Tipping in U.S. bars

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’m not sure how I can comment on this without fanning another tipping related flame war, but as someone who (like a lot of people in this part of the world) worked in a bar to help pay their way through uni, I also fail to see how opening the cap on a cider/RTD/imported beer qualifies as something requiring a tip (assuming you’re in a tipping culture).

In fact, I’d say idea of tipping $1 a drink for anything less complicated than a cocktail (or where specialist advice on a particular beverage has been provided) seems… like something bartenders might have made up so they can get paid a lot more.

Certainly, if I’d been paid $1 per drink back in my bartending days, I’d only need to work one night (admittedly it would have to be a Friday or Saturday) a week to have covered the rent and food and bills and still had enough to go out occasionally.

Yes, I know hospitality staff in the US get paid appallingly as a general rule and I’m not passing a judgement on that*, but even so, it seems odd to be basing the size of the tip based on the expensiveness of the drink rather than the complication involved in mixing it.

  • In this thread, at least
22

I’ve never tended bar as a job, but I do volunteer behind the bar for the Elks and at some of the nonprofit events in town. One thing I’ve noticed about it is the phenomenal inconsistency of it all. I can do two events with about the same size crowd on consecutive Saturdays and my tips one night will be ten times what they are the other night. I’ll get one guy ordering five beers and tipping a buck for the round, and the next guy ordering two $7.00 glasses of wine, paying with a twenty, and telling me to keep the change. It’s all over the map.

In a typical bar around here, bartenders must be paid at least minimum wage ($7.25/hour), and in my experience tips will average $10 to $20 per hour on a busy night and $2 to $3 an hour on a dead Tuesday, so their pay would range from about $10 to $25/hour. Annualize that ($20K to $50K per year) and they’re getting paid better than school teachers. When you figure the top bartenders will tend to get jobs in the higher-end bars on the busiest nights, they can do okay even in a tiny Montana town.

One of many reasons I don’t live in New York :smiley:

I think I’ve paid $20 for a drink two or three times in my life. Around here, a good microbrew on draft is $3.50 to $4.50, a decent-quality añejo tequila straight-up is $6.00 to $8.00, and a Highland single-malt like Laphroig or Oban is $7.00 up.

I quite agree.

23

Servers, especially in high end places, are forced to ‘tip out’, often to several slush funds. Sometimes to kitchen wages, most often to the house, and often to valets, barbacks etc. That portion, that they pay regardless of good night or bad, is always based on a percentage of their sales.

I’m sure you can do the math, so I won’t bother.

If you’re tipping a buck on $250 bottle of scotch, it’s actually costing the server to wait on you. Will some of it even out, throughout the evening, of other customers?, of course. But if I’m waiting solely on your large demanding celeb group, yeah the server is actually losing on your cheap self, if you’re still tipping like you’re Jo Plumber.

24

In some places.

Forcing servers to tip out is illegal in Montana.

25

Really? That’s interesting. I have extensive experience in the restaurant industry as a server and bartender (in Cincinnati) and tipping out your food runner, bartender, busser, etc is always part of the game, and always based on a percentage of your sales. But we don’t pay our servers and bartenders minimum wage here, either.
And when you mention about them “making more than a teacher” I feel compelled to mention taxes. In Montana since they pay minimum wage hourlies it may not matter, but back in the days of $2.13/hour for servers if you don’t claim enough of your earnings at the end of each shift, you can get shafted into paying a huge tax bill to the IRS at the end of the year since your “paycheck” for your 30 or so hours a week at $2.13 an hour is always a zero amount check and isn’t enough to cover your cash earnings in a given week.

26

Are you supposed to tip on comped drinks? I was at a bar awhile ago and ordered a Coke while my friends all got their margaritas or whatever (I don’t drink). When I went back at the end and told the bartender I needed to pay for the soda, he looked at me like I’d sprouted a third eye and told me there was no charge, I guess because Coke is dirt cheap and the rest of my group had run up a $250 tab. So I shrugged, thanked him, and walked away. Was I supposed to tip? I never go to bars (what’s the point if you’re not a drinker?) and it never honestly occurred to me.

27

Absolutely on comped drinks, if for no other reason than to increase the rate of more comps.

But you said a soda, that’s not a “drink.” I don’t know if it’s as necessary then, but it’s a nice gesture.

28

I have a related question. What if a bartender is friends with you and gives you a free beer or free glass of wine?

