Do You Want Better Service In The Restaurant? Dress Representatively

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

Giving and receiving tips is an important part of the restaurant business. Researchers have found that waiters serve customers better if they think they will get a good tip. They also found that waiters use stereotypes in judging which customers will leave what extra pay.

Everyone uses first impressions to make a momentary assessment, says Dr. Dae-Young Kim, an associate professor at the University of Missouri and co-author of the study. Waiters, especially when they are busy, need to quickly decide how best to allocate their time and energy.

So they are looking for ways to determine which customers will reward them for their efforts. The more businesslike the customer is, the more likely the waiter is to stereotype him as a good payer - regardless of gender or race.

For their study, the researchers studied 222 former and current waiters in restaurants in the United States. Participants were provided with photographs depicting people of different races, genders and clothing styles, and were asked to state which ones they thought would give a good tip.

69 of the waiters saw pictures of people of European descent, 45 were shown African-Americans, 48 were Latino, and 60 were East Asian. The participants were presented with eight models of clients, dressed in both styles - business and everyday.

For business attire, women wore a black formal suit with a skirt and black leather shoes, and men wore a black suit, white shirt, and a solid color tie. For casual wear, both sexes wore white short-sleeved shirts, blue jeans and comfortable shoes like sneakers. One of the members of the research team took photos of each of the models in both types of clothing in the same place in the same restaurant.

Based on the photos, participants were asked to rate what tip the depicted customer was likely to give on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being the worst tip and 7 being the best. They were also asked what percentage of the total food price they expect the tip to be.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that business-dressed men, regardless of race, were identified as more likely to tip well than women. Although waiters define women as paying less tips than men when both sexes are in formal attire, they say they will serve the ladies better.

Among the representatives of the minorities, it was determined that those dressed in business are more likely to give good tips than those dressed daily. African Americans are perceived as giving smaller tips and will therefore receive poorer service than European customers, but only when both groups wear casual clothes.

Waiters use stereotypes and first impressions to determine which customers will receive better service. The findings of the study show restaurant managers the importance of appropriate staff training to ensure that all customers receive the same good service. Giving tips encourages waiters to provide quality services to some customers, but leads to unequal service to others.