Tipping Baristas?

[sonick]

Do you guys tip the baristas at, say, Starbucks, when you get your coffee?

Does the type of drink matter? Regular drip coffee vs. Fancy mixed/frothy drinks?

How much do you tip? I usually just get plain regular coffee, nothing fancy, and I don't usually tip. Should I?

I normally tip a decent amount (15%-20%) at restauraunts, delivery, etc.

 

[cmrocks]

I tip if I pay cash and get something smaller than a $1 coin back. If not then I don't worry about it.

 

[DNW]

I normally put the leftover coins in the tip jar, mainly because I don't like to carry change in my pocket.

 

[topcatny]

Originally Posted by DarkNWorn

I normally put the leftover coins in the tip jar, mainly because I don't like to carry change in my pocket.
+1

 

[tiecollector]

Originally Posted by DarkNWorn

I normally put the leftover coins in the tip jar, mainly because I don't like to carry change in my pocket.

My sister is a barista and says that sometimes people leave $20 tip. What a joke. I never tip them, though I do tip bartenders $1 each time

. I think the baristas need to know more about coffee than most bartenders do about booze. Such is life though.

I once worked at Baskin Robbins and people would get mad that they only got $10 in tips for the night total and often got mad at me for saying that tips are not factored into our payscale. I wouldn't have tipped me.

 

[Concordia]

Aren't these Starbucks baristas the same ones who get stock options? I am confused.

 

[DNW]

Originally Posted by tiecollector

My sister is a barista and says that sometimes people leave $20 tip. What a joke. I never tip them, though I do tip bartenders $1 each time

. I think the baristas need to know more about coffee than most bartenders do about booze. Such is life though.

I once worked at Baskin Robbins and people would get mad that they only got $10 in tips for the night total and often got mad at me for saying that tips are not factored into our payscale. I wouldn't have tipped me.

Tipping $1/drink is pretty standard. I always do this, unless the bartender is being a dick. If I do a multiple drinks/shots order, then usually $4-5 total, or I buy the bartender a shot of whatever we're drinking at the time.

I used to work at Einstein Bros coffee/bagel shop when I was in undergrad. My life didn't depend on the tip jar, but getting $30-$40/week from it was pretty nice. Our manager usually divided the tips collected throughout the week to the employees at the end of each week. It usually provided enough beer money for the next couple of nights, which was pretty nice. Another perk of working at a little shop like that was the free food and free drinks; which easily added up to $30-$40/week (we were supposed to pay employee prices, but our manager almost never enforced this policy because we all worked pretty hard and the store was making money).

 

[sonick]

Originally Posted by tiecollector

though I do tip bartenders $1 each time

.
What if you just ordered an overpriced bottle of crap domestic beer at a club?

 

[LabelKing]

I don't patronize any Starbucks, but at similar cafes, I never leave a tip because there is no service.

 

[tiecollector]

Originally Posted by sonick

What if you just ordered an overpriced bottle of crap domestic beer at a club?

only tip on multiple drink orders then or every other budweiser.

 

[DNW]

Originally Posted by sonick

What if you just ordered an overpriced bottle of crap domestic beer at a club?

Don't drink crap domestic beer.

 

[amerikajinda]

I only tip at Starbucks when the barista had to do something extra, like remake my drink, for example. Just yesterday at the drive-thru Starbucks I ordered my usual, "double espresso with two inches of milk, no foam" and 99% of baristas know that "milk" implies "steamed milk" because who wants a lukewarm drink, right? Well as you can guess, they put two inches of cold milk into my hot doppio so I asked them to kindly remake it. Then I also had them add $25 to my Starbucks card. So, I uncharacteristically gave them a $1 tip (because my rule of thumb is to never tip less than $1, regardless of the price of the drink) because I felt that I had inconvenienced them a bit with the re-make and the adding to my card while I could see in my rear-view mirror that the line had grown to 3 cars so I really felt like tipping the people behind me since they're the ones I actually inconvenienced.

But I'm more inclined to tip at a local, non-chain coffee shop... although in retrospect this isn't necessarily fair to the Starbucks employees who work as hard, if not harder, than the baristas in local coffee shops. Maybe I subconciously want to support the little guy...

 

[darin_arrick]

Everyone hold on to your fedoras (or whatever type of headwear you may be sporting at the moment):

I love coffee. It's a passion for me. I know about how coffee is grown, how it is processed, how it is stored and shipped, how it is roasted, and how to serve it. I consider myself a sommelier, but with coffee instead of wine. The amount of information to learn and implement concerning coffee is enormous and growing all the time. I also have a couple of years of professional barista experience. (Yes; most of my learning was done on my own).

I'm of mixed opinion on tips. Frankly, I consider a good barista a professional. Of course, there are probably something like 2 or 3 dozen professional baristas in the United States (seriously; the rest are food service workers). A professional barista should start...START...making about $12 per hour or so, and go up from there. For a barista with 4 or 5 years of experience behind them, knowledge, training, certifications, etc., I'd be appalled if they were making less than $15/hour.

Now, nobody pays that. Why? Everyone thinks that baristas are the coffee-industry equivalents of a cashier at McDonald's. That, in my opinion, is a load of bovine waste product. A good barista should be a lover of coffee, a cook, a mechanic, a bartender, a sommelier, and a customer service whiz, all rolled into one. If any of those things are lacking, they are underpowered and need to increase their skill set.

So, if "baristas" (literally 99.9% of all coffeehouse workers in the US) actually gave a flip, learned, did a good job, etc., and weren't treated like frickin' burger flippers, they'd deserve more than the $7/hour that they get (that's about average, from my experience), and tips would be unnecessary. But, because they are lazy, don't care, push-the-button/hand-the-customer-the-swill/take-the-money, and because coffeehouse owners as a group have little to no business sense and don't actually care about their product or their people, they expect tips to make up the balance of their employee's pay. Why? Because they don't want to take on the responsibility of doing things correctly.

*sigh*

Oh, how I wish someone would cut me a check for $100K and tell me to start a coffeehouse. It would be like a wine bar, with at least a dozen coffees from all over the world "on tap" at any one time, and the varieties would change regularly. Some would be less expensive, and some would be more expensive. I can serve someone a shot of espresso made from the most expensive coffee on the planet for about $6. Can you picture being able to drink a glass of one of the most expensive wines in the world? I can't! That would run into hundreds of dollars. But coffee...I can serve you coffee that tastes like blueberries, or citrus, or chocolate, or leather, or any number of other wonderful flavors (there are over 800 chemical compounds in coffee; more than in wine). Yet, people persist in thinking it's "just coffee". Right, and a 99 cent burger is "just a fine meal". My lily-white backside it is!

OK. You can let go of your hats now. *breathes deeply*

Heck, after reading SF and AAAC, I'd be tempted to have a dress code in my coffeehouse, too! OK, maybe that's a BIT much, but... hrm...

 

[edmorel]

Here is my genereal rule of thumb. If something inside of you is making you wonder whether you have to tip or not, then leave a tip. At a place like Starbucks, you are talking about pocket change or a $1, that will not affect your life in any meaningful way. If you are anyplace and do not even remotely feel like you need to leave a tip, then you either were not provided with any type of service or are simply a cheap bastard. It seems that many here fall under the cheap bastard side of the ledger.

 

[Isaac Mickle]

Buck a drink, every time, anywhere--unless it's self-service, as in a gas station.