CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Tipping Screens in Canadian Restaurants

Not long ago, tipping in a Canadian restaurant meant adding about 15 percent after a sit-down meal. Today a bakery customer may be handed a terminal proposing 18, 20 or 25 percent before taking one bite. Such screens have proliferated since the pandemic, and in a recent national poll, 62 percent reported feeling pressured to tip more than they did half a decade earlier.

Gerald Thompson, a retired teacher in Moncton, recalls being prompted for a 20 percent gratuity on a muffin and a coffee he had collected himself. “Nobody had served me,” he says, “but with the cashier watching I felt like a cheapskate.” Nowadays he pays in cash wherever possible, purely to circumvent the screens.

For servers, though, gratuities remain indispensable. Alyssa Moreau, a Montreal server for nine years, earns more than half her income in tips and is unapologetic about the prompts. “Plenty of customers used to just round down,” she maintains, “and the suggestions remind diners we’re relying on that money for rent.”

Liam O’Connell, a consumer-behaviour researcher at an Ontario university, attributes the screens’ effectiveness largely to deliberate design. “Make the lowest option 18 percent,” he points out, “and few people bother to enter their own amount.” Many terminals also calculate the tip on the after-tax total, which inflates it inconspicuously. He would have provinces require a “no tip” button as prominent as the others and suggestions based on the pre-tax price.

Some owners have abandoned tipping entirely. In 2024 Nadia Haddad stopped accepting gratuities at her Calgary bistro and raised menu prices by roughly 18 percent; her staff now earn a fixed, higher hourly wage plus a share of the profits. The transition was turbulent: several regulars, concluding that the bistro had simply become expensive, disappeared. Yet staff turnover has dropped sharply, and her servers no longer dread a slow Tuesday.

Rajiv Mehra, of the Canadian Hospitality Owners’ Association, doubts that other restaurateurs will emulate her. A service-included menu looks costlier than a competitor’s even when the final bill is identical, so pioneers are penalized. The screens, he argues, have lifted staff incomes without forcing owners to raise menu prices.

Having waited tables all through university, I side with Ms. Haddad. Tips made my earnings 6. Choose…comfortably highfeast or faminehard to declaretied to the menu, precisely the problem her fixed wages solve. I sympathize with Ms. Moreau, but the screens shift the 7. Choose…burdenpleasurehabitrisk of paying staff from employers to customers, and nobody should feel guilty about skipping a tip on a muffin he 8. Choose…paid for in cashhad ordered from a server at a tablefetched from the counter himselfshared with a friend. Professor O’Connell’s reforms would at least make the screens more honest, particularly basing suggestions on the 9. Choose…averageafter-taxdiscountedpre-tax amount. As for Mr. Mehra’s worry, I suspect diners will adapt once they notice the final bill is 10. Choose…much higher than beforeessentially unchangedprinted on the receiptlower than at chains. I would gladly pay more on the menu knowing the staff were paid fairly.