it was? What location? What clientele?
Never seen anything like that, except on a cruise ship. There I recall you didn’t pay cash, but the slip you signed for your bill had the 15% automatically added–and with a line if you wanted to add an additional tip. Now my wife and I did add another 20-25%–and we got great service! I figured those guys were making nothing, and the little we added helped us have a great vacation.
It was very nice during that week to walk into any of the bars and before we even sat down our drink was in front of us with a smile. We even gave them a big tip the last night as we had a great time.
In our regular bar here in the Seattle area, we run a tab and we tip at the end. But we have been going there for years and are good tippers and get excellent service. Again our drinks are there almost as soon as we sit down, my wife has some little quirks she likes in her salad, etc and it always comes out right. That attention comes I believe because we tip well. The bar can be swamped and we still get our drinks right away, it is worth it to me. And besides we really like our bartender there, he is a nice guy and we know he struggles to make ends meet, and we can afford it and we treat him well and he treats us well. All in all a good arrangement!
I don’t think I’ve ever been to a bar or restaurant bar and only had one drink; two-drink minimum, and even if it’s cheap beer, I never tip less than $2. Ever. $2 is the bare minimum, and if 20% of the bill is higher than $2, then I go with that, or usually higher if I’m at a favorite watering hole.
I get a fair amount of “mistake” drinks placed in front of me.
ETA: Just to clarify; they’re legitimate mistake drinks, not deliberately poured or mixed freebies. I just mean, if one of the 'tenders goofs (or more likely, one of the servers rang up the wrong drink) I’m usually first in line to reap the benefits.
The Peculier Pub in Greenwich Village. When we arrived we were able to find a table right away but by the time we left (around midnight) it was so crowded you could barely walk out the door. We couldn’t have left a tip on the table even if we were suposed to as the second we got up other people sat down and there were no receipts or bills that gave total amount fir the night. I’d never seen something like that before but then again I’m not a bar person so I didn’t know if that was common.
