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Alison Stewart: It is the iPad swivel. You know it, you're getting a cup of coffee or picking up dinner, when you go to pay, you are presented with a tablet screen with the option to tip a suggested amount. Give a custom tip, or hit no tip. The rules around when to tip and what to tip have become confusing. There's also the why of tipping, are you tipping for great or extra service, or are you tipping because you know someone might not make a good wage? Are you not tipping because, well, it's the person's job to hand you a black coffee? These days, tipping options can be found at dry cleaners, ice cream parlor, sandwich shops.

According to a Pew poll released in November 2023, 7 in 10 Americans say tipping has increased, and they're not sure when or how much to give. Some have been calling it tipflation. It's gotten especially confusing on delivery apps. Here's a possible reason why. Over the summer, a new law went into effect raising wages for delivery people. According to our colleagues at Gothamist, I'm going to read this verbatim, under the new minimum pay law, tech companies must pay delivery workers in the city at least $17.96 per hour plus tips, with another increase at least to $19.96 an hour by 2025.

Now, according to data from New York City's consumer and worker protection division, prior to that new law, workers were making about $11 an hour and some as little as $4 an hour without tips. That seems like good news, right? Well, you may have noticed, it's a bit harder to tip now via the apps, and according to recent reporting, that might not be accidental. We're going to get into it. Tipping is the topic right now.

Listeners, when do you tip and when don't you tip? How do you feel about the tablet swivel? Are you pro tip jar? Where's a place you saw tipping and were surprised? If you're someone who works in a place where tipping happens, tell us your thoughts on electronic tipping versus cash. How do you feel when someone doesn't tip you? Our phone lines are open. 212-433-9692, 212-433 WNYC. You may call in and join us on the air for this conversation. You can text to us at that number as well. Our social media's available @AllOfItWNYC, this is a judgment-free zone, we're just trying to learn from each other in this conversation. What do you tip for, what don't you tip for? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC.

Joining us now is Food & Wine senior features editor Kat Kinsman. One of the publication's most popular pieces was on tipping, and I understand they're working on a lot more. Kat, welcome to the studio.

Kat Kinsman: Oh, thank you so much for having me about this very fraught topic. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Yes, it's not a new topic, obviously, but why do you think we're having these conversations around tipping now?

Kat Kinsman: People don't know the rules for it, and because things are constantly changing, and the nature of our interactions with people who work in service are changing tremendously. It varies from state to state, it varies from household to household, and there are just so many more opportunities for it. People are just-- I wish we taught this in high schools. Actually, I wish we could get rid of tipping altogether and just have people have a livable wage at all points, but we are not there yet, hence the nervousness around the whole thing. I think it can all be mitigated by just some good conversation.

Alison Stewart: As soon as you said that, someone literally texted, "Scrap tipping altogether, legislate living wages for all." What do these conversations about tipping reveal about wage issues?

Kat Kinsman: I think a lot of people don't understand that there is a minimum wage and then there is a tipped minimum wage. I think that's a fundamental thing that people don't understand. Say, for instance, in New York, there is a $16 minimum wage. The way that actually breaks down, if you are a person who works in certain occupations in food service, only some of that is what you're guaranteed per hour. The rest of it is basically the employer gets what is called a tip credit for it.

People are still taxed against what is assumed to be the full minimum wage, even if they're not getting paid that entire amount. There's a lot of confusion about this. A lot of people are brought up to think, "Hey, this is just for excellent service," when, really, people are making, in some states, as little as $2.13 an hour, and the rest of it is to make up that shortfall.

Alison Stewart: How did the pandemic change the way we think about tipping?

Kat Kinsman: Because we were not dealing with people face to face, a whole lot of things changed. In some ways, the collective psyche was that we should all be taking care of each other, and maybe some people were tipping to make up for what they saw was probably a shortfall. In-person, people who are traditionally in service could really do that performance-based thing and make that great interaction with somebody who might then tip a little bit higher and things.

This was all erased, but some people were maybe tipping a little bit more because they were feeling generous. A lot of people were out of work, so they couldn't tip as much. People started relying on apps more, and apps, while they're tremendously convenient, take the humanity out of the entire equation. It would be easy for somebody to make an entire disconnect between pressing the button in your app, and then all of a sudden, there's pad thai at your door, and they're forgetting that there is a human being who had to go to a lot of risk to be there and bring that food to your door.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Jane calling in from Long Island City. Jane, thank you so much for calling in. You're on the air.

