KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Some Kansas City restaurants are pulling back on automatic gratuity as international visitor numbers fall short of World Cup expectations.
Tipping is standard in American restaurants, but many international visitors, especially from Europe, don’t share that custom. In April, the Missouri Restaurant Association recommended that restaurants in high-traffic World Cup areas add auto-gratuity to protect service staff.
The recommendation was never meant to be a mandate. Customers always had the right to change or remove the charge.
Now, with fewer international travelers than expected in some areas, some restaurants are reconsidering.
Manny’s Mexican Restaurant on Southwest Boulevard added an automatic World Cup gratuity charge to protect their staff.
“We always want to think about our staff,” said David Lopez, director of operations at Manny’s Mexican Restaurant.
Manny’s Mexican Restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri.(KCTV5)
However, they haven’t seen as many international travelers, so they erased the automatic tip.
“Change is a big part. Adaptation matters. We have to go with the flow,” Lopez said. “And that’s a good thing.”
Lopez said the restaurant is not trying to overcharge customers.
“We are not trying to gauge. We are not trying to overcharge,” he said.
The changes to tipping have caused frustration among Kansas City locals. Buddy Lahl, CEO of the Missouri Restaurant Association, wants to clarify the details of the April recommendation.
“It wasn’t a mandatory gratuity that we recommended. It was an auto gratuity,” Lahl said.
Auto gratuity means the receipt should come with a line on the bill for customers to adjust the amount. Mandatory gratuity is a service charge and becomes taxable income.
“So, if you didn’t want to pay the auto gratuity, you didn’t have to, but it kinda helped the folks, foreign travelers, to understand what our tipping culture is all about,” Lahl said.
Lahl said the recommendation doesn’t make sense for restaurants outside of high-traffic areas for World Cup travelers.
“Folks in Kansas City already know how to tip appropriately based on service,” he said.
“Now that you’ve been in it for a couple of weeks, if you don’t have a lot of international travelers coming, or you haven’t seen a problem, then I probably wouldn’t do auto gratuity,” Lahl said. “If you do have a lot of international travelers, you want to protect your service staff and it’s probably the right thing to do to make sure the service staff goes home with a real paycheck.”
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