Tipping culture is being redesigned, and a hospitality professor says the first real test is already happening at restaurants near you.

Wayne Smith says tipping and non-tipping sections are being beta tested now, giving customers a choice that changes the nature of the transaction entirely. Pick the tipping section and you get full table service. Pick the other and you order at a kiosk, pick up your own food, and walk away.

Smith also traces tipping’s roots to post-Civil War America, where it became a tool for keeping minority workers from earning full wages. That history, he says, is not separate from the screen in front of you today.

Topics: tipping culture, tipping sections, hospitality research, tipping history, service industry reform

GUEST: Wayne Smith

Originally aired on2026-05-15