Diners in full-service restaurants in Pennsylvania tip at 20 percent exactly, according to a recent study, above the national level of 19.2 percent and right in line with what has been historically expected for good service.
The numbers come from the busy fourth-quarter dining season last year and were put together by the restaurant platform Toast.
Delaware was the best state overall for tipping at 21.8 percent during Q4 2025, up from 21.1 percent in the previous quarter. California again was at the bottom, averaging 17.2 percent, the same as in the third quarter, according to the report.
“Tipflation,” the pandemic-era pressure to tip at higher amounts in more situations, may be easing. Businesses are increasingly being targeted for not providing fair wages to employees and trying to offload salaries on to consumers, in the guise of "tips." In such situations, the worker and the customer often suffer, while the business owner capitalizes.
Nationally, the average tip was the same in the fourth quarter as in the third. Tips at full-service restaurants began to level off in the second quarter of last year, the report said.
Tips at quick-service restaurants remained flat at 15.8 percent in the fourth quarter last year
Cash tips aren’t reflected in the report, which shows only gratuities left via Toast’s restaurant platform using a credit card.
An overwhelming majority of respondents to an informal survey for The Question, an exclusive Patch series on etiquette, said tipping is out of control. Several people said they’ve stopped tipping at coffee shops and fast food restaurants where someone just hands them a drink or a sandwich.
“I feel businesses should pay a fair wage and not expect me to supplement the pay of employees doing the basic functions of the business, for example, cooks and the cashier, when I’m just picking up an order,” an Arlington (Virginia) Patch said.
Several said tipping is an outdated system.
“For the life of me, I do not understand why companies that have tipped employees won’t just pay their employees what they are worth, just as any other job would,” a Crystal Lake-Cary (Illinois) Patch reader said. “It is not the responsibility of the customer to make sure the employee has a proper living wage.”
In Pennsylvania, restaurants are permitted to pay workers as little as $2.83 per hour, so long as they earn a total of $135 per month and their hourly salary with tips included still reaches the unlivable minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
Only a few respondents said they’d withhold a tip at a full-service restaurant if the service was exceptionally poor.
“I may not have got the best service, but give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they were just having a very rough day,” a Champaign (Illinois) Patch said.
“I understand the reasons behind ‘poor service,’ and a lot of these are out of the server’s control,” a Boston Patch reader added.
Read the Patch Exclusive: Here’s A Tip: Stop Asking For A Gratuity For Everything [The Question]
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