Obviously, to show gratitude, I want to tip. But I usually do the popular $1 per drink tip system. I feel weird when a bartender gives me a free drink and I give him a dollar. And also, he kind of looks at me weird. Like… am I supposed to revel in the freeness of it and not tip at all? That seems cheap to me. But when there’s no tab, just giving someone you are friends with a dollar is weird. Isn’t it?

Maybe I’m overthinking it. Is there anyone who’s friends with a bartender who’s thought this through/ actually talked it over with said bartender?

29

Which I think highlights the inconsistency of the whole thing. There’s as much (if not more) effort in putting ice in a glass and filling it full of soft drink (and possibly adding a wedge of lemon or lime if there’s some on hand) as there is in taking a bottle of Corona out of the fridge, cracking the bottle-top off with the mounted bottle-opener on the bar, and putting a wedge of lemon or lime in the neck - or simply pulling a beer from the tap.

30

Buck a drink has been standard as long as i’ve been of drinking age. (1994) Although the inflation calculator says that $1.45 now would be equal to $1 in 1994.

So while it’s probably still cool now, when we are all visiting the bar in Florida in 2050, that $1 will be like .15 cents and we will have become the stereotypical senior citizen tipper.

31

As I understand it, yes. I was in a Colorado casino some years ago, and found, to my delight, that beer and wine were complimentary (casinos here in Canada cannot provide complimentary drinks, because of liquor licensing laws). But my American wife (who had worked in the hospitality industry in the US for a bit) reminded me that the server might enjoy a gratuity. She strongly reminded me that a couple of dollars would do it (a dollar for my beer, a dollar for her wine). So, the server got $2 for bringing our “complimentary” drinks. No big deal–as a foreigner, I was ignorant of local customs, and when my more locally-aware wife told me of local customs, I made good on the obligation. And a couple of bucks for a round wasn’t a bad deal in context–at home in our local pub, where we were paying, a beer and a wine was IIRC, $10 or so. At any rate, I found that while the drinks were comped, a tip was still expected.

32

Customs of the country, Martini. Here in Canada, a guy pulls a beer off the tap, I tip a dollar. In Australia, for the same pint off the same tap, I don’t tip at all. The Canadian barman expects it; the Aussie doesn’t. (In fairness, bartending is a job that in many provinces of Canada, can be paid at less than minimum wage, because tips are expected to make up the difference. So, as far as I am concerned, that $5 pint costs $6. Get your mind wrapped around that, and it is no big deal.)

Is it correct? Is it fair? I don’t know, but until provincial governments raise the minimum wage for alcohol-servers to Australian levels, I do know that the Canadian barman will likely chase you out into the street, looking for a tip, and never serving you again if you do not provide one; but the Aussie barman will wish you well and hope to see you again soon.

Customs of the country.

33

Free drink, comped drink, all should be tipped for. It’s the service you’re tipping for!

Sometimes, bartenders shoot their friend’s free drinks, well, because they can. Those free drinks are part of a comp tab that should be being used for birthdays, a round for a large group, newly weds, guys who gets a hair in his food, spillage, etc. It is extremely common for barmen to use that tab for free drinks for pretty girls they want to impress, their friends, and others who might then over tip and increase their nightly take. It happens a lot, most nights it’s combo of all those things.

Yes, your server is surprised that you’re still a cheap tipper - even when the drinks are free! They probably like you and just think you tip what you can afford. But wonder, why don’t you tip even an extra half dollar, when the drinks are free? Seems a moment when, regardless of your circumstances, you could afford to increase it a little.

Servers understand that there will always be people who tip how they tip - regardless. Nothing will shift them from their righteous position that they have rationalized to be ‘equitable’ in every instance, and themselves the cleverer wild card for not following the norm. These people are, in every other, outward way, fair, reasonable and normal.

Fortunately, they are not the majority. Coming out ahead, as a server, is about it evening out over the course of a shift. You can’t let them get you down, and it’s pointless to try and change them, so it’s best to smile and let it go, knowing, in the end, it won’t really matter.

34

Yes, from a British perspective the “$1 a drink” thing just seems insanely high. In a typical London pub during the evening shift I’d estimate each barman is probably pouring at least 50 drinks an hour, quite possibly double that at peak times. If you apply the typical pound:dollar pricing parity and say people tipped £1 a drink, bar staff would be out-earning most professionals on an hourly rate.

35

I think you may have missed what I was getting at - I was simply observing the disconnect between saying that in tipping places, a tip was warranted for an alcoholic drink but not necessarily a non-alcoholic drink, despite the fact the same amount of work is involved in getting both.