Has a waiter or waitress ever drawn a smiley face on your receipt? A new study in the Journal of Hospitality Management found people DO tip more if they see a smiley face on their receipt.
But the kind your server draws wasn't really what they looked at. They printed different tip suggestions on people's receipts, like 15, 20, or 25%. And each one had a different emoji next to it. So, they basically wanted to see if the emojis would SHAME people into tipping more. The lowest percentage had a neutral-face emoji. The rest had smiley faces, and the smile got bigger and bigger as the percentages went up.
The average tip without emojis on there was 22.9%, and rose to 25.4% with them...an 11% increase! They also tried it with delivery orders, and saw a 10% bump. And takeout orders saw the biggest increase, 33% bigger tips!!
SOURCE: ScienceDirect / NY Post