Jane: Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm a supporter, and I'm glad that you got to me. I'm going to try to do this real quick. I work for Instacart, I've been a shopper for more than two years. A few months ago, a customer let a shopper know that the base default tip that Instacart has set for the customers is only 5%, and so in the last few weeks, I've been letting my customers know in texts while I'm shopping for them, and 99% of them did not know that. They said they've been using Instacart for years, they never realized that. Let's say the bill's $150 and I see that there's only $5 on the original tip. I'm like, "I can see that you are using the base default tip, which is percentage-based amount."

What the other person was just saying, I went back to Uber Eats two weeks ago, and out of 37 deliveries that I did last week, five people added tips, no one is adding tips anymore. Since they removed the tip option until after delivery, people are just not even-- and I'm texting saying, "Hey, don't forget about me," now that they removed the option. One person said, "Yes, I hate that they removed it," but I'm telling you, nobody tips anymore. They're just saying, "Okay, well, I got my food already, so why do I have to?" Then how can Instacart get away with a 5% base tip that the system automatically figures it out for the customer?

Alison Stewart: Jane, thank you for calling in. Jane laid it all right out there, Kat. Let's break down a couple of different things that Jane mentioned that the tipping option after. This started happening around January is when it really kicked in?

Kat Kinsman: That's when I started to notice it because I order a fair amount of delivery, trying to cook more at home. I do appreciate the convenience, I appreciate all of those things, and that's part of why I live in New York City. I happened to notice on one of the apps recently the default tip, which used to be anywhere between 20% to 30% or so, had fallen to 10%, 15% or so. Some of the apps are using that because they're either doing a default minimum tip or they're having the option after because they've had to increase their fees to make this minimum wage. What they're doing is then putting the onus on the consumer, on the customer, on the end person there to know that as well, and then to follow up afterwards with this.

There are advocates for the workers who are saying that this is punitive, that this is being done to punish the workers for having stood up and asked for a better wage. There's the accusation that a certain amount of these apps are deliberately making that seem smaller upfront so people might not necessarily notice that that fee has crept up because they're not seeing the tip on top of that. It's really important for-- I'm sorry that the onus has fallen on delivery workers to have to ask for that tip themselves, but it's up to those of us who do happen to know it to spread the word far and wide about this. That it's on you to go back into your app, to go into your email, to maybe have some cash by the door to be able to compensate people as well, because this work is work.

Alison Stewart: Yes. The conventional wisdom for food delivery is, at a minimum, $5 up to 20% and even more if it's harsh weather. To your point, is there a pro to just tipping cash to just making sure you got some 5 singles, 10 or 2 around?

Kat Kinsman: That is what the advocates recommend because, that way, you are certain that the delivery person receives the entire tip and isn't paying any percentage of it to the app, to the overhead for that, it is theirs and the app can't do anything about it.

Alison Stewart: This question, I wrote it before this happened to me. I wrote, "If a meal's late, how much of that is on the delivery person?" I'll tell you a story. It happened to me this weekend. We ordered some food and there was a mistake in the order. I called up, nicely said, "Hey, you forgot something in that order." They sent it out again. I thought I needed to tip this delivery guy. It's not his fault that the restaurant made a mistake.

Kat Kinsman: Yes. This is when it becomes emotionally complicated for all these things. There's never any harm if you can afford it in tipping more, in tipping bigger, in tipping all that. I know not everybody is in the position for that. Some of these things depend. It could be the same delivery person who is dispatched to you, in theory, if the restaurant are the ones who made the error, I know the apps vary, but there should be some way through the app to determine where the error was made and who gets the compensation for that.

In theory, whoever made the mistake at the restaurant should do it. That shouldn't fall in the delivery person. Unfortunately, it's probably going to fall on you as well if you're ordering the food. This is where it gets really, really complicated because for a lot of people who are ordering delivery, they might be ordering, not because of convenience, not laziness, because it's the only way that they can actually get food. That adds another fraught layer to it as well. Once again, the argument for actually paying people living wage.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Kat Kinsman, Food & Wine senior features editor. We're discussing tipping. We've gotten a lot of texts, so I am going to just read through a bunch of them. "I'm not fond of tipping culture we have in the US. It's gone too far. I feel like a bad person if I don't tip for a cup of coffee or a takeout meal. Why is it my job to pay your employee's living wage? Tipping should reflect the service you were provided. It's not supposed to be compulsory." "As an older guy who used to work as a waiter, as well as a delivery driver, I tip whenever I can and definitely when I stay in a hotel for the housekeeping staff." "Now that taxis have extra charges, sometimes it's $8 at the jump. What are we supposed to base the tip on?"

Kat Kinsman: Oh, goodness. Cabs, I cannot speak to--

Alison Stewart: That's your world. That's a good point though.

