There's a street food hall place in Manchester where you can only order via an app and some food businessess force you to pay a "tip" while ordering your food. Can pay 5, 10 or 15%.
Who the fuck do they think is going to willingly pay more than they have to? It's blatantly a service charge, you don't give tips before you've even ordered your food.
It's more normal in fancy places, or where you genuinely want to thank a server for above and beyond service. But it's not expected, you're not rude for not doing it, and you don't do it for just any old outting.
I'll tip a bartender who mixes me a drink with 3+ ingredients that's not on their drink list, I'll tip the server who painstakingly reviews the menu with our table to make sure we don't have issues with allergies, I'll tip the barista who rushes over with a cloth to help me after I accidentally knocked over my whole coffee who tried to make me a second coffee on the house. Because that's excellent service and tipping is just an excellent way of saying thank you.
Yea, I meant we don't tip in Britain as a matter of course but sure if I've received excellent service I might. I am a bit of a tight-arse though, not going to lie, so it's rare.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. While we typically don't tip, you can go to most food places with table service and gratuity is either automatically added, or is an option when you pay.
It's definitely appearing as an option more on the pos terminals now that most people prefer to pay contactless rather than cash. I've only had one occasion where the gratuity was automatically added (ironically, on an occasion I would not tip because the service negatively impacted my meal and I had to strike it out) perhaps I've just been lucky.