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A shocking new study of tipping habits in the fifty states conducted by restaurant tech bigwig Toast shows California in last place — with allegedly stingy Golden Staters slipping well below the 20% most Americans are now expected to pay.
Californians left an average 17.1% per transaction, the dirty data revealed — 17.6% per sit-down meal and 14.8% at counter service restaurants.
California found itself in the bottom spot on a national ranking of tipping practices. Getty Images The numbers were reportedly aggregated from transactions completed on Toast’s popular point-of-sale touchscreens.
Generous Delaware topped the list, with an overall average of 21.4%. Other impressive tippers were Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Wyoming, all of which had an overall tipping average of approximately 20%.
California isn’t the only state on the increasingly cash-strapped West Coast that’s slacking off in the server-compensation department.
Washington came in third-to-last on the list, with an overall tipping average of 17.6%.
According to the report, two West Coast states are extremely stingy when it comes time to leave the tip. Getty Images According to the analysis, the average tip at a full-service restaurant in the U.S. was 19.1% for the second quarter of 2026 — matching the seven-year low reached in the same quarter last year.
Americans have become increasingly fed up with the country’s tipping culture, as new tipping norms demand higher and higher percentages, according to reports.
Tipping expert William Michael Lynn, professor emeritus of consumer behavior and marketing at Cornell University, told the California Post in August that the country’s anti-tipping sentiment is growing.
“People’s attitudes towards tipping have gotten worse,” said Lynn, who has been studying tipping for over 40 years. “They’ve started to dislike it more and more.”
According to Lynn’s research, 32% of people said they wanted tipping abolished in 2016. That number climbed to 52% by 2022.
Diners are also being asked to tip in more situations than ever, including self-service kiosks and corner-store counters.
This leads to guilt-tipping, experts say, where people feel pressure to tip even in situations were no service was performed.
“People feel a sense of guilt when a cashier is standing there waiting for them to put in their tip amount,” etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore previously told The Post.
“A lot of people don’t necessarily feel like a tip is warranted because the employee hasn’t really done much for them. They just took their order and put it in a bag and said, ‘Here you go!’”
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