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The Most Generous Tippers Live in These Cities

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Dollar banknotes and US coins on wooden tray, on coffee shop table with a white cup of tea on background. Dim light room, modern and minimal style. Concepts for customer service, checking, money tips.
vinnstock/istockphoto

When and whether to tip still confounds plenty of people, but there’s no question that the pandemic has made many of us more grateful for restaurant workers. Popmenu, a company that helps restaurants with digital marketing and ordering, analyzed 450,000 food orders placed in a recent six-month period to find the cities with the highest percentage of orders that included tips of 20% or more. Here are the cities where the most generous folks live. 

Related: Sonic Is Taking Tipping Chain-Wide

10. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and El Paso (Tie)

Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles
ViewApart/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 23%

Related: The One Thing Restaurants Wish You Would Do Before Ordering Delivery

9. Tampa and Atlanta (Tie)

Atlanta, Georgia, USA - June 25, 2017: Traffic forms at the Varsity in downtown Atlanta. The Varsity is an iconic fast food restaurant chain with branches across metropolitan Atlanta.
Sean Pavone/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 24%

Related: The Best (and Worst) Foods to Get Delivered, According to Chefs

8. New York and Las Vegas (Tie)

Stone Street, Lower Manhattan, New York City
OlegAlbinsky/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 25%

Related: The End of Soggy Fries: 10 Ways Science is Changing Takeout

7. Chicago, Raleigh, Fort Worth, and Columbus (Tie)

Chicago, IL - August 15, 2021: A man waits for a table to eat outdoors on a patio at DuSable Harbor, downtown in the Loop.
Page Light Studios/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 27%

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6. Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA - June 20, 2018: People walk by the restaurants and shops in Market Square in the downtown business district of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA
Pgiam/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 29%

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5. Dallas and Omaha (Tie)

Food Trucks
BluIz60/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 30%

4. Washington, D.C.

These diners are dining at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant in Cleveland Park in Northwest Washington DC after the fourth of July on a Monday night. American flags adorn the fence and these people are extending their fourth of July weekend by dining out.
Coast-to-Coast/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 32%

Related: Ways the Pandemic May Change Dining Out Forever

3. Denver

Denver, Colorado - October 16, 2021: People in Dairy Block, a historic block located in the Denver LoDo neighborhood, once home to Windsor Dairy
Faina Gurevich/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 33%

2. Detroit

Detroit, MI, USA - July 16, 2006: Campus Maritus Park in downtown Detroit, named after the publicly owned area of ancient Rome.
csfotoimages/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 34%

1. Nashville, Austin, and Seattle (Tie)

Nashville, Tennessee - June 20, 2019: Colorful neon store signs hang along the bars restaurants and record stores along Broadway Street in downtown Nashville Tennessee USA
Pgiam/istockphoto

Orders with a tip of 20% or more: 38%

Other Tipping Stats

Contactless payment to pizza delivery man on doorstep. POV.
urbazon/istockphoto

Popmenu also dug up some other interesting data on tipping:

  • The pandemic has prompted people to tip more generously. About 58% of people say they’re tipping servers and delivery drivers more.

  • About 56% of people say they tip servers 20% or more, and 20% are even more generous, tipping 25% or more.

  • Customers aren’t quite as generous with delivery drivers: 38% say they tip delivery drivers 20% or more, and 61% say they tip at least 15%.

Related: Etiquette Rules No One Follows Anymore

Meet the Writer


Saundra Latham

Saundra Latham regularly exploits her grocery’s fuel-points program for free tanks of gas and skips the salon in favor of the $5.99 sales at Great Clips. She has made her home in areas with a low cost of living, such as Dayton, Ohio, and Knoxville, Tenn.

Before joining Cheapism as the site’s first staff writer, Saundra freelanced for websites including Business Insider, ConsumerSearch, The Simple Dollar, The Motley Fool, and About.com. She was previously an editor at The Columbus Dispatch, one of Ohio’s largest daily newspapers. She holds a master’s in communication from Ohio State University and a bachelor’s in journalism from American University. 

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