What is an appropriate gratuity to leave your restaurant server?
Twenty percent of your total bill before tax is appropriate for standard service. The percentage should be taken on all food, wine and beverages before any discounts are made to the bill. If you receive excellent service, it is a nice gesture to tip on the final bill with tax included. Stellar service should receive 25%. It is never appropriate to leave less than 18%. If you feel you had poor service, you should alert a manager. If your problem wasn’t bad enough to alert somebody, it wasn’t bad enough to justify leaving less than 18%. Doubling the tax is not an accurate way to calculate the gratuity on a check. Remember that your server may actually go home with as little as 40% of whatever you leave them and that the government will tax them with the assumption that they have made a certain percentage of gratuities on their total sales. If you ‘stiff’ a server, or under tip, they may actually end up paying to wait on you in the form of payouts to the restaurant, support staff and the government.