Kat Kinsman: No, that's an excellent point. I can speak more deliberately to the others. For a restaurant meal, you should be tipping on the total. I know there are arguments for, "Oh, double the tax," whatever, no tip on the total for there. For a hotel, I tend to default to at least $5 a day. It depends on-- I've seen various tipping guides about $1 or $2 a day, $5 if there are special services.

It cannot hurt to have cash on you. I'm terrible at having cash on me. I've tried to default to that more often and just get in the habit of having smaller bills on me. I've gotten into the practice. I check into a hotel getting change. Often when I can't, you're never going to feel bad about having tipped. I've also talked with people about maybe being caught without cash and running back and giving the tip as well. It's incredibly complicated and it's based on various scenarios.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting that someone said about this being an American thing. There's a New Yorker piece. A server is quoted in this New Yorker piece is saying he didn't want to make his boss mad because he know he'd be given a table of European tourists and they don't tip well, or sometimes at all because it's not part of that culture. Why is tipping such an American thing in particular? How does it compare to other places that you know of?

Kat Kinsman: Well, it's deeply steeped in racism. From the jump, it is a devaluation of the people who have service jobs. It was from the get-go, still to this day, the people who work in service industry jobs, especially in restaurants, are women, women of color. It's a lot of parents working in these jobs. Historically, this work has been undervalued and people have grown up with the notion of what something is supposed to cost.

Restaurants don't have any money. I will say this also, so much of that is not necessarily rooted in greedy restaurateurs or anything. They're barely scraping by themselves. There is an expectation in America of what things are supposed to cost, and that is a little bit skewed. We need to value service a little bit more than we do. I know that's painful because so many people are barely scraping by themselves. A lot of these jobs are seen in other countries as being an elevated form of work. This is a calling, this is profession. It truly, truly is. I have so many friends who have been in service for such a long time. It is a skilled profession, and we need to see it as such.

Alison Stewart: Let me see. I've got so many texts. They're flying in. "I tip when I eat somewhere. My mother told us, don't even sit to eat ice cream if you can't leave a tip. If I order ice cream or something as I'm standing there, I don't tip. I never use delivery services. I pick up my own products." Here's something that I did not know until I started researching this. Why you should leave a tip, even if you pick it up, because it's for the back of house, because outgoing orders disrupt service.

Kat Kinsman: There is so much labor behind the scenes with a takeout order. I have a wonderful writer, Darron Cardosa, who writes for us all the time. He broke it down in a story about even if he is usually waiting tables, he has to stop what he is doing, package things up, package it up so it's not leaking, so the hot is hot and the cold is cold to-- now we're not getting utensils with our orders as much as possible. Say, somebody did want that, they wanted extra ketchup. It takes minutes to walk from place to place to assemble all of these things, make it secure, make sure it's still hot, that there is still work behind it, even if you're not seeing it. It is still important to tip on those.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Kat Kinsman. She's Food & Wine senior features editor. We are talking about tips, tipflation. We would love to hear your thoughts, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. When do you tip? When don't you tip? How do you feel about it when that tablet swivels around when you've ordered a black cup of coffee? Are you pro tip jar? What's a place you saw tipping and were really surprised? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We'll take more of your texts and your calls and your Instagram DMs after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We are discussing tipping with you listeners and with Food & Wine senior features editor, Kat Kinsman. All right. Let's talk about that tablet swivel. You order a coffee, you order a pastry. You literally, some of you see somebody take it, they take it out of a case. They put it in a bag, they swivel it around, and then there's possibility for a tip. First of all, how do we know that tip? Say, you decide to tip on this. Do we know that it's going to the person behind the counter?

Kat Kinsman: We don't always, and it's okay to ask. It is all right to ask about mysterious fees on your check. Thing is it's important not to blame the person who has to do the swivel. They're being made to do that. They probably do not have an option for that. I think it's worth it, especially if it's a place where you're irregular and you're going to encounter this over and over again. You want to be able to look somebody in the eye to figure out, is that a tip that is pooled? Is that a tip that is going to be shared with the front and the back of the house? Is that a tip that is just going to have parties at the place? Is it a tip that is going to a fund that may be is going toward insurance for workers?

It is okay to ask about those things. I know it's super awkward, but as I always say, an awkward conversation isn't going to kill anyone, especially if you're approaching it from a really good and friendly point of view. You can always ask to talk to a manager just in the interest of knowing exactly where that money is going. If somebody's putting labor into the thing that you're doing, if they're making your half-caff double, whatever, kind of thing, and you're making them do something extra than what they're doing, you definitely should tip on that. You should also tip on oyster shucking, whoever knew that. I was amazed to find that one out. Certain things that involve labor like that, those should deserve a tip as well.

