I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read this headline. Tipping culture gone totally mad? Seems a Salt Lake City airport Shake Shack was apparently upcharging customers who declined to tip. The Shack says it doesn’t do that. But a TikTokker found it does… Or did…
Amazing!
B.D. Powell and his wife tested the kiosk ordering system at the airport, after hearing from others that it up-charges customers who don’t tip.
Their video shows the couple approaching the kiosk, ordering three shakes, and checking out. But there’s a hitch… The kiosk screen tells them, there, “has been a pricing update on one or more,” of their cart items and invites them to, “review these changes.”
The discover that the price of each item in their ‘cart’ has been hiked by $0.50.
Confusion, to say the least…
According to a TODAY story, “[TikTok] viewers expressed confusion in the comments section.”
“Isn’t that illegal,” asked one user.
“You’re ordering yourself on a kiosk why would you need to tip?” asked a second user.
A third joked, “Are you tipping the touch screen?”
The Shack responds…
Shake Shack’s head office commended directly to the video post: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. This is not a Shake Shack policy, and we’re currently looking into it with our licensee, HMS-Host, that operates the Salt Lake City airport location and kiosk system.”
The head office also posted a statement at its website: “We want our community to know that we are aware of the recent video shared online by a guest at an airport Shack that is owned and operated by our licensee HMSHost.”
“HMSHost investigated the matter and determined it was an error within their kiosk technology unre-lated to tipping,” Shake Shack explained. “They have informed us that the issue has been resolved. We’ll continue working with all our licensed partners to make sure every guest is taken care of at Shake Shack.”
My take
Subsequent news dispatches say the ‘error’ has apparently not arisen at any other Shake Shack lo-cations.
I should hope not!
But consider this… If the Shake Shack where the ‘error’ occurred serves 2,000 ‘guests’ a day – which is not out of the question for an average Fast Food outlet, and even 1/4 of customers use the kiosks, purchasing an average of 3 items each. And don’t tip…
That works out to a cumulative up-charge of $750 per day. Which translates to $22,500 per month, or a potential $270,000 per year. And I’ll bet not one cent of that ‘no-tipping charge’ made it into the pockets of the employees…
~ Maggie J.