‘It’s absolutely criminal’: US tipping culture has reached the UK – and is causing chaos
NEWS | 24 August 2026
In a London pub, Greg Double was brutally confronted with the reality of Britain’s evolving tipping culture. “I was annoyed about the pint being eight quid, but then when you put service on top, it’s absolutely criminal,” he says. In the past, you might have told the bar staff to keep the change or have a “drink” on you, but since when did we routinely tip in pubs? Or coffee shops? Or, worst of all, at self-service machines? Tip creep is happening. Tipping was awkward enough in the UK when the general rule was 10% at a restaurant, plus anxiety about whether you should tip the hairdresser, babysitter or food-delivery driver. Now, with tipping suggested ever more frequently, US-style, it has become a minefield to Britons. The amounts edge higher – in fancier London restaurants, a 15% service charge is relatively commonplace. And it’s often asked for – in coffee shops for example, when you pay – before any service is delivered. Tipping may be a social behaviour, but politics and economics also inform it. Since October 2024, all service charges and tips in Great Britain must go to staff, which boosts low salaries. Hospitality businesses, struggling with the rises in minimum wage and national insurance, are surely happy that it’s tipping customers who are supplementing wages, rather than themselves. As the news site London Centric pointed out recently in an article headlined “How American tipping culture came to London”, adding an “optional” service charge avoids tax, puts more money in the pockets of staff and means businesses don’t have to raise prices, which puts off customers. But how “optional” is a service charge when the person serving us is looking expectantly as they hand over the card machine? Now, the variables around tipping seem endless and changeable, with each of us having to create our own rules. View image in fullscreen If a server smiles, it can have a substantial impact on tipping. Photograph: LordHenriVoton/Getty Images; posed by a model Double, a creative director for a PR company, says that in a coffee shop without table service, he wouldn’t tip – but he might if he were sitting there, working, “to take into account that I’m going to make this coffee last”. He wouldn’t tip if he’d walked up to a bar and bought a drink for himself, but he might acquiesce if he bought a round. Since drinking Guinness became fashionable, it almost calls out for a tip. “Because you’re like: well, you’ve had to wait around for five minutes for every pint being poured,” says Double. “If you order four pints of Guinness, you immediately see the bar staff think: ‘Oh, for god’s sake.’” Double also highlights a new tipping anxiety. Sometimes a bar worker will press zero on the tip screen before handing you the payment machine, “if they don’t think they’re worthy. There’s even that Britishness of the bar staff.” But what if they don’t? “It almost makes me think that if they’ve not pressed ‘no’ to the tip, that means they think they deserve one.” Many of those I speak to think tech has pushed this change forward – and rapidly. The shift away from cash towards card and digital payments is usually framed as removing “friction”, says Prof John Vines, the chair of design informatics at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics. “It’s about being more convenient. This is all a trend towards making it easier for us to spend our money.” The software in point-of-sale terminals prompts the customer for a tip. “These systems are presented as a way of making giving a tip easier. We don’t have to think about it too much, we don’t have to fiddle with coins and notes. But, really, it’s about encouraging us to spend more.” Faced with three options on a screen, with the third perhaps an outrageous 35% tip, I often panic and go for the middle box. I wouldn’t want to seem cheap by going for the first option, but I end up feeling bullied into giving a generous 20% or more. double quotation mark These systems are presented as a way of making giving a tip easier. But, really, it’s about encouraging us to spend more “Again, that’s presenting those options to you partly to reduce that friction – it’s taking away the need for you to mathematically calculate things. But, of course, it’s a way of controlling the options as well,” says Vines. “While we have the ability to press zero, the act of getting asked at the point of sale likely increases the chances of someone giving something, especially in situations where, at least in the UK, we culturally don’t expect a tip to be given in the first place.” Is it too cynical to suggest that tech companies who run the software, and who take a cut of every transaction, are making more money from pushing tips? “That probably is a bit cynical, but also probably true,” says Vines, with a laugh. It goes deeper than tech companies skimming a percentage. “A lot of our technological infrastructure is dependent on platforms and systems that come from the US and, in particular, California,” says Vines. “We tend to import a lot of the values and customs that are embedded with them. Even if it’s not intended, they get inscribed into these systems and flatten out the diversity of other cultures, the things that would be acceptable or normal elsewhere.” The example of tipping, while small, he says, “actually is an example of how [US tech companies] that get imported actually have quite significant long-term consequences, because it rewrites social expectations.” View image in fullscreen Consumers are often confronted with three tipping options. Photograph: Rouzes/Getty Images It’s embarrassing, says Peter, who works in a pub in Lincolnshire, to ask customers for tips. A few months ago, they got new card machines that automatically suggest adding one. Peter always presses no before he hands it over to customers. “It can rub people up the wrong way,” he says. The pub’s manager occasionally asks people if they want to add a gratuity, “but even he doesn’t do it very often. It just feels pointless to us. You only tip someone if they’ve looked after you, you’ve been sat down and it’s been good service. You don’t tip someone for just pouring you a pint.” Tipping culture was also changed by the pandemic, even in the tip-heavy US. “During Covid, we started tipping people that we didn’t traditionally tip,” says Michael Lynn, an emeritus professor of consumer behaviour and marketing at Cornell University and the author of The Psychology of Tipping. It was akin to “hazard pay”, he says, plus there was a perception that some people were more likely to be struggling financially. “People started being willing to tip and businesses took that as