Do you tip more when you pop out for a weekday bagel, or after a Sunday waffle-and-mimosa extravaganza? If you answered the latter, a new study says you're not alone. While the average tip at independent restaurants in the U.S. is 16%, it rises to 20% on Sunday mornings between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m., according to data from restaurant-technology company CAKE. Tips dip to their lowest around 11 a.m. on weekdays — right when you're craving that bagel.
While Sundays see the highest gratuities, restaurants make more in tips on Fridays and Saturdays, according to the data, which was exclusively reported by Eater. These days bring in more dough — Fridays make 20.1% of total revenue to Mondays' 7.37% — so they make up a higher percentage of the week's tips.
People might tip more on Sundays because they feel more relaxed — but it could also be because we tend to visit different types of restaurants on different days of the week. “This difference could simply be the [makeup of] the kinds of restaurants people are going to,” Mike Lynn, a consumer-behavior professor at Cornell University who specializes in tipping research, told Eater. “There’s huge variability in quick service and full service.” Again, bagel and coffee versus waffles and (possibly bottomless) mimosas.
CAKE collected its data from credit card transactions at about 2,000 independent U.S. restaurants, both quick-service and full-service.
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