Restaurant payment app starts its second attempt to make tipping a thing in Japan
Many would say that along with delicious food and great service, no tipping is right up there among the best parts about restaurant dining in Japan. However, one cashless payment provider wants to play a role in changing that last part, and now includes a prompt encouraging customers to leave a tip.
Tokyo-based Dinii actually has two different tipping systems, with the second being added this past May. It introduced its first take on tipping, called 'Oshi Support,' in 2020, but that works a little differently than the sort of tipping conventionally seen in American restaurants. Taking a cue from Japanese idol culture in which ardent fans support their favorite performer ('oshi') through extra spending, Dinii's Oshi Support allows customers to look at a list of profiles for the restaurant's waitstaff and use it to select an extra payment to be given to the server of their choice.
Dinii's new system, simply called 'tipping,' instead prompts users to select a percentage-based addition to their bill, which goes to the restaurant.
▼ Dinii's tip selection screen, with options ranging up to 25 percent
Dinii is usable at about 3,000 restaurants in Japan, and the company says that around 13 percent of those make use of the service's new tip payment option. Though tipping is largely recognized in Japan as originating in foreign dining cultures, Dinii says that its data shows a fairly even split between Japanese and non-Japanese users of its new tip function, based on user language settings, with an overall 56 percent Japanese/43 percent foreigner breakdown (though 61 percent of tippers in the Kansai area, around Osaka and Kyoto, are non-Japanese).
That doesn't mean, though, that Japanese customers are as eager to start tipping as their overseas counterparts. Dinii's statistics about the tipper nationalities don't mean very much without comparing them to the nationalities of the service's total users. As a Japan-based service without much recognition internationally, it's likely a safe bet that the majority of Dinii's users are Japanese, and so roughly half of tippers being foreigners likely means that far less than 50 percent of the total number of Japanese users are leaving tips.
As for the Oshi Support system, through which one waitress says she was given 70,000 yen (US$480) in a single month, by co-opting fan jargon and working through perusable profiles, one could make the argument that it's actually closer to the parasocial transactions of host/hostess bars or online influencer donations, where the extra payment has less to do with skillful service and more a desire to support a presumed personal connection.
There are a few other factors to also take into consideration regarding the decision to tip or not in Japan. First, many restaurants in Japan already include a tip substitute in the form of something called otoshi, a small appetizer that is served to customers without them ordering it and must be paid for. Otoshi portions are small and their ingredients usually inexpensive, and they're priced to boost the restaurant's profit margin a little extra beyond the food and drinks that customers actually order. It's also not unusual for bars and fancy restaurants in Japan to have a seating/table charge built into the bill. Finally, with tipping not being a common practice at restaurants in Japan, concepts such as the waitstaff pooling and splitting their tips, or a portion of the tips also going to the kitchen staff, may or may not be in place, depending on the establishment.
It's also worth pointing out that part of the way Dinii presents its tip option runs counter to a belief in Japanese society. The text above the tip percentage options reads 'Let's show appreciation with a tip. A special thank you for special service.' To diners in Japan, though, good service isn't supposed to be 'special,' it's the norm, and something the restaurant should provide as a matter of course, so hopefully attempts to wedge tipping into dining out in Japan won't erode that part of its culture.
Source: PR Times, Mainichi Shimbun via Yahoo! Japan News via Jin
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: PR Times
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