Alison Stewart: Are you okay not to tip of someone if you order a black coffee?

Kat Kinsman: I'm always of a mind about that. I tend to default and check it out, and do a dollar tip for that or something, or if I happen to have a single, because I get nervous, I get awkward, and I was raised with a lot of guilt. I tend to default to tipping. I know a lot of other people are really distraught about that. We're still trying to figure it out.

Alison Stewart: That's the one where I see people having the biggest issue.

Kat Kinsman: There's that, and there's also those handheld tip, the credit card machines that show up at the end of the meal, and the server is standing there and watching and seeing how much you're tipping. Those are much more common in Europe than they are here, but we're going to get used to them.

Alison Stewart: The other part of it, I think, is the other part is that everything is very expensive right now. People who follow me on Instagram know I do fancy coffee Friday. It's the one day I go and I let myself buy one of these coffees. By the time you add it up, you can get up to $8 or $9, and then tipping, and then you're like, "How did I just spend two figures on a coffee?" For a lot of people, that isn't even within the possibility to do it once a week. I'm just fortunate that I can, but I will say I have had sticker shock.

Kat Kinsman: Oh, absolutely. That happens to me when sometimes if I get a sandwich. Sandwiches tend to be the thing where I think like, "Oh, I feel like such a jerk for getting this sandwich. I don't deserve this sandwich. I was raised a suburban Catholic girl and I shouldn't be getting these things." I think like I have the extra dollar, I have the $2 or something like that, and I try to factor it in there, but there's always the nervousness and the angst around there. Again, if it's somewhere you're going on a regular basis, I think it's just good to know that and to know also how those people are being compensated. Are they being compensated with a tipped minimum wage or just a straight wage?

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Willie from White Plains. Hi, Willie, thanks for calling in.

Willie: Yes. Great topic. As I was telling your screener, I would encourage all the listeners and even yourself to tip cash. You can pay your bill with a credit card or debit, but waiters and people in the service industry enjoy getting a nice cash tip because many restaurants or many people would add it to their check and get taxed.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Willie: As I was growing up, I was in the service industry myself, and even currently, I'm a manager in the automotive services, and I get tips all the time. I suggest to all the people who are in the service industry to just basically be friendly. You become a star, you become a showman, you become an entertainer. Especially in the food and beverage industry, people come out and have fun, enjoy, forget about their lives.

Even if the food may be not up to par, as long as the service is great, you will get a nice tip, a nice smile, presentable, and it all goes well. I know dealing with the public could be a bit difficult, but you are there to entertain. You're there to take care of your customer. Customer service is number one, and that goes a long way.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in, Willie. This is a text, "I live in a six-floor walk-up, and I always tip big, not just for the stairs. I often meet them a floor or two down, but because I know these guys get paid very little and what a difference it can make. I also pay street vendors when they ask, like today, when I bought cheap gloves in St. Mark's, they weren't worth $10, but I'd be a real tightwad to haggle." That's Andy.

"Years ago when my brother-in-law was visiting from Spain and saw how much I tipped, he said, 'if you did that in Spain, the waiter would invite you to his home for dinner and let you sleep with his wife.'" [laughs] Thank you. Thank you for that call.

A few years ago, I can remember actually doing a story on this for News Hour about, in 2015, there was a real move to just get rid of tipping, all together, to have it included in the cost of the meal. Danny Meyer was really on the forefront here in New York in 2015. Many of the places that did it, including his restaurants after the pandemic, reverted back to the old model. Momofuku told Eater that, "It never really worked." What happened to this push to remove tipping, to just fold it into the meal, or just to make sure that the front and the back of the house received the same amount of compensation?

Kat Kinsman: Well, in a lot of places, it's illegal to pull some of these fees, to pull tips, to share in the back of the house. It works on a state-by-state basis. There were actually a lot of service workers who pushed against having a tip included because they felt that actually diminished what they could potentially make because they're out there, they're doing their job, especially at these places that are very, very high-end. They're really, really working with the consumers who are coming there. They felt that if tipping wasn't included, that actually diminished because, otherwise, they could really work develop this report and get a much, much higher tip if they were doing that, especially if people are buying big ticket wines, and all of that. They felt like it actually wasn't working in their favor.

Also, the consumer base just didn't understand it because we're indoctrinated since youth that tipping is just part of what you do. I've never really loved the notion people come out with a fallacy that it's to ensure prompt service. No, it's not what it is. There are people who use it in a punitive way, especially you hear the tales of the people who have the stack of bills on the table and they're putting them in and taking them out depending on performance. That's abusive to somebody who is really just doing their best to serve you a meal.

