Walk into Passionfruit Coffee in Bed-Stuy and you’ll see freshly baked madeleines, iced oat lattes and a tattooed barista ready to take your order.

What you won’t see? A tip jar.

There’s also no option to tip on the screen. And that’s by design.

On a recent Monday afternoon, guests had mixed feelings about this policy.

First-time visitor Carrie Lenza, who sipped an $8 espresso special topped with orange peels and mint, said they didn’t see the point in going gratuity-free and wanted to add a tip.

“At the end of the day, if people want to tip for positive service, then you should be able to tip,” they said.

At a table outside, 33-year-old Sana Mustafa had a different take.

“I don’t necessarily care if the tip’s included or not,” she said. “I care more about how much they pay people.”

Passionfruit is one of several new coffee shops in the city trying to get rid of tipping. Sey Coffee, which started in 2013, was one of the first. Tobin Polk, the cofounder, saw how baristas across the city were underpaid and customers were forced to subsidize their wages.

Sey’s policy was launched in response: to provide employees fair compensation in exchange for services. It gained national recognition after being named the best coffee shop in America in 2019 by Food and Wine.

In the past two years, a crop of no-tip coffee shops has opened in Brooklyn: Passionfruit in Bed-Stuy, Three Legged Cat in East Williamsburg, Cleo’s Yarn Shop’s café in Bushwick and Principles GI Coffee House in Gowanus. Til Death in Williamsburg opened four years ago.

Most of the owners who opt for the no-tip system say they do it to provide fair and consistent pay, which they say is the burden of the employer rather than the customer or barista. But some customers say the inability to tip makes them uncomfortable, because they’re still not sure if the person behind the counter is making enough.

Employee wages vary, with Passionfruit starting on the lower end at $22 per hour and seasoned Sey Coffee employees making up to $33. Minimum wage in New York City is $16 for non-tipped employees, while tipped employees like servers earn a $10.65 cash wage and $5.35 tip credit.

‘Scraping By’

Before Passionfruit even opened in 2023, owner Taylor Siok knew he would adopt a no-tip policy. He and his wife, Chloe, call themselves service industry “lifers” who saw a host of workers leave the industry due to inconsistent pay.

Tipping can be unpredictable and dependent on factors such as weather, a customer’s mood or rush-hour traffic. Siok wanted to give his employees a regular career, complete with paid time off and a raise after three months.

“We pay the highest hourly wage that we can,” he said. “We offer consistent hours, and we don’t cut people short or send people home.”

He said the policy has succeeded in attracting talented employees. Plus, staff don’t feel slighted when they’re scheduled for quieter shifts. If the coffee prices are slightly higher — $6 for a small cold brew — so be it.

“During the pandemic, people were getting taken advantage of and overworked, and mis-paid and mistreated,” he said. “That’s a common thing in the hospitality industry, but I think it’s now behind us.”

While some owners believe the business model is sustainable, others say that they’re barely scraping by.

Katie Bishop, who owns Principles Coffee House, is a military veteran with a “compulsion to serve” — through coffee or other means. In her current career, she sees her service as paying her employees the highest possible wage: $25 an hour. Her cafe also offers “pay what you wish” coffee and espressos.

“I probably make $7 an hour with the amount of time I put in here,” Bishop said. “But I grew up poor, so I’m used to it.”

She is able to pay higher wages by raising her prices — something she said wasn’t the smartest economical move.

“There are people who you know are offended at my prices and feel entitled to cheaper coffee, and to be completely frank, those aren’t my customers,” she said. “They don’t understand what I’m trying to do here, and I’m not trying to please everyone.”

Ultimately, Bishop sees doing away with tipping as a win-win: Regulars can avoid awkward interactions, and baristas don’t have to perform for tips.

“When you tip, you sometimes feel obligated, especially when they’re probably not paying them enough,” said longtime Principles customer Christina LeMoines. “It’s a weird social thing — and there’s already enough weird social things to navigate.”

Principles barista Aubrey Barker, 32, agreed.

“Any number of circumstances can affect foot traffic at any given day — it makes it a gamble,” said Barker. “I don’t like the gamble.”