a message that consumers will bear it.” The accepted level has always increased over time, says Lynn. This could be due to any number of factors. “The population of the US is more urban than it used to be and urban people tend to tip more than rural people,” he says. Then there’s the move away from cash. “People who pay with a card or digitally tend to tip more than people who pay with cash.” And big tippers – who do it for reasons of status, or to ensure good future service – ruin it for the rest of us. “It creates this upward pressure,” says Lynn. “It’s got to stop somewhere, right? We’re at close to 20% today [in US restaurants].” Several times a year, I have a gnawing anxiety about whether or not to tip my hairdresser. It’s not that I don’t think he deserves it, but would it be condescending? “One of the impediments to tipping is concern about status and power implications,” says Lynn. “Money commodifies the relationship. If you view it as a social relationship, you don’t want to contaminate it with tips. It’s very hard to tip people that you have a long-term relationship with.” View image in fullscreen Do you tip your hairdresser? The jury’s out … Photograph: Spiderstock/Getty Images; posed by models Why do I tip my hairdresser (I’m too embarrassed to press “no”), but not the plumber or the dentist? It’s usually because with the latter two – or an accountant, a lawyer or a doctor – “I’m worse off than they are”, says Lynn. “Not only financially, probably, but also they’re helping solve a problem for me. When I go to something in a hospitality context, or even for a haircut, it’s generally something positive. I’m enjoying myself and that worker is doing not such pleasant work.” The late anthropologist George M Foster, says Lynn, “argued that tipping began as an attempt by patrons to say: ‘Don’t envy me because I’m having fun and you’re working.’ The primary evidence he had for this was that the word for tip in many languages is ‘drink money’.” Social expectation is the main reason people leave a tip. The second, he says, is “social connection and rapport. If a server is attractive, if a server is the opposite sex, if the server smiles, calls you by name, squats down, there are so many variables that impact the social connection, but they all have a pretty substantial impact on tipping.” This, of course, is affected by blatant bias, sometimes unconscious, in the person leaving a tip. Some research shows that Black waiters and cab drivers receive lower tips, says Lynn. “Having said that, there are also a number of studies not finding this. There’s enough data on both sides that my conclusion is clearly there is racial discrimination, but it’s not universal and we don’t fully understand when it occurs and when it doesn’t.” You get more tips from the opposite sex, says Lynn, so “waitresses tend to get slightly better tips. And attractive waitresses get better tips than less-attractive waitresses.” When British football fans went to the US earlier in the summer for the World Cup, many were baffled and frustrated by the tipping culture. One fan told the BBC it was “weird” to be asked for a tip when buying a bottle of water. Ollie Thomas, a football content creator, says he went “with the expectation of [tipping] being very much in your face and quite intrusive. But I live in London and I didn’t think [restaurant tipping] was any different, really. “The main difference I found in the US was that the service was a lot better. I guess the backdrop of the US tipping culture is that there is a massive weight of expectation on the customer’s shoulders to tip because the waiters don’t earn much money. Whereas it feels like there’s not that level of pressure on the customer in London because the general living wage is a bit higher here.” But even in the US, says Lynn, tip fatigue is real. “In surveys, I was asking people: ‘Would you rather tipping be eliminated?’ In 2016, about 32% of people said yes. By 2018 it was 42% and by 2022 it was 52%. I haven’t repeated that since, but other surveys have asked similar questions. It seems to have gone back down to about 40%. But, absolutely, people say they’re being asked to tip for more services than ever before and, even for traditionally tipped services, they’re being asked to tip larger amounts. It negatively impacts consumer sentiment.” So, how do we deal with this emerging tipping nightmare? We could do with some guidelines that everyone can agree on, perhaps beginning with a national discussion on how much we really want US tech companies to influence our proud British cheapskate culture. As for current good practice, Jo Bryant, an etiquette coach and training director at The English Manner, says we should continue to tip in restaurants, but watch out for the service charge. “People shouldn’t feel pressure to double tip. For restaurants, generally, it’s around 12%.” View image in fullscreen The US has always had a tip-heavy culture. Photograph: Catherine McQueen/Getty Images However, there’s no reason to tip at the bar in pubs or coffee shops “apart from for food or table service”, says Bryant. But if it’s somewhere you go regularly, you may want to consider tipping: you don’t want to become known as the non-tipper. It’s completely acceptable to press the “no” button to a tip request in a place we wouldn’t usually tip, even with the person serving you in front of you, but do it briskly and confidently. “As soon as you start apologising and making a thing that you’re not tipping, then it becomes awkward.” What about in more grey areas? If in situations that feel more condescending or uncomfortable – tipping someone who cleans your house or looks after your children, say – Bryant suggests just giving a generous tip at Christmas. “If you wrap it up into the Christmas cheer, it can feel less awkward.” It’s very British, says Bryant, to view tipping through a lens of anxious social appropriateness and class. “Americans don’t have that feeling at all. I’ve provided etiquette classes to Americans and get tipped. It’s a great novelty. They’ll say goodbye to you and put a note in your hand. I think it stems from the Brits not talking about money. We’ve always been awkward about wealth and class and status.” It’s why, she says, we never developed a tipping culture – and why it feels unsettling. “We all just find it so brazen to be getting out your wallet and handing money to people … we’ve been left in this slightly muddy zone.” We could fight it – and I’m open to fighting the influence of US tech – but faced with an expectant barista offering me the choice of three buttons, I’m more likely to panic-hit the middle one and hope it wasn’t 25%.
Author: Emine Saner.
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