Bring the Love or It's Just a Fee: Fixing Tipping Culture in Your Restaurant

Tipping culture has reached a boiling point, and restaurant owners are caught in the middle of it. On this episode of the Ride or Die Restaurant Show, Greg Provance and Spiro Douvris dig into why customers are fed up, why tipping at sit-down restaurants is actually declining, and the one distinction that determines whether a tip prompt builds loyalty or drives guests away for good.

Is tipping culture actually out of control?

Yes, and the data backs up what every restaurant owner already feels at the register. A 2025 Bankrate study found that 72% of Americans say tipping is expected in more places now than it was five years ago, and separate research cited on the show puts the number even higher: roughly 90% of consumers believe tipping culture has gotten out of hand. Kiosks, self-checkout counters, and even non-food-and-beverage businesses are now flipping the screen around and asking for a tip, and customers are noticing the mismatch between the ask and the actual service they received.

Why is tipping at sit-down restaurants actually declining?

According to the same Bankrate research, the share of Americans who say they always tip at full-service, sit-down restaurants fell from 77% in 2019 to 65% in 2024. Spiro's take: that drop has less to do with tipping fatigue and more to do with a decline in actual hospitality. "I think that's more due to the lack of hospitality than tipping culture," he says. When guests stop feeling cared for, they stop feeling obligated to tip generously, even in the full-service settings where tipping has always been the norm.

Should quick-service and counter-service restaurants ask for tips at all?

It depends entirely on what happens after the order is placed. Greg shares his own experience running a quick-service concept where the team bagged orders, delivered drinks, and bussed tables even though it wasn't a full-service model. "We made the decision to make sure our team was bringing it with the hospitality," he explains. That's the line: if the team is only doing the transactional minimum, a tip prompt reads as an unearned fee. If they're actively creating a hospitality moment, the same prompt can feel like a fair ask.

What's the real difference between service and hospitality?

This is the idea the whole episode circles back to. Spiro draws the line clearly: "If you're just giving service and not hospitality, what am I tipping for? That's what your hourly takes care of." Service is completing the transaction correctly, order taken, food delivered, table cleared. Hospitality is the feeling a guest gets when someone genuinely sees them: a warm greeting, a bit of energy, a moment of connection. Greg calls it out directly: "Hospitality is a feeling. It's an emotional response." Tipping was always meant to reward the second thing, not the first.

What is "tipflation" and "digital guilt," and why is it making customers angry?

The show cites research showing two-thirds of customers feel intense anxiety and social pressure when an employee watches them choose a tip percentage on a turned-around screen. Default suggested tip percentages have crept from the old 15/18/20 standard to defaults starting at 18-25%, and Greg says he's personally seen a 30% option offered at a counter-service order. Combine a rising default with a guest who already feels watched, and you get exactly the friction point restaurant owners can't afford: the moment right before checkout when a guest decides whether they had a good experience or not.

Who actually benefits when a restaurant piles on tip prompts and surcharges?

Not who most people assume. Spiro points out that when a restaurant stacks a credit card processing surcharge on top of an 18-25% tip default, "the only one who makes out like a bandit in all this is not the restaurant and it's not the employees. It's the credit card processing companies," who collect a percentage of a larger transaction total. Every additional prompt and surcharge a restaurant adds increases the processing fees it pays, even as it also increases the friction the guest feels at checkout.

So when is a tip actually a tip, and when is it just a fee?

This is the thesis of the entire conversation, and Greg names it directly: "So the tip is just the middleman... When is the tip a fee and when is the tip actually a tip? That's the distinction." A tip becomes a fee the moment it's disconnected from any real human moment: no eye contact, no name used, no acknowledgment, just a screen turned around at the end of a transaction. It becomes a real tip the moment there's a genuine connection behind it. As Greg puts it, the qualifier for restaurant owners and operators is simple: "Put the tip out, but you better bring the hospitality. You better bring the love. Otherwise you're just charging a fee."

What should restaurant owners actually do about tipping right now?

Stop trying to engineer more revenue out of every single transaction, and start investing in the thing that actually earns a tip. Spiro's advice: "Focus on the hospitality, focus on the quality, focus on doing volume. Stop trying to ring the towel dry in every single transaction and focus on the long game." That means training every team member to say a guest's name more than once, to bring energy to a routine interaction, and to treat every checkout as a relationship moment instead of a transactional one. Do that consistently, and the tip percentage takes care of itself, because the guest is no longer paying a fee. They're bringing the love back.

More from the Rundown: for more on what hospitality actually looks like day to day, see Stop Building Concepts, Start Building Community, Stop Hiring Bodies, Start Hiring Believers, and Are You Building Drivers or Just Babysitting Doers?.

This is exactly the kind of culture-first thinking we build into the Leadership Circle: helping restaurant owners train their teams to deliver real hospitality, not just service, so tipping (and everything else tied to guest experience) takes care of itself. If you're ready to build a team that brings the love without you having to stand over their shoulder, learn more about the Leadership Circle here.

Want more conversations like this one? Subscribe to the Ride or Die Restaurant Show and catch every episode at gphospitalitypartners.com/podcast.