The flat white coffee drink was $4. A suggested tip was $3.
The cashier at Café Grumpy, a New York City coffeehouse, swiped the credit card, then whirled the screen of her iPad sales device around to face the customer. Add a tip, the screen commanded, listing three options: $1, $2 or $3.
In other words: 25 percent, 50 percent or 75 percent of the bill.
There was a no tip and a customize tip button, too, but neither seemed particularly inviting as the cashier looked on. Under that pressure, the middle choice $2 seemed easiest.
American consumers are feeling a bit of tip creep.
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New York City taxi riders paying with plastic are confronted with buttons for 20 percent, 25 percent or 30 percent tips. Anything less has to be manually entered (and calculated by the passenger).
Purchasers of gift certificates for the day spa Euphoria are asked if they want to include a staff tip; the option 25 percent is automatically checked for those who say yes. (They, too, can manually change it to 15, 20 or 30 percent.) A Miami diner complained on Chowhound of an automatic 24 percent gratuity for a buffet lunch: Im a consistent 20 percent or better tipper, but a 24 percent included tip on a buffet Sheesh.
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There are records of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson giving tips to their slaves, said Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell Universitys School of Hotel Administration,
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Still, the concept of tipping is spreading. In March, a Silicon Valley company opened ChangeTip, a platform that allows people to send small Bitcoin payments through social media, email, Skype or text to show their appreciation for content creators (or anyone) on the Internet.
The service has been growing about 30 percent a month and now has about 60,000 users who have collectively tipped over $250,000, said Nick Sullivan, founder and chief executive. The average payment, he said, was a little over $1.
The tips may be small, but Mr. Sullivans vision is grand: to disrupt the advertising model on the Internet by replacing it with a system of small altruistic micropayments. He even envisions a new concept: the viral tip.
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A company, DipJar, has created an electronic tip jar patrons who pay for their coffee, ice cream or bagel with a credit card can dip the same card into a receptacle by the register for a preset tip amount, usually $1. Last fall, DipJar raised $420,000 from investors to expand its presence from about 20 test sites to 500 locations in the coming months.
DipJar, when we heard about it, we thought, This is a godsend, said Leo Kremer, a co-founder of Dos Toros Taqueria, a small chain of counter-service Mexican restaurants in New York. The company recently removed the tip line from credit card receipts on transactions below $20 out of concern that some customers found it presumptuous. DipJar, he said, can generate more tips in a way thats not intrusive.
Far bolder are the proliferating tablet-based point-of-sale systems that force the issue by presenting consumers with a slate of generous gratuity options before the transaction can be completed.
