As a party of 4 adults and 2 children - are we still eligible for the service charge of 18% for parties of 6 or more ?
Yes
4+2
That;s what I thought. Thank you for confirming.
Yes if there are six people, the 18% is included automatically, even if one is a child under 3 not eating.
If you wish to add more for a larger gratuity, be careful. I generally like to tip 20 percent. On our last trip at H&V they automatically added the 18 percent, which was fine. I crossed this out and changed the amount to what would have been a 20-percent tip. When I got home I found that I had ended up tipping 38 percent.
Thanks for your advice Robert. To be honest, we are from the U.K and we don’t generally tip more than 12.5 % over here so we definitely won’t be tipping more than 18%. It’s just as well that it is compulsory otherwise our normal gratuity would be frowned upon I’m sure.
Just curious, do servers in the UK make a normal living wage or do they do like some states do where server minimum wage is significantly lower than other minimum wage?
Example:
In North Carolina the minimum wage is $7.25 but the minimum wage for servers is $2.13. Both unimaginable for me.
Our national minimum wage for everybody over 25 years old is approximately $10.50 per hour. Servers are not treated any differently to other workers.However, eating out in restaurants is much more affordable in the U.S and you have a huge selection of family and buffet restaurants that we don’t have. Our restaurant bills are so much higher here that adding a 20% tip would not be very popular.