Tipping in the US: A Guide to American Dining Etiquette

17.08.2024 - 09:40 / cntraveler.com

It’s the wild, wild west these days across America’s dining scene. They’re taxing tips. You’re getting nudged away from your table after ninety minutes with a check you never asked for. If you’re not on your toes at all times, you’ll end up tipping 20% on the water bottle you grabbed from a self-service refrigerator. Whether you live here or are merely visiting, it’s hard to know what exactly is expected of you when dining out in this ever-shifting nation. We have, after all, only just emerged blinking and shivering wet from a quarantine-which-shall-not-be-named that variously rewrote and obliterated many of our societal norms. Menus are on QR codes, there’s a restaurant-loyalty app that lets you pay without speaking to the waiter and it’s depressing Pete Wells (as well as this writer), yada yada.

A new study by Yelp is looking to help offer some guidance to anyone who might feel confused. A total of 2,000 regular restaurant reviewers and an etiquette expert weighed in on such matters as phone use at the table, splitting the bill, and tipping in the US. Since we’ll take all the help we can get, we spoke to a few hospitality experts of our own to bolster the findings. Read on for the full breakdown.

While the Yelp study proffers that businesses feel “the less cards, the better”—anyone with good sense and an appreciation for their own dignity should understand this—Yelp users themselves are split. About 65% of Southern diners “ask the server to divvy up the tab based on individual diners’ orders.” In the Northeast, 39% split the bill evenly and 35% do the right thing and have one person foot the bill, with everybody else paying them back in private and at a latter date. (Assuming the spirit of generosity did not visit the bill footer, who may or may not know how good it feels to declare, “Dinner’s on me!”).

Victor Gothelf, executive chef at Port Sa’id, agrees that this is the best route, saying, “One card is always the way to go, and then split among friends on an app—especially if one person is trying to get points on a credit card. If you must split the bill, for business or any other reasons, up to four cards is doable.” Li Goldstein, a Bon Appétit staffer who last year wrote a very helpful dissertation on splitting the bill specifically, sees one person footing the bill as a given, going further to say that splitting intricacies should only be handled after the fact rather than put on the server. “If some people are drinking while others aren’t, or one person balled out on a crazy expensive entrée, having everyone Venmo their exact share is well within reason,” she says, “It’s a case by case judgment call.”

Out of the Yelp survey respondents, approximately two-thirds will tip 20% for table service