...are costing the server money? Most eat in restaurants charge the servers a small percentage of their sales everyday, for example, if a server sold $1,000.00 in a day they would have to pay the restaurant maybe $10.00 to $15.00. Therefore if half of this $1,000.00 was in take out food, the server would be paying $5.00 to $7.50 to the restaurant wether they were tipped on this amount or not. So assumming no one tipped on the $500.00 take out that day and the server made an average of 15% on the other $500.00, they have still done $1,000.00 worth of work (taking care of your take out order is still work and you are still being served) and ended up with less than $70.00 for the day compared to $150.00 which would be 15% on $1,000.00. Keep in mind, I am not talking about restaurants that actually have seperate take out counters, such as Swiss Chalet. So next time you get that $50.00 take out order consider leaving at least $1.00 or $2.00 so your server is not actually losing money on the transaction.