Restaurant owners can help their staff earn more tips. Here’s how

What can you do to help your staff get more tips?

Foreigners visiting the US are often baffled by our unique tipping system: most US waiters rely on tips as a source of income and diners know this. American diners leave tips that would be considered generous by European standards.

But the situation across the US isn’t completely homogeneous: some states are more generous than others when it comes to tipping. Regardless of regional differences, the tipping standard is anywhere from 15% to 20%.

As a restaurant owner, you want to do everything you can to keep that tipping percentage above 20: it’s a great way for you to keep your staff happy without increasing your expenses.

But you might think the percentage of tips you receive is determined by the quality of service alone, so you leave it to your waiters to influence tipping behaviors.

This is not exactly true: restaurant owners can do a lot to encourage guests to tip more. Here at sunday, we help restaurants accept payments through QR codes, making their staff more efficient and their clients happier.

And we’ve noticed something interesting when it comes to tipping: diners who use sunday to pay their checks tend to leave 40% more tips. And the kicker is: this holds true even for restaurants that use sunday in France…

Even though leaving tips is not usual in France (service charges are already included in most restaurant bills and French people were deemed the Worst Tippers In the World by the Tipping Index in 2015).

So how did we do it? Read on and find out.

Technology and tipping

We have great news for waiters everywhere: paying by credit cards has been shown to increase the amount of tips.

And cashless payments are increasing in America, especially for restaurants. Which means that every time your diners pull out a credit card instead of dollar bills, they’re more likely to leave a generous tip.

Why? One explanation is that paying cash is a “painful” experience for your clients: they see the amount they’re spending more clearly and have a harder time leaving cash money behind.

Plastic cards, on the other hand, reduce the “pain of paying”, as you’ve probably noticed if you’ve ever been caught in an online shopping spree. There are great days for tipping ahead!

Why help your staff get more tips?

You might be tempted to leave it up to your staff to increase their tips. After all, tips are a reflection of the way they greet and treat guests.

And as a restaurant owner, you can’t claim any part of the tips: the money your team gets as a gratuity doesn’t influence your bottom line at all. But the truth is, you have a lot to gain by helping your servers make more tips.

Tips are a good way to keep your staff motivated and satisfied without increasing wages. And employee satisfaction can go a long way: if they’re happy to work in your establishment, your best employees will stick with you.

You’ll be reducing turnover and making sure your servers do their best. And the better they work, the more they’ll be tipped! It’s a virtuous circle.

You have the option to add a mandatory service fee at the bottom of your checks, but you don’t want to jack up the price of your restaurant, and become less competitive on your market. Luckily, there are other things you can do to promote tipping in your establishment.

Tipping: a sign of guest satisfaction

You know that diners are more likely to tip when they’re happy. Theoretically, tips are a reflection of the quality of the service, but concretely, it’s hard to set this one factor apart from the rest of the guest experience.

If a diner is having a good time overall, if they’re happy with the atmosphere, the music, the cooking (or even the company, yes, you can’t do much about this but this is how things work), they’ll be in a better mood and more inclined to leave generous tips.

So the first step to increasing tips is to work on guest satisfaction by making your clients’ lives easier (by accepting payments through innovative methods for instance).

Here at sunday, we think that QR code payment can also make the lives of restaurant owners easier, but it helps out diners too: they don’t have to wait for the check, to split it among each other, to get their credit card out, etc. They’re happier and show it by leaving more tips.

Suggest and encourage: the Nudge technique

You might not know it, but nudging is a hot topic in the world of behavioral economics. You’ve probably already felt the effect of this powerful psychological tool and modified some of your behaviors: you might’ve signed up for a travel insurance because the option was offered to you in the process of making a reservation.

You’ve been exercising more since you live closer to your gym. Or maybe you’ve used the nudge technique yourself to influence the behaviors of those around you: in your kitchen, you make sure fruit is more accessible than cookies, to entice your kids to have a healthy snack whenever they come looking for food…

The nudge technique is more and more appealing for marketing professionals: it’s subtler than traditional advertising, and it allows them to influence behaviors by changing people’s perspective and by removing obstacles between individuals and the desired outcome. In other words, by building a “path of least resistance”.

The Technique of the Full Tip Jar

The nudge technique is more efficient when people are under the impression that they are conforming to a social norm.

This is the reasoning behind the technique of the “full tip jar”: some baristas routinely fill their tip jars with bills to give their diners the impression that all other patrons tip, too.

It’s a subtle way to build social pressure, but it works: guests are more likely to add money to a full tip jar, as they’re reminded that they should tip. Certain payment apps that suggest tipping whenever a diner pays the check can have a similar effect.

The Path of Least Resistance

The second step for nudge techniques to work: eliminating obstacles. In other words, making tipping easier! When you know that most restaurant diners are now paying through cashless techniques, tipping methods should follow.

Rather than looking for change in their coats and their wallets, clients will just have to press “yes” to leave a tip. It also seems that when they’re presented with several options for tip percentages, guests tend to leave higher tips.

Here at sunday, we knew we had to incorporate tipping into our restaurant payment method. We’ve made it easier for diners to tip.

And we were right! Our partner establishments get 40% more tips, their staff is happier, they’re more loyal to their restaurant, and they do their best to keep guests happy!

Would you like to try it out? Just head here!