At a restaurant in the Lower East Side I once walked out leaving only a dollar behind as tip (huge sacrifice for minimum wage earner me) only to find a very angry Latina waitress screaming after me as I walked away, "No service charge! No service charge!" I found it really weird that she was throwing a fit - because my standard tip here is just P20 - P50 ergo $1. This was three yeras ago.
Apparently the rule over there is that you should leave 15% -20%of your bill as tip and there is usually no service charge that comes with the bill. Which gives you the discretion to tip as you please, depending on the service or your pocket situation at the time. Learned fast about that and was also pleased to know that it really helped a lot of my waiter friends and their families back here in the Philippines get by. So yay to that tipping culture!
Over here though it doesn't work the same way. The service charge is usually factored into the bill already. Talked to some restaurateurs and the way they do it is they divide the service charge among the waiters and kitchen staff, including any additional tip you leave. The service charge is already usually 10-15% of your bill so really there's no need to add extra - although I still throw in an additional P20 to P50 (or P100 or more if it was a really big bill with a lot of us or if I gave the waiter a hard time - sometimes I ask a ton of questions). There are some restaurants though that do not include service charge in the bill, so you must be keen to check the receipt. Rule of thumb is still 10%.
The factored in service charge is a good system, I think. Because we really should give our servers a little extra - it isn't easy waiting on people. It's the additional 12% VAT that bothers me. Once you step outside from a great dinner, you encounter all these potholes on the way home. That isn't working!
9 comments:
What I know in the US is that minimum wage for "tipped" folks is WAY lower than regular minimum wage (i.e. a few years ago I remember reading it was $3 for tipped people, and $8 for regular people). So if you don't tip these people, they're really seriously starve.
In Manila ... I would always try to leave around 10% if service charge isn't included in the bill, or around 100, whichever is lower. In mathematical terms that would be min(100, 10% of x) where x is the bill value.
The cynic in me has to ask though ... does the service charge that restos charge in Manila actually even go to the servers?
Echoing Wysgal. That is a really good question...
Wysgal: are we even sure that tipping function is continuous at that point to come up with minumum? Hahahaha
I'm just kidding. I so love calculus!
Oh, and good food as well... :D
if there is a service charge, i dont usually tip unless the service is really exceptional.. like giving in to requests, very attentive waiters.. excellent food beyond expectations...
P20 to P50 for a bill that averages P400 to P500 (so I'm in the 10% range). More if we are a large group.
But there are times when the service sucks and I don't leave a tip at all.
hi mam
this is franco, 1/3 of the alex/basco/franco trio you made libre in chateau 1771....i went back to chateau with my family and sobbrang sarap talaga....i just realized that ive come across your blog before.Do update it! do a book review on this new book "Manila's best kept restaurant secrets" i want to find out if its sulit!
-franco
margaux, please remove docchef.blogspot.com on ur link list, the site has been hack and is being run now by an evil person
thanks
I hope that the service charge built in the bill really goes to the waiters too. I cannot recall where I heard it, but someone told me the service charge in the bill goes to the kitchen staff and the money you leave on the table is what the waiters are depending on.
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