Extra percentage to tip bartender?

Re: Extra percentage to tip bartender?

• charlotte989875 member

  

  August 2018

  knottie3a07c9dc00519677 said:

  Thanks for responding to my message about tacky tip jars below. Now we're down to the last few days! I realize that I need to hand a tip envelope over to the bartender at the end of the reception and need help figuring out what percent to give.
  
  1. It is a host bar.
  2. There is a 20% gratuity included in our bill on everything (food, venue, etc.). We have prepaid this for all but the bar. (Twenty percent will automatically be added to the bar bill once that is totaled.)
  3. Since the bartender has to share the automatically applied 20% with the servers and we are not allowing a tip jar, we need to know what the customary percentage is for the extra cash tip that we will give to the bartender.
  
  Also, do you tip the banquet master?
  
  Thanks!
  
  P.S. Send Valium

  Congratulations! So close! 
  
  
  Is the banquet master the same as a day-of coordinator? We tipped ours $200-300 I think (I don’t remember the exact amount but I think closer to $200 and we had roughly 220 guests.)
  
  Do you know how many bartenders and how many servers? I’m guessing you won’t know this, or how they split out the added gratuity. Do you know an estimate of the bar bill? I’d say add another 10% of the bar bill for the bartenders. Or if there are 2-3 bartenders add another $200-300 total for all the bartenders to split. 
  
  Hope that helps! 

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• knottie7d6129cc92a62680 member

  

  August 2018

  an additional separate tip for the bartenders and banquet master would be so much appreciated
  

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• maine7mob member

  

  August 2018

  We gave them a cash tip at the end. They did a fantastic job!
  
  

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• knottieae8af736662ece6d member

  

  August 2018

  Are you sure that 20% is actually a gratuity that is going to the service staff? A lot of places tack on a 20% service charge but don't actually distribute it as a tip, and some caterers are quite sneaky about it. Please double check and don't assume it is actually a tip. 
  
  This practice of misleading customers about the mandatory service charge is illegal in New York, and one caterer who got sued for this practice now recommends that people tip $3-5 per guest to the maitr'd and $3-5 per guest to the rest of the service staff. That might be a good rule of thumb for the bartender in this situation as well. Figure about 50-75% of guests would tip the bartender $1 at least once, and some would tip for most or all drinks. When you do a consumption bar they tell you to budget 2 drinks per person for the cocktail hour and 1 per person per hour after that, so another way you could do it would be to assume 6 drinks per adult guest and give the bartender $6 for each adult guest to compensate for that.

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