And where people tip the best
Bad news for baristas in Hawaii: Customers there are the worst tippers nationwide, doling out an average gratuity of 14.8%, according to new data from the payment processing company Square. That’s a big difference from Idaho, where the the best tippers in the nation give an average 17.4%.
Square based the rankings on millions of credit and debit transactions in July 2017, from over 2 million sellers across the country, ranging from small businesses to chains like Whole Foods. Nationwide, the average tip was 16.4%. States including Georgia and Oregon fall into that middle range.
Square’s data for each state reflects a minimum of tens of thousands of transactions, with up to a million transactions in highly populated states like California.
Some of the spots with the worst tippers, like Hawaii, the District of Columbia and California, are home to some of the highest earners in the U.S. Conversely, Square’s ranking shows that residents of some lower-income states, such as West Virginia and Mississippi, handed out some of the most generous tips. Only Alaska bucks the trend, by landing in the top 10 states for both earning and tipping.
Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly stated that the July 2017 Square data included transactions from Starbucks. Starbucks stopped using Square in the fourth quarter of 2016.