Not too long ago I was visiting an old friend who lives in a large city. She lives the "high income, high spending" lifestyle so common among young urban working professionals. He live-in boyfriend is the head bartender at a place specializing in 'craft-cocktails', and during my visit we went to his bar. It's the kind of place hipsters frequent and the drinks go for $15-18 each. Thankfully, since my friend was dating the bartender we paid the house price of $5 each, and my friend picked up the tab. Wanting to be generous, I insisted on covering the tip. Had we paid full price, the drinks would have cost $102, and I left a $20 bill - a tip of 19.6%. I thought that seemed decent.
Later on my friend came up to me and in a nice-but-informative tone she said "just so that you know, if you leave that kind of tip it's borderline offensive to the bartender. my boyfriend understands because we know you don't know any better, but the expectation is for a larger tip"
whaaa.... I essentially tipped 20% on what the full-price would have been. No good, I'm told. 20% should be considered the absolute bare minimum, and what you'd give for pouring a beer, not for making a 'craft cocktail' that takes so much time (about 2-3 minutes, from my observations). So I started googling it, and there's a whole bunch of articles from lifestyle magazines that back up this crazy idea. I keep hearing that if you want to be considered a good tipper on a craft cocktail you should leave up to 50% (!) If you order several drinks (like for a table of 4, like our group) you should tip more because it demands more time. These articles quote "cocktail artists" who state that they will look down on customers who leave tips of 20% or less (and don't leave loose change, i keep reading - somehow a $5 bill plus four quarters is poor manners).
The rationalization given is that 'craft-cocktails' take so much more time compared with pouring a beer or shot, and a instead of 50-70 beers/hour a bartender can only make about 15-20 craft cocktails. But here's my problem: the coctails already cost 2-3x as much as a beer, and custom dictates you tip based on price. Frankly, I don't care that it takes more 'skill' and training - if a bartender is averaging $3-4 per cocktail, he's pocketing over $50/hour and most likely not paying tax on it. Ironically, a line-cook preparing twice as many $30/plate meals won't earn 1/3rd of that.
Needless to say, I'm not likely to ever frequent such places. But it's made my head spin that a large group of people have genuinely accepted this. I should have been a bartender.