Should You Tip?

from the cellar

in good company

edges of reason

bottom of the bottle

Should You Tip?

words

Claire Adey

Moira Tirtha

images

No items found.

To tip or not to tip? Claire and Moira wade into the murky ethics of modern gratuity. QR codes, emotional labour, and the death of free bread are all on the table.

MOIRA
So, Claire, do you tip?

CLAIRE
Not always. Do you tip?

MOIRA
At restaurants, almost always. But if I’m ordering up at a counter or through a QR code, I doubt I’ll tip.

CLAIRE
I would say I’m tipping exclusively for service. It’s only recently that tipping for the quality of the food has even come into my mind’s eye.

MOIRA
Agreed. I would assume that the price of the food on the menu is reflective of the amount of the quality of the ingredients used and the time and skill that it takes the chefs to prepare said meal.

CLAIRE
I’m obsessed with you saying, ‘reflective of said meal’. You know what I was thinking about? Do you remember when you would get the flatbread with that soft cheese at Marion, and it would be free?

MOIRA
Oh, shit. Life used to be crazy.

CLAIRE
God, bread used to be free.

MOIRA
Let me give you a hypothetical situation. The service is amazing. The food is great.

CLAIRE
Yeah.

MOIRA
There’s an hour between your entreé and your main. Do you tip?

CLAIRE
Fascinating. Because to me, wait time is a component of the service. Oh, muy caliente. That is a spicy one. I guess there have been times where I’ve waited a long time between courses and have still thought the service was good. Yes, I would tip, and no, it wouldn’t impact it. There is something about, and I know that I say ‘touching the table’ all the time because I just love the term — I think it sounds so camp. But, there is a component of feeling you’re not being thought of when you’re sitting there and you’re like, can I get a glass of wine? Can we chat? Can I get those mashed potatoes? What’s happening? And if the service is good, and it is taking an hour, I think a good waiter comes to you before that’s happening.

MOIRA
They’re across what’s happening at all times and anticipating what someone needs, and it’s this idea of care, right? Dare I say hospitality? The idea the person who’s serving you actually cares. For example, if the food is taking a while because the kitchen’s gone down, communicating that to a table so they’re not angsty or have to feel the discomfort of having to ask.

CLAIRE
That the kitchen’s at capacity.

MOIRA
The kitchen’s at emotional capacity.

CLAIRE
That is a tip in and of itself, that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ service is the feeling of not bothering people. That’s the ‘yuck’ feeling that you hate. It’s feeling like you’re a burden, which is the exact opposite of hospitality.

MOIRA
So if tips are for service, do you think front of house should get all the tips?

CLAIRE
Damn. Like, I think it should be like 70% front of house. And I know the chef bros are about to come with me with their fucking pairing knives and their tweezers. But I don’t know.

MOIRA
I’ve worked at a big four restaurant group and had a percentage of my tips go towards the owner and the head office which is like, kinda fucked. It’s not uncommon for businesses to take 5% of that for glass breakages, which I don’t think is as fucked. I’ve worked in places that do an even split with everyone working, front of house and back of house. I maybe would also say 80/20 isn’t unfair. I think 70/30 is fair.

CLAIRE
More than an even split?

MOIRA
I mean, when I was post-COVID and didn’t have the razzle dazzle in my service I made way less on tips. I’m talking like, 75% less. Which meant everyone had less tips. So yeah, because I think front of house have more influence on how much a table tips or whether a table tips at all.

CLAIRE
That is interesting data. That data proves my point that I really think that societally, we have decided that tipping is the extra cream on top.

MOIRA
And you work for it. Performing good service, doing extra things to make someone’s experience of dining feel seamless, is labour.

CLAIRE
I think this comes down to emotional labour. There’s doing your job in hospitality, following the sequence of service, touching all your tables. And then there is putting the cream on top of the cake, which is like, I’m going to connect with this person and I’m going to make them feel good. This is what The Bear is about, where you’re going above and beyond, and you’re tailoring that person’s dining experience to make them have a better time. But can you imagine a world where every single time you went to a restaurant, you tipped 15%?

