What do you normally tip the “to-go” person at your favorite tipped (sit down, i.e. Applebee’s, Ruby Tuesday’s, O’Charley’s, Outback, etc.) restaurants? I’ve heard that the standard tip is 10-15% percent, but I can’t find any websites mentioning it, as the drive-up-and-park-and-we’ll-bring-it-out-to-you phenomenon is pretty new.
~TygerD
I read a column about that this week. I believe it was in the Boston Sunday Globe. They said that tips for takeout should range from 0 - 15% with 0 - 10% being the normal range. A simple pickup of a pizza requires no tip while it would be nice to tip a host or waitress at a nice takeout restaurant 10% or so if they go to a lot of trouble to bag your order. More than 10% would be for special circumstances.
I haven’t used the carside carryout services yet, but when I get to-go from Chili’s or Friday’s, I usually tip 10%. I’ve watched them running around a lot, and don’t know what their pay is. They’re doing a service for me, either way, so I’m cool with it.
At Denny’s, the hostess is in charge of to-go orders.
Which means besides greeting customers, getting drink orders, dealing with checks and the myriad of other things that occupy a host’s every on-the-job second, she’s gotta wedge in ordering and packaging a to-go meal. There are quite a few items that the server (or in this case, the host) has to assemble herself- like salads, milkshakes, biscuits and gravy, any sauces, desserts, etc. Beyond that is a lot of scurrying for containers, silverware, bags, etc.
In other words, it’s a lot of work. And unlike servers, they’ve got a job besides serving you.
Usually a host gets a tiny bit more than the servers, but doesn’t get direct tips. The server is supposed to tip the host, but that depends on how much they can help out the waiters (which won’t be much if they are focusing on to-go orders). In the end I got about $9.00 an hour, to the server’s $16.00 an hour.
I rarely got tipped on to-go orders. Maybe one out of ten orders would tip me. When they did, it was always warmed my heart and put a little extra food on my table that night. I can understand not wanting to tip full for a to-go order, but they really are just as hard to deal with as regular orders and it sucks to work for nothing.
It depends on how much stuff I ask them to get for me, like sides of sauce, napkins, extra containers, etc. If I’m a pain, I’ll leave two bucks; a dollar or so for the usual to-go delivery. Of course, my to-go orders are usually about $10, never more than $20 in total. I mean, it’s not like they have to continuously wait on me, refilling my drinks, removing my dirty dishes, asking me if I’d like anything else. It’s pretty straight-forward.
About five bucks.
Not sure why, but that’s what I almost always tip the “to-go” person.
On a $15 order - $5
On a $30 order - $5
On a $60 order - $5
I go to the same places over & over so I think it all evens out in the end.
These are all family-run-type restaurants, too, so the staff is limited. I think it’s almost always the same person helping me every time I go in.
Boy, this is a surprise to me.
I never even considered it necessary to tip for carryout. In my mind, when we sit down for dinner, we are being taken care of by a waitperson for the duration of the meal, we dirty the dishes, we occupy a table, and so on. When I pick up my carryout, it probably spent all of thirty seconds in the hands of the wait staff, after sitting under a heat lamp for a few minutes. A very big difference. That’s a slippery slope to where we will end up tipping at Micky D’s, in my book. Even though there is some work involved in preparing the meal and packaging it, I tip to reward good service, and there really is no special service I see in takeout.
Of course, now I am wondering if those meals I get from Appleby’s have been coming well-done, with extra spit.
Well, if you think about it, carryout at a sit-down restaurant takes up time that that person can’t use for doing table service and thus reduces their opportunities for tips. At McDonald’s, there’s no such thing as table service and nobody is making tips. At some places that are really pushing carryout, such as Ruby Tuesday, there seem to be staff who are doing nothing but that. They’re most likely making a higher hourly wage than those doing table service, but still probably not making as much since the tips are so scarce. They are spending less total time to do one carryout order than waiting on a table for a full meal, so I usually tip about 10-15% versus 15-20% for table service.
I tip at the local Mexican Restaurant…about 10 percent. It is two plastic grocery bags filled with food and a few containers of salsa and such. Way more effort than slapping the goods on one plate. Plus they make a mean banana margarita and know my face.
Whoever prepares it prepares any salads, soups, condiments, some entrees (like biscuits and gravy), drinks, milkshakes, desserts, and anything that is cold. In the end, it takes about as long to prepare a to-go order as waiting on a full sit down meal. A server isn’t sitting at your side, after all, they are serving their other tables as well.
