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Restaurant owners in U.S. cities hosting the FIFA World Cup 2026—stacking up to be the most expensive in history—are adding a mandatory tip to checks to account for the fact that international visitors do not share America’s tipping culture.
Tipping is, for better or worse, built into the expected compensation of restaurant workers in the U.S. Most American servers and bartenders earn less than the minimum wage and largely rely on tips to make up the difference.
Some restaurants in U.S. host cities, expecting an influx of millions of international visitors for the tournament, plan to combine the tip into the overall cost of the meal to ensure their workers are compensated. The move comes as soccer fans have already been hit by sky-high costs for flights, hotels, tickets and transportation to games.
In Atlanta, for example, T’s Brunch Bar will increase its existing automatic 18 percent gratuity to 20 percent.
“Different people’s cultures, it’s not nothing bad, they just don’t tip,” Teneshia Murray Butler, who owns the restaurant, told Fox 5 Atlanta. “They’re not used to it in other countries. And so they just don’t like the tip.”
Restaurants in other host cities are taking the same measures.
In Boston, some businesses have proposed a mandatory 20 percent tip be added to customers’ final bills.
Steve DiFillippo, who owns an Italian restaurant called Davio’s and who serves on the Massachusetts Restaurant Association board, told NBC 10 Boston that restaurants will notify customers of the policy change by including a message on their menus.
He said the move was critical to protecting workers.
“Our servers and bartenders are the lifeblood of our industry. We would never want them to get hurt,” he told the broadcaster.
George Pantos, owner of Jimmy’s Pub & Restaurant in Mansfield, disagreed with adding a mandatory service charge. He told NBC 10 that he’d prefer to post signs reminding visitors to tip and to trust that they will tip on their own.
“If we’re as busy as we speculate, it won’t be a problem,” he told the outlet.
The same concerns over employee well-being are driving a push for mandatory tips in Kansas City.
Mike Burris, the executive director of the Missouri Restaurant Association, told the Kansas City Beacon that the organization is advising restaurants in the city to add mandatory tips to diners’ bills during the six-week tournament.
“If I was a server, I wouldn’t be too happy if I took care of somebody for 90 minutes, and they didn’t tip just because they didn’t know any better,” Burris told the paper.
The mandatory tip policies are expected to be temporary, but they’ll still be implemented at a time when Americans are already squeezed.
David Henkes, the senior principal at food research firm Technomic, told Fox News Digital that making tipping mandatory could upset the already cash-strapped locals living in host cities.
“Restaurant traffic has been declining, and anything that is perceived to increase the cost does risk some consumer backlash,” he said. “Particularly if it’s not well-publicized or if consumers feel there’s an expectation to tip on top of the automatic tip.”
