Few customers tip at Warwick food outlets

Serving staff at University-run outlets such as Le Gusta are apparently allowed to keep tips, with a 10% reserved for the kitchen, few out of the restaurant’s range of student, professional and visiting customers chose to leave tips at at all, let alone the customary 10%.

The Eating at Warwick card payment system causes further issues because of the need to separate the payment of the meal from a discretionary extra. Even with standard bank cards, this often means extra processing costs, which often come out of servers’ pockets.

Although University-run outlets are, according to the Le Gusta management, run independently from central administration, revenue is distributed by the University. Service staff’s salaries come directly out from the Warwick payroll, which subsidises the outlets with £800,000 per year.

While the SU run outlets fairly similarly, tips collected at Xananas are pooled together to run socials for staff, such as bowling, ice-skating and shared meals.

Waitresses at Warwick retail outlets, who wished to remain anonymous, commented to the Boar that they would prefer to receive the tips directly in relation to the amount of shifts they work.

However, as in Le Gusta, servers at Xananas said that tipping is “very rare”, particularly since customers pay at the counter before eating.