London Travel Forum

Can someone help me understand the convention for tipping in London for dining. A Londoner response is preferred but please help regardless. I just came back from London and was baffled by the range of answers I got for how much I should tip in a restaurant. Here are the responses I got...

1. Don't tip. The servers take this as an insult as if you were offering money to a beggar.
2. It's not necessary to tip but you can if you like. You can just round the bill up (e.g., from 78 to 80 pounds).
3. 10% is reasonable.
4. Two restaurants had a service charge on the bill of 12.5%.

I left confused tending to tip 10% when a service charge was not on the bill. I kind of just got the impression that no one really cares one way or another. In the states if you just rounded up the bill a couple percent it wouldn't go back to that restaurant as that would be very insulting to the server.

It certainly can be confusing, even to a Londoner. Traditionally England hasn’t had a culture of tipping, except perhaps barbers/hairdressers and taxi drivers. However as continental influences have become more prevalent, especially in London, the situation has changed and that’s what causes the confusion.

In many places a 12.5% service charge will be shown on the menu and added to the bill. You should pay this unless you have had really bad service in which case you are entitled to ask for it to be reduced or removed. You do not need to pay anything in addition, in some unscrupulous places they add the service charge then expect a traditional tip.

If no service charge is shown or added then you decide if you want to tip and 10% is a reasonable amount. Rounding up is OK as well but I guess anything less than £2 might be seen as insulting, it depends on the type of restaurant really.

One thing to note is that tipping in pubs and bars for drinks and food is not necessary. Some bars have an annoying habit of giving you your change back on a small tray after serving you with a round of drinks as if to infer you should leave it as a tip. This annoys most Londoners who as a matter of principle will take every penny of the change back.

I much prefer the culture in the US where I know that a tipping is the convention but never feel that it is demanded, i.e. there are no uncomfortable times when you feel pressured into tipping by the attitude or posturing of the waiting staff . I think the main difference is that the levels of service I have encountered in the US have never made me want to withhold a tip whereas in London some waiting staff seem to think they can provide the most slovenly sullen service and still think they have a right to be tipped.

Cheers
Clive

Great question and helpful answer. I am an Aussie (we don't tip for anything, anywhere, anytime!) who first encountered tipping in America. We are off to the UK and Europe later this year and I have been wondering about this. Thanks.

While that is a great answer for London, it doesn't necessarily hold true for the rest of the UK!! Wherever I go I try and avoid places that have the 12-1/2% service charge. I do tip for a meal but what I consider the service and so on to be worth. It could be less than 10%, it could be more. And if paying with a credit card, I never add the tip but leave it in cash or give it directly to the server, so that I know that he/she receives it. They may have to put it into a general pot but at least I've tried!

Yes, great answer to a confused situation. Only certain places are relevant for a tip. Can I add that I think the idea of adding a fixed percentage such as 10% to a bill as the tip is wrong. You may have been given much better service in a cheaper restaurant, but basing the tip on the size of the bill means that waiter/ess will be thanked with much less.

My advice is don't tip!!!

Let's not go down the American way where people rely on tips, employees should be paid a reasonable wage for a good service, after all you wouldn't tip a checkout girl at Tesco's!

My son gets a taxi home from town often and the fare is £4 yet he gives the driver £5 stating that it's only a quid - it's 25% - I think we would all like a 25% wage increase.

I'm not tight! Just carefull with my money!!!

I agree with you Paul. The whole tipping culture is based on employers not paying reasonable wages to their staff, and it allows them to get away with it.

I would say 10% is the minimum, unless you get bad service. But good service deserves 15% (easier to work out quickly than 12½%!). Taxi drivers get 10%-ish (rounded up or down) from me - fares are so high now, I am not giving them 15% on top!

Generally, tip taxis, restaurants, juniors in hairdressers - not the stylists, porters, hotel junior staff. If a restaurant has added service (12½% normally), don't leave a tip on the table.

