Word of the Day: Tip Creep
Also known as tipflation, and leading to guilt-tipping and tipping fatigue.
There’s no doubt that restaurants, bars, and coffee shops rely on tipping as a wage subsidy, and therefore avoid the issue of fair pay for work. I favor the European model, where service workers are paid a living wage, and the wages are built in to the cost of goods and services. But here in the wild, wild west, service workers are being hit by declining tips while being paid less than minimum wage.
Tipflation and tip creep are terms to describe the United States' recent widespread expansion of gratuity to more industries, as opposed to being traditionally only prevalent in full-service restaurants. Tipflation's origins are likely the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021–2023 inflation surge. Touch-screen digital payment systems run by companies like Clover and Square include gratuity prompts that are often visible to nearby members of the public and the service worker. The social pressure created from such systems is often separately mentioned as guilt-tipping, and tipflation has also been seen as causing tipping fatigue, which is the resentment that American consumers generally feel from tipping culture.
It’s reached Canada, too:
Tax firm H&R Block polled more than 1,500 Angus Reid Forum members in February and found that around two-thirds of respondents think tips should be abolished altogether.
Meanwhile, 93 per cent of respondents said they believe tipping is “out of hand” and is often applied to goods and services that don’t warrant it.
Traditionally, tips were meant to be a reward for quality service. But now the option to leave a tip seems to be everywhere — even when there’s no apparent service provided, such as at self-checkout counters or when you’re just buying a bottle of water at a coffee shop.
Sylvain Charlebois, professor at Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, refers to this emerging phenomenon as “tip creep.”
Charlebois says many people started to feel tipping fatigue after the pandemic, when prices began rising.
“During COVID, people felt generous, they wanted to help the (hospitality) sector,” he said. “But after a while people felt there was some abuse going on and a lot of (them) were turned off.”
[…]
The H&R Block survey found that around 40 per cent of Canadians have avoided going to places with tip prompts at cash out, including coffee shops, convenience stores and fast food counters.
A majority of respondents — 89 per cent — also said they think the tipping percentage amounts have become too high, with many feeling comfortable clicking the “no tip” option.
“The percentage is another issue,” said Charlebois of prompts that can begin at 18 per cent and go up to 30 per cent. “But, frankly, a lot of people just felt they were providing not necessarily a reward for good service, but a wage subsidy.”
A reward or wage subsidy?
In 2025, a previous survey by H&R Block found that 88 per cent of Canadians believed that tipping culture lets employers off the hook to pay employees’ adequately.