'Tip creep' is pushing some customers to leave smaller tips, and driving others to avoid businesses that ask for them

Business Insider

24-05-2025

Customers say they feel like they are being asked to leave a tip at more places, and some are fighting back.
About 33% of people surveyed by Morning Consult said that they're expected to tip more, either more often or a greater amount, than they were five years ago.
They're not imagining it. From self-checkout kiosks to paying for service on your car at a mechanic's shop, customers are seeing businesses ask for tips in situations where gratuity wasn't previously expected.
Consumers are feeling pressure to tip more from that phenomenon, which a report on the survey from Morning Consult calls "tip creep."
"The biggest change is that the prompt to tip is showing up in places that we didn't expect it," Lindsey Roeschke, a travel and hospitality analyst for Morning Consult, told Business Insider.
Morning Consult surveyed 2,200 adults online in the US between March 14 and 16.
Some customers told Morning Consult that they're fighting back.
More than 25% of respondents said that they use services that require tips less frequently than they previously did. Almost as big a share — 23% — said that they focus on visiting businesses that don't pressure them to tip more than they have historically.
And 16% had another response: Their individual tips are smaller because of all the requests they are getting.
"Perhaps due to the perceived pressure related to growing gratuity expectations, a majority of U.S. adults say they've changed their behaviors in some way to account for tip creep," Morning Consult's report states.
Expectations around tips could change again if an idea that President Donald Trump floated in his last campaign becomes reality.
On Tuesday, the US Senate passed the No Tax on Tips Act, which would create a federal income tax deduction of up to $25,000 a year for workers who receive cash tips. Another version of the proposal is part of Trump's larger budget and immigration bill. The Act would need to pass both houses of Congress and get a sign-off from Trump to become law.
If enacted, a tax-free status for tips could create an incentive for more employers and workers to prompt customers for gratuities, one tax expert told CNBC.
Despite feeling pressure, Americans are still willing to tip in the right moments.
In several situations, from getting a haircut to picking up your car from a valet, more Morning Consult survey respondents said that it was "necessary or expected" to tip than said they felt pressured to tip.
Being brought or served food was a major point of agreement: Sixty-nine percent of respondents said it was necessary to tip when dining out at a local restaurant, while 64% said it was the norm when getting food and drinks delivered to their home.
Pizza chain Domino's has also seen a lift in tips at many of the new locations that the chain has opened in recent quarters, CEO Russell Weiner said on the company's earnings call last month.
Many of the new stores are splitting the service area with existing locations, cutting the time that it takes to get pizzas to customers, he said.
"You get hot, predictable deliveries," which, in turn, make customers more likely to order again and leave a bigger tip, Weiner said.
Morning Consult's survey also showed that many people support paying service workers a fair wage. Forty-four percent of respondents said that service workers should not have to rely on tips for their income.
When asked about whether they would support additional mandatory costs that could support workers, such as businesses adding a fixed service charge between 15% and 20% to their bill, most consumers said that they were opposed.
Instead, a majority — 53% — said that tipping should be optional and depend on the service they receive. At the same time, "they also think that service workers need to be paid a fair living wage," Roeschke told BI.
"It just reflects this overall tension" around tipping, she said.