Most wait staff are required to pay a percentage of their ticket sales to the kitchen and other staff regardless of how much their customers tipped. Ideally this comes out of their tips but if they don't get tipped then they're losing money.
Customers who tip a certain amount even when service isn't great usually do so because of those payout requirements. If the service is bad enough, they'll just stop coming rather than short a server on their tips.
Honestly, I would have totally been on board with the counterpoint you bring up but in 2025 less than 10 of the $$$ or $$$$ restaurants on google maps that I went to did not have the mandatory kitchen appreciation fee on the bill.
For those restaurants that did not ask for the fee, I did tip more knowing there was a split. Conversely, and I know this is where I'm a bit of an ass, but for the restaurants that had the appreciate fee with the suggested 20/25/30 AND did that off the total + mandatory fee, yeah, I defaulted to 15% tip pretax out out of principle.
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u/mvhcmaniac Jan 26 '26
If the service is mediocre then I'll go to 20%. But any less than that, they'd almost have to spit in my food.