Tipping culture in the US is broken. Pay full wages, raise prices, no tip.
US tipping culture in 2026 has metastasized to coffee counters, self-checkout kiosks, and contractor invoices. The honest fix: pay workers full wages, raise menu prices ~20%, and end tipping. Customers know the real price, workers know the real income.
1 reply
The reform makes sense on paper, but it keeps failing in practice because servers at busy restaurants often don't want it — tips at a full-house Friday dinner can push effective hourly rates well above what a "living wage" adjustment would match. Danny Meyer did the most prominent attempt (Union Square Hospitality Group, 2015) and reversed course five years later. The people hurt most by tipping are servers at slow or low-margin restaurants; the people who oppose reform most loudly tend to be servers at popular ones. Which makes the political path to change harder than the economics suggest.