What is a tip out?

A tip out is the share of a server's or bartender's tips that goes to the people who supported their section — usually the bar, the bussers, the food runners and sometimes the host stand. It comes out at the end of the shift, before the server's money is really theirs.

Who gets tipped out

It depends entirely on the house. A common shape in a full-service restaurant looks like this, but every number here is a policy decision your employer has made, not a standard:

Why it comes off sales and not tips

Because sales are the thing the support staff actually worked on. If a server has a slow night for tips but sold $3,000 of food, the runners still ran $3,000 of food. Taking the tip out from sales keeps the support staff's pay tied to the work they did rather than to how generous one server's tables happened to be.

The trade-off is real, and servers feel it: a table that leaves nothing still generates a tip out. On a bad night the percentage of your tips going out can climb well above what it looks like on paper. Running the numbers is the only way to see it.

Cash and credit

Tip outs are commonly paid in cash at the end of the shift, out of the cash tips in your apron, with credit tips arriving later on your paycheck. That means the cash you walk out with and the tips you actually earned are two different numbers — and on a heavy credit night the cash can run short. The tip-out calculator tracks both if you tell it how your house works.

TYPTAPP does the math. Whether a particular tip-out arrangement is permitted depends on federal, state and local law and on your employer's arrangements, and that is a question for your employer, your labour department or a lawyer — not for a calculator.