Context
Retail versus service tipping
A comparison of the archive’s retail and service reports, including sample sizes and the limits of the comparison.
How this was calculated
Retail is identified from the category or service label in the archive. Everything else is grouped together to avoid pretending that a small service subtype is a statistically reliable comparison.
Only approved, non-demo reports with a known city and state are included. Placeholder locations such as “Location not reported,” “Online,” and “N/A” are excluded. Duplicates and pending submissions are excluded. This is descriptive archive data, not a survey of all U.S. businesses.
What stands out
Service and other settings contains the larger share of reports in this comparison (69). The grouping describes where reports were collected, not the overall economy.
This is an editorial reading of the current archive, not a causal claim. As more reports arrive or corrections are made, the takeaway can change.
| setting | reports | average highest |
|---|---|---|
| Service and other settings | 69 | 21.2 |
| Retail / product purchase | 6 | 21.8 |
What this page can and cannot tell you
It can show how the published archive is distributed by place, time, setting, and prompt details. It cannot estimate the true rate of tipping requests across all businesses, prove that a business-wide policy exists, or replace the original source. Use the links above to inspect individual reports before repeating a statistic.
See the underlying reports. Browse the archive or add a documented report.