Americans are annoyed with tipping culture, leaving fewer gratuities

The size of tips left by American restaurant-goers has shrunk in recent years. Across the country, the overall tipping average for restaurants came in at 18.8% in the third quarter of 2024, Toast data based on U.S.restaurants that use its systems showed.While that rate remained steady from the prior quarter, it has declined from 19% in the third quarter of 2022 and from 19.2% in the same period in 2021, the data indicated. For full-service restaurants specifically, the average rate for tips was 19.3%, lower than the 19.6% rate seen in 2022’s third-quarter and the 19.8% tracked the year before that, per Toast. The percentage that people typically tipped when visiting quick-service restaurants in America has experienced a decrease, as well.

It hovered at 15.9% in the third quarter of 2024, marking a decline from 16.1% in the third quarters during the two years prior to that and 16.5% in 2021’s third quarter.Tipping rates for both types of restaurants in 2024’s third quarter were also down compared to the same period in pre-COVID 2018 and 2019, Toast data showed. Some experts attributed those decreases in average restaurant tipping rates, earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal, to “tipping fatigue.”“Consumers have reached something called ‘tipping fatigue,'” Ted Jenkin, co-founder of oXYGen Financial, told FOX Business.“Americans do want to tip a job well done, but they don’t want to be told what they should tip while someone watches them enter their tip.

It’s that tipping pressure of the automated systems that is creating this counterculture of people wanting to tip less.” Meanwhile, Bankrate senior industry analyst Ted Rossman said he has seen a “noticeable downturn” in the frequency of tipping “over the past few years.”In a survey released June 2024 by Bankrate, 67% of U.S.adults who ate at sit-down restaurants said they always leave a tip for their servers, representing an 8% drop from three years ago.That phenomenon has...