And don’t doubt the power of the server, even the to-go server. Your food probably isn’t coming with spit, but it’s probably coming without extra tubs of dressing and extra ice cream in the shakes and a full compliment of jam flavors and care taken that it doesn’t slide around in the container when they handle it.
The problem with this reasoning is that the tip comes after the purchase. Unless I am a regular customer, they don’t know me from Adam, so unless I say “Go heavy on that milk shake and the tip will be nice…”, there is really no way for them to reward me ahead of time for considering them in my tip.
It comes down to this: For sit down service, one is paying to offset low wages and to reward good service. For carryout, one is simply paying to offset low wages, and the “reward good service” only comes for repeat business (Hey, she’s the nice smily one who threw in extra sauce. I’ll tip her more).
I suppose I could gripe all day that the variableness of the tip exists primarily to allow rewarding good service (imho), but it has become an expected supplement to wages – no one was obliged to offer me tips after I showed them a nice film back in my projectionist days, and the pay stank.
Be that as it may, I will simply accept that our world is this way and offer a decent tip when I order carryout! I must say, however, that restaurant workers need to educate the general public on this somehow. Until I read the posts here, I had no clue as to why I would even consider offering a tip. I’m certain that anyone who has worked in a restaurant understands, but what about an ordinary Joe like me?
You don’t already? Man, how do you ever get your food?
j/k
I’m mostly in agreement with you.
Sometimes I wish restaurants just paid their staff a decent wage and tipping wasn’t expected; but was a true tip for excellent service. Sure the food would cost more on average; but that way the servers wouldn’t get shafted by non-tippers and tips would have real meaning.
I do not get that logic. Each table at a sit-down restaurant takes up time that that person can’t use for doing more tables. Each task at a restaurant (such as making the waitstaff bus tables and get the condiments) takes up time that that person can’t use for doing more tables. Does that mean that if a restaurant stretches its servers really thin, such that they cannot work enough tables or work them properly, that I have to pay more for some reason?
It seems to me that the problem here is the restaurant that does not have a dedicated to go person, or that does not split the responsibility evenly enough.
I don’t tip the “to-go” person and I’m not about to start.
Ditto. I don’t use the carside service, if I did, I might tip her, but I go inside. I’m paying for the food, no way am I paying a cent extra.
I used to feel the same way, that is untill I got a roommate who worked at a California Pizza Kitchen. She would rotate what she did depending on the schedual, some days serving, some days hosting, some days doing take out. Her base pay for all the jobs was the same, the difference was the tips. After talking to her I found out that the to go window people actually work harder than the waitstaff and half the time don’t get tipped anything. The togo person is the person who actually assembles your order. If you want napkins, forks, anything on the side, any changes to the way the order is usually prepared, its their job. Because of this I ALWAYS tip something when I go to a place that would normally be a sit down restaurant. If the order was particularly large and/or complicated I will tip as much as 15%, otherwise between 5 and 10%. I tip low on these occasions mostly because I am taking up a small amount of the persons time and I know that they will have many more customers.
But in any job where I know that the persons pay is based on the expectation that they will recieve a tip, I tip. Its just the society we live in, and we can’t do anything about it. (at least not without moving to Europe which I may do, but not because of tipping.)
Wow. I tip nothing if nobody brings me the food. Never. Not one time ever. I appreciate the bagging of my meal, but if it ain’t delivery or if it ain’t sit-down-in-restaurant, forget it. And I’m a generous tipper at sit-downs - a minimum of 15% even for barely-there service.
George
There’s a few take-out places I’ve eaten at in my day. All of them “less nice” restaurants than the ones we’re talking about here, I don’t really eat out much but I’ve had chinese takeout, pizza take out, calzone take out etc. I don’t tip in those situations and never have nor ever will.
But from what I’ve read in this thread if I ever utilized a full take out function at a nicer restaurant I’d definitely include a tip. I tip almost compulsively anyways. About the only people I don’t tip are fast food (never eat fast food anyways) or people at “cheaper” take out places.
I don’t get your confusion. When a server is waiting tables, they are normally making tips. When they’re working to-go orders, they’re not waiting tables. When you get a to-go order, someone is providing you a service of packing up your food, condiments, utensils, and so forth, and even though you’re not eating the food there, it’s nice to tip for this service.
It seems like these restaurants should have the orders packaged by the kitchen staff, who are paid to do non-customer facing tasks with hourly wages.