Tipping in England

In November we had a private transfer from Heathrow to London and the driver seemed genuinely surprised when I gave him an extra £5.

As for cash, we did pay the driver in cash but we didn't need to and didn't really need cash anywhere.

Bob, restaurants on our last couple of trips, mostly in the London area (so I don’t know whether this is widespread throughout England) have added a charge to the bill, essentially a tip. It’s apparently optional, but you’d have to specifically request that they remove all or part of it. Whether that extra charge goes to the staff or the owner I don’t know. It’s far less than 15-20%, although servers and kitchen employees arguably make a decent wage. If you were to tip above and beyond that added amount (which is probably not expected, and several of the Brits who post on this forum have said that tipping over there is practically non-existent.

If you were to tip, and didn’t obtain Pounds in cash, what about using your credit card for any desired gratuity?

I live in England and have not used cash in close to a decade. If I wish to tip in a restaurant I do so when paying with my card, although now most places add 10-15% anyway. There are no other settings where tipping is normal.

No cash needed at all. I live in the UK and used cash on Sunday for the first time in a couple of years at a market stall that said “cards taken but cash preferred.”

Restaurants will expect you to pay cards. There may be a 10-15% service charge added, so no need to tip beyond that.

What might happen instead is that the card reader will have a screen asking you if you’d like to leave a tip and show you options - say a choice of 10, 12, 15, 20 percent to add to bill. 10 or 12 is perfectly acceptable if the service is good. I’m sure the 20% button is aimed at Americans! :-)

Otherwise, just ask the waitperson if you can leave a tip using your card when you pay the bill.

Some people might say we don’t have a tipping culture. But personally I’ve always been 10-12 percent tipper in restaurants if the card reader allows it and if the service is decent.

I once asked for the service charge to be removed when service was incredibly slow and chaotic and half our food didn’t arrive, and politely explained why. But I don’t do that often.

I do tip taxi and Uber drivers - taxi drivers by rounding up - I’ll say something like, “take ten pounds” if the ride comes to, I dunno, £8.75. Uber drivers I tip on the app, depending on their general friendliness tbh.

I guess I might tip a pre-booked pre-paid driver if they were really helpful, cheerfully helped with luggage etc. But I’m not sure how I’d do it without cash. Honestly I’d probably say “I’d like to tip but I don’t have cash… will you take a card?”

A good guide is to tip as you do in the USA, minus 90-100%. We really don’t need the tipping culture here.

restaurants on our last couple of trips, mostly in the London area (so
I don’t know whether this is widespread throughout England) have added
a charge to the bill,

In zone 1 in London it was always 10% except for a Gordon Ramsey restaurant that charged 15%. In Richmond and Fulham, nothing was added.

Up to a few years ago, there wasn't really a tipping culture in restaurants, but these days there seems to be a "discretionary service charge " added in most restaurants in London and further afield. It's normally 10%, although there is sometimes a choice or percentages.
Many of us blame this as being an imported custom by US tourists. If you start adding a tip on top of the 10% eventually we will all be expected to pay it.
I rarely use taxis, but when I do, I simply round up or give a couple of pounds, no more.
Of course for poor service, you could ask for the charge to be removed altogether.

Up to a few years ago, there wasn't really a tipping culture in restaurants

Eh? I've always left a small tip when sitting down for a meal that's brought to my table. The service charge thing confuses things a bit now, but I was always taught, or at least did it led by the example of my parents, that a modest tip was normal. That was considerably more than "a few years ago". What Americans do has never figured in any way whatsoever in making that decision for me.

I've always left a small tip when sitting down for a meal that's brought to my table. The service charge thing confuses things a bit now, but I was always taught, or at least did it led by the example of my parents, that a modest tip was normal.

I agree. It was always the case in my experience, as far back as the 1970s, that tip of around 10% was normal in a nice sitdown restaurant. It wasn’t quite so pressured as perhaps it seems to be in America, but it was certainly normal practice whenever I ate at a restaurant in my youth. Not that I ate out often but it was definitely a thing.

I don’t tip on top of the service charge though.

Same here. We ate out infrequently but my parents always tipped, probably not 10% but would leave a few coins on the table. Likewise they always left a few pounds for housekeeping when we were on holiday.

Thank you for your help. We have not travelled to England or Europe since the pandemic, focussing on other parts of the world.

Bit late to the party on this one but I can remember restaurants with discretionary service charges back in the 1970s so there is little new about those. Plus no one these days can pull the trick used back then of displaying prices without VAT.

They did become less common for a while when bills tended to incorporate a phrase along the lines of "service is not included".

These days at least there is clarity that the money of a service charge gets divided up in some agreed way amongst the staff & not taken in by the owner.

I was a little shocked when the mini-terminal for NFC payment at a London coffee shop asked me for a tip, with the smallest amount equating to 40% of the cost of the espresso. Yikes!

Tell us where that was! Shocker! :)

There’s been a recent thread about vending machines, and the strangest thing people have seen in them. I wonder when vending machines will start having a Tip option, or will actually ask for one.

Those machines don’t stock themselves, you know, and somebody has to take care of that ;-)