The rise and rise of tipping in New Zealand hospitality.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a sort of post-meal-clarity that descends after dining out \u2013 you\u2019ve satiated your hunger and thirst, and you find yourself confronted with a bill that\u2019s somehow always higher than anticipated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDid we really need garlic bread and arancini balls?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid I need a second chardonnay?\u201d you wonder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As you go to tap your card on the terminal, you\u2019re faced with another question, one that has been creeping into normality recently: Tip? 10%, 15%, 20% or \u2026 NO TIP.<\/p>\n
A bead of sweat forms on your brow, the waiter who served you hovers approximately 40cm away. Your finger dithers over the terminal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the hell did we start doing this? When did tipping become a part of Kiwi life, and more importantly, where does this tip actually go?\u00a0From restaurants and hairdressers to ordering takeaways from the comfort of your couch, tipping prompts seem to be popping up everywhere.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve noticed this, you\u2019re not imagining it. Nicola Waldren, general manager of the Restaurant Association of New Zealand confirms that while the functionality has existed for years, it\u2019s now much more commonly enabled on restaurant and caf\u00e9 payment terminals.<\/p>\n
Waldren acknowledges that not everyone appreciates being asked to add extra to their bill. \u201cSome people find the prompt a little uncomfortable, and others are glad of the reminder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waldren\u2019s advice is to give customers some space to make their decision privately.<\/p>\n
Maybe the more interesting question is exactly what happens to that tip once you\u2019ve pressed the 10% button. \u201cThere\u2019s no specific requirement to tell every customer how tips are distributed,\u201d says Waldren, explaining some businesses divide them equally among staff while others allocate them to particular employees. The Association recommends that tips be passed on to staff, with a clear policy explaining how they\u2019re shared.<\/p>\n
So, are Kiwis actually tipping more, or just being asked more frequently? As the Restaurant Association doesn\u2019t track tipping directly, there are no precise figures on how many diners tip or how much they leave. But its remuneration survey captures tips as part of wider pay data, and compared with 2016, the results suggest tipping has become more common in restaurants. \u201cThat\u2019s indicative rather than precise, but it fits what we see and hear from members,\u201d says Waldren.<\/p>\n
Kristy Gregory of Eftpos New Zealand tells me tipping functionality is a standard feature built into payment terminals globally, and that it\u2019s up to business to choose to enable it. \u201cThere’s been no deliberate push on our part to introduce or encourage it in the New Zealand market. It\u2019s simply a tool that’s there if a business wants it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Gregory says the median tip is around 5% of the bill and explained that tips are added to the total amount of the transaction and deposited as a lump sum into the business\u2019s bank account. \u201cMerchants can see tips broken out from sales, and we have a feature which allows businesses to attribute tips to individual staff members, so they can distribute tips accurately,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But how those tips are actually divided is at the discretion of the business, and there are very few laws in place surrounding the practice. \u201cIn New Zealand, unlike other jurisdictions, tips are not dealt with by employment law. This means that it is up to the parties to decide how tips are to be allocated as between an employer and employee,\u201d explains Simon Schofield, professional teaching fellow at Auckland Law School.<\/p>\n
So how do the staff manning the Eftpos machines feel about the practice? At a central Christchurch Mexican restaurant, server Joshua* (not his real name) tells me he\u2019s seen an increase in tipping. In the past, international tourists were the more generous clientele, but he\u2019s noticed a shift in recent years with more New Zealand diners leaving gratuities, too. At his restaurant, the entire tip goes to the staff member responsible for the table, which he says is \u201cabsolutely\u201d an incentive for staff to provide great service. He points out that the \u201chigh cost of living\u201d can mean every dollar adds up. \u201cA $4 tip is a big help,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sam, who waitresses at an upmarket steak restaurant in central Christchurch, says tipping is common at her workplace, where \u201cthe menu is expensive, people tend to have the money to tip\u201d.<\/p>\n
She explains that 75% of the tips go directly to the staff member who served the table, while the remaining 25% is divvied up between the chefs. She admits that it can be a little embarrassing presenting patrons with the tip prompt. \u201cI feel awkward, definitely,\u201d says Sam. \u201cThat\u2019s why I often get the ma\u00eetre d\u2019 to do it. They ask, \u2018would you like to leave a tip for your server?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Sam is right to be hesitant about who to offer the tip function to \u2013 tipping is a divisive subject amongst Kiwis. While some will happily tip for good service, others are less tolerant. \u201cYeah, nah, get fucked. Any place that implements this loses my business,\u201d was one particularly eloquent Reddit user\u2019s verdict on Eftpos tipping prompts.<\/p>\n
From tipping-induced rage to tip jar disputes ending up before the Employment Relations Authority, we\u2019ve seen it all. Schofield points to one such case, Rickards v Night Pearl (2021) Limited, in which a hospitality worker took money from the staff tip jar on multiple occasions and was subsequently dismissed. The Authority ultimately found her dismissal unjustified as her employer had failed to follow fair process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Who actually owned the money in the staff tip jar was disputed. Rickards argued that, in her experience, tip jars were for staff, although the Authority questioned whether that meant employees could simply help themselves whenever they needed the money.<\/p>\n
Schofield advised, \u201call in all, while well-intentioned, the payment of tips is more trouble for employers and employees than they are worth.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sentiment echoed by Dan Gregory, former owner of Auckland restaurant Al Forno, who says the restaurant passed 100% of its tips, averaging between $400 and $1,000 a week, on to the employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cManaging tips was a time-intensive process for me and took about two hours a week to work it all out,\u201d he recalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSome customers pushed back on the question about tips during the Eftpos payment.\u201d As the restaurant\u2019s usual cashier, Gregory says he would reassure customers there was no obligation to tip. \u201cI simply said, \u2018There is absolutely no expectation of tipping, so please feel free to press no to that question.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite tips being taxable, IRD says it doesn\u2019t have separately identifiable data of electronic tipping income, because it\u2019s included in a broader income category. So exactly how much tipping is going on in New Zealand is anyone\u2019s guess.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I recently encountered a slightly baffling tip prompt that left me questioning the logic behind the whole premise.\u00a0I ordered Vietnamese at the counter of a bustling street food market in Christchurch.<\/p>\n
Before I\u2019d even glimpsed a spring roll, let alone established a rapport with the staff, I was handed the Eftpos machine which prompted me to add a 10%, 15%, or 20% tip to my bill.\u00a0I was then given a buzzer to alert me when my meal was ready, and when it went off, I walked back to the counter to collect my own meal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now this isn\u2019t a criticism of the staff, who was perfectly pleasant, but it did leave me wondering what exactly the tip was supposed to be for?\u00a0Traditionally, a tip is a way of rewarding exceptional service. But as I\u2019d been asked to add a gratuity to my bill before I\u2019d even tasted the food, it couldn\u2019t even be attributed to being so enamoured with my meal that I wanted to reward the chef. And as for the service? Well, I\u2019d basically served myself.<\/p>\n
I suppose hospitality companies and servers are using the age-old principle of \u201cif you don\u2019t ask you don\u2019t get\u201d, and can you really blame them for trying?<\/p>\n
To some, tipping is a nice way to thank hardworking staff for going the extra mile. To others, it\u2019s all just a little gratuitous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rise and rise of tipping in New Zealand hospitality. There\u2019s a sort of post-meal-clarity that descends after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,10270],"class_list":["post-640163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}