I agree 100% with St Vincent. A great answer! I only leave a tip IF the service and food was good and if no service charge has been added.
I leave between 5% and 10% depending on total bill amount. The higher the bill, the less I leave.
When I was a waiter (many moons ago), tips helped boost our meagre wages which are always on the minimum wage rate. Many restaurants now use the service charge to bring the waiters wage up to the minimum hourly rate, so we are, in affect, paying 12.5% of the waiters wage which means 12.5% greater profit for the establishment, this on top of the already overly inflated prices they charge.
In a 5 star hotel, breakfast can cost a guest over £20, yet the actual cost to the hotel is about £1! Add to this a further 12.5% and it makes a tidy profit which we pay for.
A best practice is as St Vincent says, 'You don't have to pay (all) the service charge if you believe that you didn't get good service'. If you get crap service and food, why should you pay £12.50 on top of a £100 bill?

This is a good discussion on a thorny topic - personally speaking if I tip I only ever tip cash, and only if the service has been good.

There is a pretty nasty corporate culture in the UK where the restaurant chain will take part or all of the staff tips if you tip through a chip and pin terminal.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-shameless-scam-of-restaurant-tips-842807.html

This also happens sometimes when you tip cash but it is less likely.

Thanks all for some very helpful answers. I have to agree also the the absence of tipping would be ideal assuming the servers would ultimately be compensated properly. Its always uncomfortable and more thinking than I'm interested in doing when I'm on holiday.

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tp/1bdb66/

A couple of things. You might notice that the service in the UK is generally appalling. It is a cultural thing. Generally it is considered beneath the dignity of the British to serve. Came from the WWII when the upper classes where generally regarded as being responsible for making a complete mess of things. The servant class disappeared and those who were still employed were generally underpaid and did their jobs grudgingly.

Today you will find very few English people working as waiters or waitresses or in pubs and bars in central London. As an English waitress in my local coffee bar put it, she did not hold with pandering to customers.

If you think that tipping cab drivers is a good idea consider first that these guys earn something like £50 - £70k a year. London taxis are some of the most expensive in the world, and though they know their business well, they are very unobliging if you ask them to go somewhere South of the River.

The article in the Independent was very revealing. Some of the practices of restaurants are quite outrageous. The tips often go to the corporation that runs the restaurant chain rather the waiting staff. I look forward to the loophole in the Minimum Wage act being sealed so that waiting staff get the rate due to them. I think a change is on the cards.

Peresonally, I tend to leave tips in places that are good value or where the service has been exceptional.

There are not many places like that in central London.

I did try not tipping in the US. It was an experience. I went back to the same restaurant the next day out of curiosity. They showed me a table next to the kitchen doors. When I asked to be moved, I was given a table next to the lavatories. I dare not eat the food. When I joined the line to pay at the cashier I overheard a customer complain about the service on his table not being up to scratch. The manager said he would see to it and took the complaint seriously. If that had been the UK you would have had Basil Fawlty being rude to the customer and treating him as troublemaker who had just insulted the restaurant.

In the US you tip and expect to get good service.

In the UK you don't get good service even if you do tip.

I live in hope that this will one day improve.

I believe that whatever the cultural background people in Britain are waking up to the fact that Tipping, particularly in restaurants is a totally unacceptable practice that enables restaurant owners to protect their profits by using the accumulated Take from Tips to make up the wages of their waiting staff to UK minimum wage.
There has been a recent campaign by workers in the hospitality/catering industry in the UK to move away from Tipping and force employers to pay their staff the minimum wage. Tips do not go to the waiter or waitress who gave you that special service but into the Pot from which the owner pays his subsidised wages to staff.
Don't do it!
Reward if you like an individual who has provided exceptional service and contributed something extra/special to your enjoyment but do not be bullied by an outworn convention that impels a Tip in order to subsidise a business.
I should add that my over generous husband leaves a Tip even for mediocre service because he is sorry for the staff.