Emily Post’s etiquette book recommended 10% for a restaurant meal in 1922. By 1997, the Post Institute was noting that 15% had been the standard in elegant restaurants and was already creeping toward 20% for excellent service. The suggested tip line on a restaurant receipt in 2025 usually starts at 18% and goes up from there.
Toast, Square, Clover, and the other POS systems that run most restaurants in the country let operators set whatever default percentages they want, and the defaults have drifted upward steadily enough that Pew Research Center’s 2023 survey of nearly 12000 adults found 72% of Americans believe tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago. The receipt itself is where most of that drift shows up.
Three numbers are printed at the bottom of a slip of paper, with dollar amounts already calculated, and the customer picks one or writes in their own. The design of that choice is not accidental.
Michael Lynn has been studying tipping for over 30 years at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. He has more than 50 published academic papers on the subject, which is more than anyone else in the field, and he worked his way through school waiting tables and bartending in Austin, Texas. His research has consistently found that tip percentages are only weakly related to customers’ ratings of service quality. People tip because of social norms, not because the pasta was good.
A 2020 study that Lynn co-authored with Damon Alexander tested what happens when POS systems present suggested gratuity amounts to customers. The suggested amounts increased the size of the tips. Customer satisfaction didn’t change. The mechanism is straightforward enough in behavioral economics terms. Anchoring. When three numbers appear on a receipt, the lowest one is 18%. The customer’s internal reference point shifts. Fifteen percent, which was the floor for decades, starts to feel stingy if it’s not even listed as an option.
Square’s default tip settings for transactions over $10 used to be 15%, 20%, and 25%. But those are configurable. Restaurant operators can set whatever they want, and enough of them moved the range to 20%, 25%, and 30% that Reuters ran a piece on it in 2017, calling the phenomenon “tip inflation.” A PYMNTS study found that one in three consumers had noticed the suggested amounts getting higher. The interesting thing about the POS configuration is that nobody regulates it. A restaurant can put 25%, 30%, and 35% on the screen, and there is no law that says they can’t. A Starbucks receipt includes a tip line because that’s what the format requires, but the suggested percentages printed on any given restaurant receipt are a business decision, not a standard.
Toast’s own data from Q3 2024 shows that total tips at restaurants using the platform averaged 18.8% of the check. Full service restaurants averaged 19.3%. Toast also reports that customers who see suggested gratuity amounts on their receipts tip more than customers who don’t. That tracks with what Lynn and Alexander found in the 2020 study. But here is where the math gets quietly interesting. Several of those POS systems calculate the suggested tip on the post-tax total, not the pre-tax subtotal.
The Emily Post Institute has said for years that tipping should be based on the pre-tax amount, because tax is a government charge and has nothing to do with the service. On a $100 dinner with 8% sales tax, a 20% tip on the subtotal is $20. A 20% tip on the post-tax total is $21.60.
That difference feels small on a single check, but it scales. In states like California, Tennessee, and Louisiana, where combined sales tax rates run above 8.5%, the gap gets wider. And the customer usually doesn’t notice, because the suggested amount on the receipt is already calculated and the pre-tax subtotal is printed in smaller type somewhere above it.
Dave and Buster’s caught public attention in early 2026 when customers noticed the chain’s suggested tips were being calculated on the post-tax total. Derek Simms, who operates multiple restaurants in Frisco, Texas, told Fox News Digital that a tip “should be on the subtotal.” He said customers are starting to notice the discrepancy more often. “And that’s ultimately what matters,” Simms said, “because the customer feels frauded. And when the customer feels frauded, you’re going to lose business.” The Pew survey found that 40% of Americans oppose businesses suggesting tip amounts, compared to only 24% who favor the practice. Another 32% were neutral. A good share of that frustration is aimed at counter service, where a Starbucks receipt asks for a tip on a $3 coffee.
Seventy-two percent oppose automatic service charges on bills regardless of party size. Anyone who has worked a closing shift and watched the receipts come back knows that the people who circle the middle number on the tip line outnumber the ones who do the math from scratch by a wide margin. The middle number is the path of least resistance, and moving it from 18% to 20% is the kind of change that doesn’t announce itself.
Pew’s survey also found something that cuts against the tip inflation narrative. A majority of respondents, 57%, said they would leave 15% or less for an average meal. Only 25% said they’d go to 20% or higher. Michael Lynn, quoted by CNBC after the Pew data came out, said that “people’s willingness to tip, even in restaurant settings, is going down.” Bankrate’s 2025 survey found that 35% of Americans tip at least 20% at sit-down restaurants, down from 37% the year before. The receipt keeps suggesting more. The customer keeps resisting, or at least some of them do. The slip of paper at the bottom of the check is doing more persuasive work than it ever has, and it’s still losing ground with a chunk of the public that has decided 15% is enough.