There are people who get punitive because they're punishing for the food when it has absolutely nothing to do with the service whatsoever. It depends on the whims of people. This is emotional work in addition to being incredibly skilled labor. Emotional labor is labor. That should all be compensated too. People don't know what the numbers are. I think it was genuinely confusing for people coming in and tipping, and also, people would maybe come in and question it. They didn't know why. Sometimes people would get nervous and then tip on top of that, which I definitely did at one restaurant because they just wasn't sure how it was all going to work out.

Alison Stewart: I remember interviewing a restaurant owner who was against it, and they made an interesting argument. He said, "I'm at a price point where people will come in two or three times a week. If it goes up higher, people aren't going to come in regularly or as often, and then that doesn't serve any of us." Which I thought was an interesting argument. Back in the point when people were saying, "Just fold it in and raise the price on your meal so that everybody gets a tip," that it's basically baked into the cost of a meal.

Kat Kinsman: Restaurant margins are so, so tiny, and I think there's a skewed version because of how restaurants are portrayed in the media in a lot of ways with splashy celebrity chefs out there, when the reality, it is so hard to break even or make anywhere near a profit when you are running a restaurant. This isn't greed on the part of the restaurant, it's just, again, we've gotten ourselves into a corner over many, many decades where this is the model that has been set up, and it's going to take a giant cultural shift in order to change this and to be able to compensate the people who do these jobs.

Alison Stewart: We've got two Pauls who have very different opinions.

Kat Kinsman: Oh.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Paul from Manhattan who has issues with tipping. Hey, Paul, thank you for holding. You're on the air.

Paul: Thank you. For decades, I've been against the practice of tipping. My opinion was sealed by a WNYC program of Freakonomics, did a whole program on tipping that I would suggest everybody look up and listen to. We are just habituated to tipping like many other practices. I'm a retired social worker. Back in the days of slavery, before the Civil War, there was an entire social work movement that was interested in improving the conditions for slaves. They never even considered eliminating slavery. They were considering, "How do we make it more comfortable?"

Alison Stewart: Okay, Paul, I'm going to pop in here because I feel like we got a little bit off-topic here, [chuckles] and I'm really not sure how to handle that part of that conversation. Let's talk to Paul from Maplewood who used to work in service. Hi, Paul from Maplewood.

Paul: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. It's a great topic. Definitely a different point of view than the other Paul. Coincidentally another Paul. I worked in the service industry. I started as a host and I worked my way up through the kitchen, busboy, waiter, bartender, bar manager. I am definitely from the school of thought of, if everyone could just work one day, one shift, in any of those positions, it would completely change their point of view on the whole topic.

Also, that tip goes a lot further in having that appreciation. From the person getting the tip, it boosts your confidence. Now, I have my own business, I do artisan blacksmithing. Whenever I get a tip, it's great. I go out, I give tips, it always comes back around. It's a good thing to do, even if you can't give a lot. It's important even if you just can give a little bit wherever you're going because people work really hard in these businesses. Harder than most people can imagine.

Alison Stewart: Paul, thank you so much for calling in. Kat, as we wrap up this segment, what would you want people to take away from this conversation? Also, getting a lot of questions about tipping at bars. A dollar a drink, is that the deal?

Kat Kinsman: I'd say $2. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: $2 a drink.

Kat Kinsman: Especially fancier.

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes. Fancier drinks, for sure.

Kat Kinsman: Oh, yes. Definitely. You know what? I feel like we need to all get past the awkwardness of all of this. If you have any doubts about where the tips are going, ask. You can ask things right to your app, honestly. I know that sounds silly, but figure out where the money is going for there. Look up some of the advocates and their reasoning behind a change in these wages and how people can actually get them.

It's never going to make you feel bad to tip well. I know people are not always in a position where they can do that. Don't punish anybody with a tip, I think, would be my biggest giveaway. Taking it away or not tipping at all, that's pretty terrible behavior and you're essentially stealing services. I hope that we can have a big conversation about this that starts, I don't know, in a high school class or something like that, where there's mandatory education about this. Err on the side of decency and you will never be disappointed with yourself.

Alison Stewart: Get cash if you can.

Kat Kinsman: Get cash if you can too. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Use cash if you can. Kat Kinsman is Food & Wine senior features editor. Thank you so much for all of the explanations and the guidance. We really appreciate it. Thanks to everybody who called in, pro, con, and everywhere in between. Thanks, Kat.

Kat Kinsman: My pleasure.

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