At The Orleans buffet last night with Jean and Brad Scott, we discussed the issue among ourselves and with the cashier.
Jean and Brad leave a cash tip on the table and always have (and probably always will). Typically, they leave $1 per person, which we’d say is about standard, though if there’s something special about the service, they’ll leave more (Brad is a good tipper).
Anthony Curtis is also "george" in the tipping department. He says that it depends on the price of the buffet and the number of people dining at the table. For example, he’ll leave between $2-$3 (eating alone at a $4 breakfast buffet) and up to $10 (with three other people at a gourmet dinner buffet).
At the Orleans and all the Boyd properties, the buffet servers pocket their own tips. When the tip is put on a credit card at the cashier, that too goes to the server. The way it works is the server checks the receipt, which the host or hostess always leaves on the table, and if there’s a tip on it, he or she keeps the receipt, brings it to the cashier, and collects. Servers and cashiers, we were told, settle up at the end of every shift.
We’d never heard of buffet servers pooling their tips, but the cashier at the Orleans thought somewhere they might, so we called around to a half-dozen buffets (Wynn, Harrah’s, Palace Station, MGM Grand, Bellagio, and Cosmopolitan) and asked. Five out of six confirmed that the servers keep their own tips. The buffet cashier at the MGM Grand said, "I can’t answer that question." So we called Bellagio and figure that it’s the same company-wide (although this is not necessarily the case, especially within the MGM group of properties, which used actually be required to compete against each other, as well as the corporate competition, and where some properties, notably MGM Grand itself, often seem to do their own thing). We also assume that the servers collect their credit-card tips in the same way as at the Orleans.
Still, since it's a somewhat sensitive topic and difficult to get to the bottom of without a visit, this question has inspired us to put this in the mix for a future reader poll, where we might combine it with some other similar FAQs we receive concerning the etiquette of tipping your room maid, valet parker, showroom concierge, and so on, since it's been many years since we last canvased either our panel of experts or our readers on the subject. So, stay tuned!
