Tipping Question - Frisco,TX

Yes, I tip when I take out food and delivery. I also add to the tip jar at local food places that have one out for their workers.

My daughter used to work in a Mac-grill and she says people tip for that pick up. I am okay with a small tip, but she said everyone tips $5.

Heres my thing. It is an easy enough job to prepare and bag everything. It is seconds to take it out to the car, and again, the job is a no brainer.

If they feel they don't make much money, stay in school!

I don't tip when I pick up take out food.
I tip for delivery and I tip when we sit down to eat in a restaurant (no tipping in fast food places).

I never tip for take out. And I never used to tip for buffets until my husband started tipping the people who brought drinks. To me if I'm serving myself why should I tip? But he is the nicest man on earth and they do make sure they race over and refill our glasses over and over again.

I NEVER tip when I get take out. UNLESS we eat in a restaurant or get it delivered. If I pick it up nope I don't tip

I don't tip for takeout.

If the person ringing me up provides a service beyond what a Mc Donalds cashier would provide I tip. Why would I tip someone for handing me my food when the cook did all the work?

In a nutshell tips are for a service. If there is no service performed no tip. If there is a service performed you tip on just the service. An example, there is a brewery called Perennial Artisan Ales here. We go every week for their new release. We may pick up bottles. When a bottle can go for 25 dollars get four and you just added 100 dollars to your bill. So we had a few beers, dinner maybe and our bill is 170, I don't tip 34 dollars, I tip 14, there was no service provided handing us four bottles of beer.

I find the buffet answer interesting. I actually tip there, I don't tip 20% because I do half the work but someone is clearing all our plates, they tend to offer to refill drinks, so yeah.

I am just not going to tip for service when there is no service given.

Yes, you should tip a few dollars. Often, a server making $2.13 an hour is putting together your order. They have to box everything with the appropriate sauces/plastic utensils/napkins for you. A few bucks is probably not going to break you and it is just the nice/right thing to do...

When I do curbside to go or run in to pick up an order, I typically tip about 10%. Someone did put forth effort to get the order ready for presentation and neatly packaged for me so it is easy for me when I get home.

We don't do delivery here, it is available, we've not had good experiences with it in the past so we opt out of delivery. We just prefer to go to curbside or walk in and pick up our order.

At restaurants where we place the order at the front cashier area and wait for the food to be prepared and brought to the table, I tip 10% as well.

I tip for almost any food/drink I purchase. I don't go to many chain restaurants so I can't speak to what happens there. I do know that when I worked as a waitress in my 20's we spent time not only taking and placing the to go order but also getting it together, gathering condiments, utensils/napkins and getting drinks.

Some people don't seem to understand how cost of living impacts low wage workers. Nine dollars per hour in San Jose doesn't go very far. In fact I wonder how anyone could even survive on that where I live an hour south. I just cannot get my brain around a $2.13 minimum wage. How low could the cost of living be to justify that?

I usually add $1 to the total bill (paying by card)... or drop all the coinage change in whatever tip jar/can they have sitting out. But that's it. They are not providing a service really, as Julie S mentioned. But, they are typically the person who stopped whatever else they were doing (waiting on live in person customers?) to take and submit the order to the kitchen, and ensuring that it is packaged for the ride home.

Mostly, if I'm picking up take out it is a pizza box. But sometimes it'll have a salad on the side with dressing/ etc. I don't tip on the order total like I would if we were eating in and being waited on, checked on, and cleaned up after, getting refills on our drinks, etc.

It's a token. $1 isn't going to break me. But it recognizes that they are taking care of my order just the same.

Now, if I am going to a sub shop, I don't add anything for a take away order. Because they don't do anything different than if you were eating there, which means the cashier rings up the order and takes my money. The end. The sandwich makers behind them make the food and hand it over... and they all make minimum wage (at least). Not so in the kinds of places I will add a bit onto the bill for carry-out. Usually, those places have serving staff that makes less than minimum (the $2.55 or whatever it is base for wait staff).

The ones that get me are the places like coffee shops. My coffee is $1.95.. you want me to tip you 40 cents because you poured coffee in a cup?? Really? I'm putting my own half and half in it at the little table over to the side... and taking my trash with me when I walk out of the door. I don't think so.
If I order 4 froo froo drinks for the family, then maybe I'll drop some change in the basket/can.... but not for a plain coffee. It's absurd the number of places that put out tip cans these days...

Interesting question. I think the answer may also depend on where you live and the current minimum wage.
I never tip for take out. Tracy, Susan & "Isn't this fun" have referenced a server's wage of under $3 per hour. Here in San Jose the minimum wage for all workers is currently $9 per hour and going to $10.30 on January 1. I'm feeling hard pressed to tip more than 10% to servers (unless the service is noteworthy) any more because they no longer have a base wage as in the past. We all may have to re-assess as wages increase across the US. Sadly the increase in wage has not increased the quality of service.

My brother worked in the food service industry for a few years and the curbside people aren't making more than the regular servers, but they rarely get tipped. So everyone hated to do that because they made almost no money that night...I always tip them.

I tip the pizza guy $5 each time. So if I get 1 $10 pizza they are getting 50%, if I get 3 pizza's for $30, they are getting just shy of 20%. But I know they have to spend gas to get to me, so I try to do $5 each time. My brother also did this and he said that's a good amount.

We tip small amounts at buffet's too, not 20%, but maybe $5 for the 5 of us. We don't do buffet's often because I'm not a fan.

it never used to occur to me to tip when i picked up the food, although i'm a very generous tipper for table service and home delivery. then i worked in a restaurant that did carry-out for its excellent food. the kitchen packed it all up, and was no extra work for me, but it was an eye-opener as to how many people DID tip and how much the kitchen staff appreciated it.
so now if it's an actual restaurant where tips are part of the staff's pay, i do tip 10% for picking up take-out. and i've noticed that there's usually a tip jar there where you pick the food up.
khairete
S.

On the rare occasions when I order pick up, I tip 10% of the bill. They aren't really doing much other than handing the check over to the cook.

When I worked at the Outback and did curb-side, people were generous with the tips - especially when it was raining, snowing or cold.

We do 10% for to go orders.

Yes, you tip for takeout.
Usually, the food you order is packed up by a member of the wait staff. The time they spend assembling your order is time they must take away from their tables. You pay them for their time.

I their a few bucks in the tip jar--pizza or Chinese.
That's the only takeaways we get. And the Chinese place does NOT deliver, nor can you eat in.

I gotta laugh at O. response, even with ALL of the evidence out there about the demographics of minimum wage workers, people still think they are all uneducated high school grads & kids. Most of them are using multiple wage jobs to support children.

Never when I take out!

I, too, have been confused about whether to tip when picking up a "to go" order. Now I tend to leave about 10% unless the server or the "to go" person goes out of their way to do something special. In some places, it is the minimum wage ($2.13) server/waiter that handles "to go" orders. In other places, the business assumes tips will be lighter and pays them more in salary. If I order "to go" in addition to my restaurant eaten meal, I always tip 15-20% on that. I do tip the delivery driver.