When you take everything at face value, you can make wrong assumptions. This study claiming Chicago tips way better than St. Louis is a great example.

I want to be clear that I have St. Louis and Chicago friends and I'm not playing favorites. Both cities have their good and bad aspects. It may very well be true that Chicago people tip better than St. Louis people. The devil is in the details though.

Kudos to Central Illinois Proud for the find on this one. They shared a story based on a PR Newswire release declaring that Chicago is one of the top 20 tipping cities in America. Fine. Congrats. St. Louis is nowhere to be found. However, I'd like to highlight one detail that is important in my opinion. I'll bold it to make my point. Here's their exact phrasing:

Popmenu conducted an anonymous survey of 1,000 consumers ages 18 and older across the U.S. from October 5 to October 6, 2021. In addition, Popmenu tracked tipping percentages for online food orders placed in the last 180 days nationwide and then zeroed in on larger U.S. cities with populations over 300,000 to compile its list.

Online food orders. Not sitting in a restaurant face-to-face with a waiter/waitress. Online. Not saying it's irrelevant. Not at all. My point is this doesn't definitively mean Chicago brothers and sisters are more generous than their St. Louis counterparts.

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It's an interesting study and worth a read if you'd like to see how online ordering and tipping have developed especially during the pandemic. Good to at least see that the percentage of tips seems to be higher as restaurant workers have to work that much harder in this time to do their jobs.

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