12/2/2015
By Ivan Pereira
New Yorkers who shell out a fortune for a Manhattan pad aren’t as generous when it comes to tipping for food delivery, a study released Wednesday found.
Real estate listings website StreetEasy compared its 2014 city median rent data from the neighborhoods it covers and the average tipping percentage in those same areas, based on the typical tipping amount on Seamless.
Seventeen of the top 20 neighborhoods that tip the least are in Manhattan, with Upper Carnegie Hill renters giving the least amount, an average of 12.25%, StreetEasy found.
Alan Lightfeldt, a data scientist at StreetEasy, said the initial analysis points to a correlation between higher rents and lower tips, but said there isn’t enough data to indicate why.
The citywide percentage for Seamless tipping is 12.9%, but the ordering service doesn’t have data on cash tips made by customers, according to a Seamless representative.
Greenpoint residents tipped the best, with an average of 15.3%, followed by Sunset Park and Woodside with 15.1%. The median rents for those neighborhoods are $3,200, $1,750 and $1,795 respectively.
The neighborhoods that tipped the least were Upper Carnegie Hill, Battery Park City, which had an average of 12.41%, the South Street Seaport, 12.67%, and Central Park South, 12.71%. The median rents for those neighborhoods were $5,060, $3,850, $3,861 and $6,900 respectively.
The report also found, not surprisingly, that neighborhoods with higher rent burdens, meaning a higher percentage of incomes goes to rent, tipped less. For example, Brooklyn Heights has a rent-to-income ratio of 30% and residents tip an average of 14%, while in Elmhurst, where the ratio is 42%, the typical tip was 13.1%, according to the report.
“Those who are highly burdened are looking at every dollar they are spending, because they have few of them,” Lightfeldt said.
He added that some customers have a stuck amount that they always tip with, and in some cases leads to a smaller percentage depending on the restaurant.
“This could speak to this mentality that if you tip on Seamless, you have this discreet dollar amount that you will tip,” he said.
Lightfeldt said that with the holidays around the corner, being alerted to poor gratuity habits might actually push New Yorkers into tipping better.
“I think it would be a good reminder to New Yorkers to keep in mind how much they are tipping, not just the money amount but also the percentage,” he said.