The new normal?

Americans have had qualms with tipping for nearly as long as the country’s existed.

In New York specifically, restaurants have tried (and failed) alternate tipping models for more than a decade.

In the mid-2010s, a series of employers across the city announced no-tipping policies. These included high-profile New York City chefs Danny Meyer, Amanda Cohen, David Chang and Tom Colicchio. By raising prices, they aimed to pay their staffs more liveable wages. But in five years or less of each experiment, all but Cohen had dropped the practice, with most agreeing that it was impractical. Even prior to the pandemic, Meyers had lost 30-40% of front-of-house staffers.

An inability to attract top servers, high labor expenses and even poor customer satisfaction factored into most decisions — with Colicchio even saying that older customers were not ready for higher menu prices and the loss of tipping freedom.

Then along came the pandemic, and a restaurant industry in which owners struggled to cover their costs.

Suddenly, New Yorkers were asked to tip for nearly every meal, takeout order or drip coffee. Many iPad tipping screens at cafés were set to 20%, with options to tip at 25% or 30%.

As tipping seemed to explode, close to half of Americans said they were tired of the whole ordeal.

“It’s really a relationship-based business,” said Stephen Zagor, a Columbia adjunct professor who specializes in the restaurant industry, said. “And the worst time of any relationship is when you actually have to pay.”

But four years after COVID upended the industry, Zagor said, a few brave businesses are once again discussing a tip-free world.

“Now, we’re getting back to what might be considered the new normal — and I’m not exactly sure what that is — but as we progress away from the pandemic, we may very well get back to a no-tip world,” Zagor said.

This year, tipping has become a hot-button issue in the presidential election, with both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris offering proposals to avoid federal taxes on tips. Zagor said that could be big — but was skeptical that it could ever become policy.

For a typical restaurant, the measure would be mutually beneficial for both owners and servers. But the gratuity-free restaurants would miss out. “It’s certainly going to be cost versus commitment,” he said. “Some are still going to be committed to the fact they still want to include tips, equalize pay and create a more perfect work environment. But they’ll be missing out on some of that cost saving.”

Currently, Zagor said, the payment system around tipping is broken, but tipping will likely never fully disappear, especially when the majority of restaurants — mom and pops — have a hard time transitioning.

Maintaining a no-tip venture is all about balance. Sometimes, when money isn’t the primary motivator, coffee shops can get away with lower wages if the team feels motivated by the mission. Employees feel like they’re making a difference, Zagor said.

Other times, they might feel exploited.

Zacharie Adams was working in the kitchen of the now-closed Crown Heights cafe Hunky Dory when a no-tip policy was implemented in mid-2020, after returning from pandemic closures.

“For one or two of the front-of-house members, I think it for sure deterred them from working, since they weren’t making as much as they used to in the past,” he said. “For the back of house, it helped a lot, because they weren’t making as much.”

Before no-tipping was implemented, front-of-house staff made at least double what the kitchen staff made. The new model lasted until 2021, when Hunky Dory closed.

‘It’s a Band-Aid’

Adams thinks that 20% surcharges should automatically be included on the bill — but that even that would be a temporary solution.

“It’s a Band-Aid, because the restaurant industry is one that needs to be refined in order to keep up with today’s costs,” Adams said. “Most restaurant workers don’t make enough to even live here.”

Adams is a personal advocate of tipping even on top of a price increase.

Claire Sprouse, who owned Hunky Dory, remembers some pushback, particularly from servers, when she announced a no-tip policy. “Some people just wanted to make more money, which is fair.”

Unlike baristas, servers are used to the “tip credit” law. That means that employers can pay a lower hourly wage as long as employees make up the difference in tips. It’s been a long-standing point of contention in the restaurant industry. Baristas, on the other hand, earn the full $16 minimum wage, and any tips are just a nice bonus.

Sprouse, who called herself “politically outspoken,” chose the no-tipping route instead to make pay consistent for her staff.

“If I owned another business today, I would still go gratuity-free,” she said. “Nothing that we ever did was perfect, but we tried to do things differently, and I’m proud of that.”