MOIRA
I wouldn’t be able to afford to go out.

CLAIRE
I wouldn’t either.

MOIRA
The percentages thing is so interesting because I’m never really like, was the service worth 10% of the meal or 20%? But I think if it weren’t for tips, it’d be hard to make hospitality a long-term career and the bar for good dining in Melbourne wouldn’t be as high as it is.

CLAIRE
How do you tip?

MOIRA
I’d say, as a blanket rule, 5 bucks per person if someone does anything I see as doing more than just taking my order and bringing food from the kitchen to the table. Or I’d round the bill to a nice-looking number.

CLAIRE
I think dining in 2024 doesn’t leave room for tipping in every situation because dining out isn’t what it was. We go out more casually now. It’s not just for special occasions.

MOIRA
I think that if you are dining out on a gift card from your 30th birthday, or your engagement party—

CLAIRE
How dare you come for me so personally.

MOIRA
Well, you know, where you’re not personally paying for the meal, I think you should tip. Like people who are using the company card.

CLAIRE
On the company card, every meal. I think that is embarrassing if you don’t. Honestly.

MOIRA
God, if you’re some food influencer profiting and gaining cultural capital from sharing your quote-unquote expertise and review of food from a culture that isn’t yours, especially if it’s from a marginalised culture and you’re not tipping, you should think about that.

CLAIRE
Dining as a group is an automatic tip.

MOIRA
Claire, how much do you tip?

CLAIRE
Absolutely not a percentage, unless I get that weird prompt where it’s like 5, 10, 15, and it tells you how much it is. I’m always doing the mental math kind of rounding up to whole numbers. Like $10 or $15 or $20 onto something.

MOIRA
What’s the social etiquette with groups? Would you ask the crowd? Would you just add it on?

CLAIRE
I can’t think of many times where I’ve been like, are we tipping? I’m just like, I tipped this much. If I were going to dinner with people and I knew that they famously didn’t tip, I would cop the tip.

MOIRA
Cop the tip. Hot of you.

‍

Claire Adey either loves or hates things– there's no middle ground. She also runs Into It, a communications and content studio specialising in all things food and beverage storytelling.

Moira Tirtha is Veraison's dad and a serial over-committer with fingers in far too many pies. Moira also runs Nongkrong with their brother, Darryl Tirtha.

No items found.

Thanks for reading.

Veraison's "Internatty" guides are a tool for navigating the broader world through a local lens. Our favourite discoveries from across the globe.

We published a lot of wonderful writing from friends and colleagues back in Veraison's days as a physical publication, and we wanted to give some of it a permanent home. Our "From The Cellar" articles are a curation of our favourite pieces from Veraison's print days, brought online for you.

Veraison's "Microclimate" guides are focused on what's happening here in Naarm. These guides try to shine a light on some of the often overlooked aspects of this ridiculous city of ours.

"Edges Of Reason" is a recurring chit-chat between besties Claire and Moira; a (very) loosely structured exploration of ideas, sometimes over a bottle of wine, with much vim and vigour.

The "Bottom Of The Bottle" article series is our long-form meandering exploration of ideas, championing the kinds of conversations you might get into when you're 750ml deep with a friend or two.

"BYO Club" is Darryl's routine roundup of the best spots to bring your best botts (and friends, of course). Each BYO Club Guide is compiled with a different theme in mind.

Veraison is an independent publication about wine and food, and everything in between and around. We create this publication from the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong people, and write about wines more often than not grown and produced on further unceded indigenous lands. We strive to create a diverse offering for our readers, and recognise that by writing about wine and (fine-ish) dining, we are operating in a historically very white and elite space. As such we're committed to amplifying the voices that try to diversify this space. If you want to contribute to Veraison, we'd love for you to get in touch.