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Originally Posted by Rodney
This is a good question. I used to have a friend who worked at a fine restaurant with a great wine list. A great dinner for four there might range from $250 to $600, depending on what the customers drank; the restaurant had many $100/200 bottle wines, plus brandies, dessert wines, and so on. So does the waiter deserve a larger tip just for serving a different bottle of wine?
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Absolutely the waiter does. Here is why:
In almost every restaurant the servers have to tip the bar. In many of them it is based on a percentage of the drink sales (usually about 10% of the bar sales). Say you have dinner for $250 and spend $250 on drinks. The final tab is $500 but you don't want to tip on the drinks so you leave a 15% tip on the $250 ($37.5). Because the bar sales were $250, the bar is due $25 from that table. Now the server gets only $12.5 which is essentially a 5% tip on just the food sales. Even worse, the restaurant makes the server claim 8% of sales as tips so he has to report 8% of $500 ($40). The 'tip' you gave him ended up going only to the govt and the bar. Server got nothing.
The insane thing about the whole situation is that you spent $500 on a meal. That is very luxurious and extreme but in the end you go cheap on the tip.