I was originally thinking about delivery (isn’t it basically the same effort to deliver 1 or 2 pizzas?). Shouldn’t delivery tipping be based on distance/effort rather than cost of food?
The same goes for restaurants, of course. If I go with a friend and we have the same meal but I have three glasses of wine, and she has three cokes, I am expected to tip more, but the server’s effort is the same for each of us.
Was it always like this or did it change with time?
Note: I’m only trying to understand this aspect of Us tipping culture. I know that tipping isn’t the norm everywhere.
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Some delivery tipping *is* based on distance and effort: UberEats and other gig economy apps.
It makes sense to tip a waiter based on the bill because the bill is pretty consistently based on how much food is ordered and therefore how much effort it took to serve the table.
It makes slightly less sense when splitting a table between multiple bills because then you get uneven distribution of tip costs for relatively the same effort.
It makes even less sense for things like pizza delivery, because the only thing that gets harder with more pizzas is carrying them from the car to the customer. But established pizza companies often use a purely percent-based system just as a holdover from restaurant tipping.
But for UberEats, tips are promised in advance and are the main source of income for workers, who can choose whether to accept them or not. So customers can tip whatever they want, but workers only have to take the jobs with tips that they think are worth the effort.
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