Should you tip on takeout?

Etiquette guidance has converged on something modest for takeout, commonly around 10 percent, or a couple of dollars on a small order, when a staff member took your order, assembled it, packed it, and handed it over, work that is real even though no table service occurred. In many restaurants those staff share in tip pools, and takeout has become a large share of business, so the labor exists whether or not the traditional service model does. Nothing at all is still defensible at a counter where you picked up a bag with no interaction, and no reasonable etiquette authority calls that rude.

What has actually changed is the prompt, not the norm. Point-of-sale systems now request tips at coffee counters, bakeries, self-serve kiosks, and retail registers where tipping was never customary, a shift widely called tipping fatigue, and polls consistently find most Americans feel the requests have gone too far. That is a business decision by software vendors and employers, not an obligation you incurred. The reasonable position is to tip meaningfully where service work happened, tip generously for delivery, which involves a person's vehicle and time, and feel free to select no tip at a screen for a transaction that involved handing you a pre-made item. The deeper problem, that tipping shifts wage responsibility from employers to customers, is real and not solvable at the register.