How Custom Tipping Screens Impact Wages at Counter Service Restaurants

Five years ago, employees at the Paris Creperie in Brookline, Massachusetts, a quick-service restaurant just outside of downtown Boston, didn’t see much come across the counter by way of tips. It wasn’t that their customers were especially stingy. Brookline is an affluent neighborhood — according to 2010 U.S. census data, the average household income ranges up to $170,000 — but 90 percent of the creperie’s customers pay with a card instead of cash. “The staff was working with a legacy point of sale system and a nice tip jar with various attempts at clever signs,” Henry Patterson, head of finance and administration at the creperie, explained. At the time, tips weren’t a meaningful part of the staff’s paychecks. In 2015, the restaurant switched its point of sale technology to Boston-based Toast and set up a custom tipping screen, similar to what other digital point of sale systems like Square and Revel offer. The difference in customer tipping behavior was instantaneo