Revel Blog | Revel | May 5, 2017 |
For servers, tips can make up as much as 70% of their income. Servers’ income is contingent on the dining experience and behavior of the customer.
Every year $40 billion dollars is tipped in restaurants across the US, and tipping is an integral aspect of restaurant models. A few servers have struck it lucky, most notably a server at Pizza Hut was tipped $10,000 by a regular to help her pay for her college tuition. While this extravagant form of generosity is rare, there are a number of ways you can enable your servers to earn more in tips.
Sell a Bigger Total Bill
A recent study by the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell found that the biggest factor affecting tip amount was the total size of the bill. This may come as no surprise, but how is this accomplished? Upselling. Start off by assuming that the diner will order a three-course meal and a drink when taking their order, encouraging them to order more than they may have originally intended. Upselling customers leverages the momentum of purchase decisions to increase profit margins. You can also:
Provide Top-Notch Service
While you may not have control over how the food will taste, you have control over every other moving part. From ensuring that the order is accurate to being ready with the check, you are the driver of the customers’ experience.
Tipping Digitally
The “pain of paying” is amplified when customers must pull bills from their wallets or add up tips by hand; the old-fashioned way is costing you. According to a 2015 survey by retail POS research website Software Advice, tipping digitally makes the process easier, leading to greater tips.Having pre-set tip options displayed on the printed on the bottom of the receipt gives you the control to set a tip baseline (eg. if the lowest option is 15%, out of three options, customers are more likely to choose a higher tip option).
Restaurant tipping is the social norm of reciprocity. What this means is that while tipping is expected, the amount can vary widely depending on customers’ whole experience and in the moment behavior. To mitigate the fickleness in customer behavior and ensure a completely seamless experience, you can leverage a number of studied techniques to earn more in tips.