Okay, I generally tip well but at coffee shops, my tip (if I am alone or am just buying a coffee for myself and someone else) is 100%. Now I don’t get fancy coffees. I want a dark roast that is black and that is it but I always tip the full cost of my coffee.
At a time when the very idea of tipping has been brought into question, the debate surrounding how much you should tip at coffee shops remains confusing. Should tipping for a two-dollar drip coffee be the norm, or is that extra dollar only called for when you’ve ordered something complicated, like an extra-foam soy chai latte with sugar-free hazelnut syrup? The questions don’t stop there. Is dropping your fifty-cent change into the tip bucket basically an insult? And: Are baristas mad when you don’t tip at all?
We spoke to a handful of current and former baristas about how they feel about tipping and whether they notice when you don’t tip. (They do.)
The general consensus seemed to be that while baristas almost always make a mental note of whether you tipped or didn’t, they’re only really bothered by a lack of tip when the order is complicated, and they had to go above and beyond.
“I always notice,” a barista in an East Williamsburg café told me. “I’m not usually irritated unless the order is really big, like five or six drinks, and the person doesn’t tip me anything. I just put all this effort into this with this huge line of people, and there was nothing extra that I got out of it.”
She added that tips are appreciated for small orders, too.
It gets complicated when I order a sandwich or something else because there is now math involved but I still do the 100% tip for the beverage and something extra for the sandwich. I get pretty good service when I go for coffee and I don’t think this makes it any better but I have had baristas come up to me and thank me for the tip which lets me says, “thanks for the awesome coffee”. That always makes both of us feel pretty great.
One other thing is that when I am in Starbucks and the barista goes out of their way to do something nice for me, I let their corporate head office know online. I did that a few times and word goes down the chain really, really fast to the barista. Twice they have realized it was me and have gone out of their way to thank me. For them it was a really big deal and that makes me happy as well.