usdmattiphone

The difference being

 

 

 

Good customer where the $$$ make their way to the owner

 

 

 

V

 

 

 

Good tipper where they go to a staff member.

The tips go to the bartender but the additional purchases made due to the goodwill go towards the owner. This isn't a hard concept. Ever seen a purchase where someone wanted to make a customer happier by throwing something in free so that they'd come back? It's the same thing except the salesman gets a small kickback for doing so. It's essentially the same thing as a commission, where you have an amount of discretionary margin to give up to build good will towards a client. These are basic business concepts.

Either way, this is a moot point. If you own a restaurant one day, feel free to fire employees for giving out occasional perks to well tipping good customers, I was just trying to tell you that this IS NORMAL in the US restaurant/bar industry.

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Seems to me the bartender is risking losing his/her job by giving product away without having the customer pay for it. Could you imagine what would happen to a server at say Chili's if I ordered only an entree and they brought me an appetizer and desert "on the house" only because I tipped above the norm (since we are talking about over tipping.....every drink on a cruise ship already has an 18% tip attached to it)? I don't know about others but if I owned such a place and a server (or bartender) was giving my product away for in an attempt to line their pocket with extra tips they would be gone!

I can't speak for cruises since I've never worked on one and the culture may be different, but any bartender in the industry in the US who had worked in a few bars can tell you that this is the norm. Some places don't allow it, but in my experience far more do. The food analogy isn't quite apropos because food margin is almost nothing, whereas alcohol is quite high. And even so, restaurants often DO have something called a "gratis budget" where they can do that exact thing and give free food away to people who are good customers. The overall margin spend from a good customer will outweigh some free booze and food now and then. This is how the service industry works.

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As a former bartender better tippers don't usually get served behind another paying customer, but they might only have to pay for 2 of the 4 drinks they just ordered, and they might be stronger than normal. There are ways you can be shown appreciation for good tips other than being served first. A bad tipper I might only get then another drink if they ask, whereas I will frequently check in with the bigger tipper to find out if they'd like another (sometimes for free or discounted). Shifts a small part of the money to a bartenders pocket. This of course is if you work for a bar that doesn't require metered drink pours and takes inventory nightly of bottle weights.

Establishments understand that a happy well tipping customer will likely spend more money over the course of their visit, than someone that doesn't tip and will practically try to use a coupon on a drink.

Tip or don't tip, that's up to you, if you think they should do their job for what you pay them, then a good service employee will do just that, but not another thing out of the ordinary. There are too many people that try to claim they'll "take care of you at the end of the night" if you treat them right, but for every 1 person that actually follows through, there are 5 others out there trying to get you to treat them special with no intention of a better tip, or even a better attitude. This of course is all purely a cultural thing from the US, so I'm aware this doesn't necessarily apply to other countries.

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