Tip pool vs tip out

A tip out is money moving from one person to another. A tip pool is money never belonging to one person in the first place.

Tip out

You keep your own tips. At the end of the shift you pay a share to the support staff, usually a percentage of your sales. Your income depends on your own section and your own tables. If you have a good night and the server next to you does not, you keep the difference.

Tip pool

Everyone's tips go into one pot and the pot is divided by an agreed rule — usually hours worked, sometimes weighted by role. Your income depends on the shift as a whole. A great night at your tables lifts everyone slightly; a rough section does not sink you.

Telling them apart on your own shift

• If you declare your own tips and hand over a percentage, it is a tip out.
• If your tips go into a shared pot and come back as a share, it is a pool.
• If the amount you take home varies with your own section, it is a tip out.
• Plenty of houses run both — a pool among the servers, and a tip out from that pool to the bar and the kitchen support. That is normal and it is why the two words get used loosely.

Which is better?

Depends what you want. Tip outs reward individual sections and suit rooms where sections differ a lot. Pools smooth out luck, make it easier to hand a table to whoever is closest, and generally suit teams that run the floor together. Neither is fairer in the abstract; what matters is that the rule is written down and applied the same way every night.