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tipping on large pickup orders

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califpizza

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Hi. We own a small pickup/dine in/ no delivery shop in St. Helena CA. During wine harvest (which is upon us) we get large orders (20+) almost daily. No complaints there! My complaint is that they don’t tip! With orders over $300 sometimes, there is no tip!

My husband wants to know if we can put a “tip included” line on the credit card receipt similar to restaurants that have an automatic tip when there are large parties. A certain percentage for a certain amount of pizzas or over a certain amount.

We aren’t a full serve restaurant - we only have 12 seats and 90% of our orders are to go. Its getting frustrating that we work hard, have extra staff come in and sometimes lose money on other orders because we’re working on the large on.

I know - be grateful for them coming in at all - but its very difficult that they don’t seem to appreciate all the hard work! We even joke - a nice bottle of wine or two would be a great tip - they don’t even do that!
 
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That sounds awfully entitled to me. You should appreciate their business, adding gratuity to a to go order? To me it sounds ludicrous and I would never go back. That’s precisely why they may be ordering take out, they don’t want to tip.
 
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How / why do you lose money on the other orders when you are working on these large orders?
As owners, don’t you get paid based on sales, profit, etc? So you are making more money when these large orders come in, even if they don’t tip, right?
As a manager/owner the only time I take a tip is if I was the one who made the order, cut it, etc. Even then I might only take 33-50% of the tip (carryout, no seats), the rest of the tip goes into a cup that the inside crew gets tipped out of.
Since you have seats, I am assuming that your tickets all print a tip line, right? If this is the case, at least you are giving them the opportunity to do it. Usually in our case it’s the small orders ($15-20) that tip - NOT usually the $100+ orders!
 
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I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to disagree with you here. As an owner, I don’t expect a tip for carryout and as a customer, I don’t tip for carryout. Are the large orders heavily discounted? Because otherwise, I don’t see how you are losing money on other potential orders by making the large, guaranteed orders. If you’re bringing in staff for these orders, then I would guess that they are pretty consistent and the extra staff is just the cost of doing that extra business. Are these pre-arranged orders? If so, I would give some kind of discount if the orders are placed ahead of time (like the previous day). Then you know what to prepare for in both the prep and the need for extra staff. I’m sorry, I know those large orders are hectic on the kitchen, but they are rewarding you by giving you that large amount of business. Offering the discount might be helpful in that you can have some control over when the order is started and ready.
 
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To go orders is a large part of our business. We have a wine carafe jar for tips. We have had some counter help that get consistently well tipped and others that do not get tipped at all. Great service with a friendly attitude and caring tone of voice and the ability to acknowledge each person has its rewards, the average do what is required, the successful do what is required and more ,
 
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califpizza said:
Hi. We own a small pickup/dine in/ no delivery shop in St. Helena CA. During wine harvest (which is upon us) we get large orders (20+) almost daily. No complaints there! My complaint is that they don’t tip! With orders over $300 sometimes, there is no tip!

My husband wants to know if we can put a “tip included” line on the credit card receipt similar to restaurants that have an automatic tip when there are large parties. A certain percentage for a certain amount of pizzas or over a certain amount.

We aren’t a full serve restaurant - we only have 12 seats and 90% of our orders are to go. Its getting frustrating that we work hard, have extra staff come in and sometimes lose money on other orders because we’re working on the large on.

I know - be grateful for them coming in at all - but its very difficult that they don’t seem to appreciate all the hard work! We even joke - a nice bottle of wine or two would be a great tip - they don’t even do that!
Click to expand...
this sounds like something I would here from one of my employees…thanks for the chuckle!

but seriously, if things make you think like that as an owner you need to raise your prices!
 
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I would be grateful for the business. Any tips that come through our shop get distributed to the inside help so it doesnt benefit my pocket anyway. Dont be that entitled this is why people pick up because they dont want to tip.
 
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