The Effect of Write-In and Electronic Tipping Prompts on the Proportion of Customers Who Tip on To-Go Restaurant Orders

Abstract

Tipping in restaurants for to-go orders has been a hotly contested topic for years now, with the majority of customers saying they do not want to tip for this limited-service experience. However, with tips making up part of the income of employees who manage to-go orders, it is important to explore if tipping methods influence the proportion of customers who tip, particularly when customers pay with a card as there already exists a large amount of literature on tipping differences between cash and card payments. This study reports that of the 45 anonymous customers who were prompted to tip by an electronic screen where there was a pre-selected 20% tip, 76% tipped on their to-go order. On the other hand, of the 58 anonymous customers prompted to tip by a paper receipt where the customer would have to write in a tip, 48% tipped on their to-go order. These results show that there is a statistically significant difference between the proportion of customers who tip depending on how they were prompted to tip while paying with a card (p= 0.0042). These findings suggest that in the sample used for this study, customers were more likely to tip when tipping with an electronic screen than when they were asked to tip by writing in the tip on a paper receipt.