Has a waiter or waitress ever drawn a smiley face on your receipt? Like they think we’re so dumb, the fake cheer will make us tip more? Well, they might be right . . .
A new study in the Journal of Hospitality Management found people DO tip more if they see a smiley face on their receipt. But the kind your server draws wasn’t really what they looked at.
They printed different tip suggestions on people’s receipts, like 15, 20, or 25%. And each one had a different emoji next to it. So, they basically wanted to see if the emojis would SHAME people into tipping more.
The lowest percentage had a neutral-face emoji. The rest had smiley faces, and the smile got bigger and bigger as the percentages went up.
The average tip without emojis on there was 22.9%, and rose to 25.4% with them . . . an 11% increase.
They also tried it with delivery orders, and saw a 10% bump. And takeout orders saw the biggest increase, 33% bigger tips.
