When and Where Do We Tip the Most?

During the second quarter of 2025, our average restaurant or bar tip was 14.99%. However, continuing into the late-night hours, we become more generous with a 2 am peak of 19.48% at bars and 18.55%, overall.

Below, tip size correlates to the time and place:

Tipping States

As for where geographically, the highest tippers live on the East Coast with the lowest in the South and West. At the bottom of a LendingTree state list, Utah’s tips averaged 4.09%, and Mississippi’s, 4.91%, while the leap to New Hampshire’s 16.1% is massive:

Nightlife Cities

Meanwhile, we could call Detroit, Michigan our nightlife leader.

Compared to other U.S. cities, the proportion of Detroit’s restaurant and bar transactions are relatively high between 7 pm and 4 am:

At 28.4 percent of all transactions, Detroit’s bar and restaurant traffic was #1 in the Square list. As for Tampa and Atlanta, even with a slide, still, they are near the top of the nightlife crowd.

Consequently, they also are probably among the biggest tippers.

Our Bottom Line: Defaults

In addition to time and place, a behavioral economist would say that defaults shape our tipping behavior.

In a past econife post, we told a tipping tale from one quick service restaurant. Although they were located in an affluent suburb of Boston, the tip jar (with a hopeful adjacent note) received minimal attention. Then though, in 2015, they switched to a custom tipping screen. Immediately displaying a difference, the average popped to $4 an hour per employee. Somewhat similarly, when riders were given a tip option after they began using credit cards to pay for NYC cab rides, they added 20% to the fare.

Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein and Nobel economics Laureate Richard Thaler explained that we gravitate to defaults because they simplify our lives. In their book Nudge, they add that many people believe the default must be beneficial because it is the default. Furthermore, people get decision fatigue and select the “yeah, whatever” choice because the default is almost like “doing nothing.”

A custom tipping screen gives diners and drinkers a default choice that we suspect further encourages larger tips during the late night hours.

My sources and more: All of my recent nightlife and tipping data came from Square and LendingTree. From there, I returned to this econlife post with 2022 data that differed from today’s.