What a tip actually costs at Canadian restaurant chains

There is a question about tipping in Canada that has a precise, checkable answer, and it is not "how much should I tip". It is this: when the terminal offers you 15, 18 and 20 percent, what is it taking the percentage of?

If it uses the total after tax, an 18% tip in Ontario costs you 13% more than the same 18% on the food. On a $22.99 main that is $0.54. On an $84.59 platter it is $1.98. Nobody announces which base the machine is using, and the two numbers are never shown side by side.

What this compares, and what it doesn't

This page does not tell you what to tip. It puts a dollar figure on tipping decisions, using menu prices Froqel has verified, so that a percentage stops being an abstraction.

Three limits, stated plainly.

Froqel has not verified any chain's tip-prompt defaults. Which percentages a given terminal suggests, and whether it calculates them before or after tax, is set by the operator and the payment processor, varies restaurant to restaurant, and is not published anywhere I can check. So this page does not claim what any named chain's terminal does. It shows what each choice costs, on real prices, so you can read your own receipt.

No gratuity policy is quoted here. Large-party auto-gratuity thresholds are set per location and are not in any menu file on this site.

Tips are excluded from every other price on Froqel, as are taxes, because Canadian restaurants price their menus that way. This is the page that adds them back.

The pre-tax and post-tax question, in dollars

Both bases are defensible and both are used. Here is the gap, at 18%, on real orders.

The pre-tax and post-tax question, in dollars

Chain	Order	Menu price	18% of the menu price	18% of the Ontario total	The gap
Swiss Chalet	Quarter Chicken Dinner	$7.99	$1.44	$1.63	$0.19
Chuck's Roadhouse	Chuck's Burger	$9.00	$1.62	$1.83	$0.21
Kelsey's	Chicken Parm	$22.99	$4.14	$4.68	$0.54
Montana's	Average main course	$23.70	$4.27	$4.82	$0.55
Boston Pizza	Large create-your-own pizza	$25.99	$4.68	$5.29	$0.61
White Spot	Baby Back Ribs, full rack	$34.00	$6.12	$6.92	$0.80
Kelsey's	8 oz sirloin with Cajun shrimp	$40.79	$7.34	$8.30	$0.95
St. Louis	40-piece Boneless Platter	$84.59	$15.23	$17.21	$1.98

The gap is always exactly 13% of the tip, because Ontario's HST is 13% and the tip is a percentage of a percentage. That makes it easy to carry: whatever tip the machine proposes, if it used the post-tax total, about an eighth of that tip is a tip on tax.

In a province charging only the 5% GST, the same arithmetic gives a 5% gap. On the St. Louis platter that is $0.76 rather than $1.98.

What each tier costs, on the same eight orders

The step between 15% and 20% is the decision most people actually make at the terminal, and it is smaller in dollars than the debate suggests — until the order gets big.

On a single Swiss Chalet dinner, moving from 15% to 20% costs forty cents. On a table's worth of wings it costs $4.23. Both are the same five percentage points.

Set that against the menu itself and the tip stops looking like a rounding error: a 20% tip on the Kelsey's sirloin, $8.16, is more than the entire Swiss Chalet Quarter Chicken Dinner at $7.99, and more than four IKEA coffees.

Where a tip is expected, and where it is not

This is the part of tipping that actually varies across the chains on this site, and it varies by service model rather than by brand policy.

Table service. Kelsey's, Montana's, Boston Pizza, White Spot, Chuck's Roadhouse, St. Louis Bar & Grill and Swiss Chalet dine-in are served by a server who takes the order at the table. This is the group where a tip is a normal part of the transaction in Canada.

Counter and drive-thru service. McDonald's, Tim Hortons, Burger King, Wendy's, A&W, Harvey's, Arby's, Mary Brown's, Mr. Sub and Chick-fil-A take the order at a counter and hand the food over. Tip prompts have appeared on counter terminals across Canada in recent years; a tip there is a genuine choice rather than a convention.

Food courts. The Costco and IKEA counters are the clearest case of all. A $1.50 Costco hot dog combo with an 18% tip is $1.77, and the tip is 27 cents.

The dollar amounts explain why the counter-service prompt feels different rather than merely unfamiliar. Eighteen percent of a $1.83 Tim Hortons coffee is 33 cents — trivial to give, and trivial to receive. Eighteen percent of a $34.00 rack of ribs is $6.12, which is most of an hour's difference to the person carrying it.

The delivery version, which is worse than it looks

A delivery tip sits on top of a menu price that has already been marked up, and this is the one place tipping and pricing compound.

At Kelsey's, the one Canadian chain where a counter price and an app price have been matched item by item, delivery adds a flat 20.0% to the restaurant's own price. A Chicken Parm is $22.99 in the restaurant and $27.59 in the app.

Tipping 18% on a delivery order can cost $1.47 more than tipping 18% on the same dish in the restaurant, and none of that extra money reaches the driver as a larger share — it is 18% of a markup and 18% of the tax on that markup. The full teardown of what delivery adds before any tip is in the delivery app markup guide.

Frequently asked questions

Should you tip before or after tax in Canada?

Both are common and both are defensible. Tipping on the pre-tax total is the more conservative reading, since tax is not a service the restaurant provided. In Ontario the difference is exactly 13% of the tip: $0.54 on an 18% tip on a $22.99 main, $1.98 on an $84.59 order.

How much more does tipping on the post-tax total cost?

Exactly the provincial rate applied to the tip. In Ontario that is 13%, in a GST-only province 5%. On a 20% tip on a $40.79 dish, tipping after tax costs $9.22 instead of $8.16.

What is the standard tip at a Canadian restaurant in 2026?

Terminals commonly present 15, 18 and 20 percent, and the customary range for table service in Canada sits around 15 to 20 percent. Froqel has not verified any individual chain's prompt defaults and does not publish a figure for one.

Do you tip at a fast food counter in Canada?

There is no convention that you do. Counter and drive-thru service at chains like McDonald's, Tim Hortons and Burger King has historically not been tipped in Canada, and prompts on counter terminals are a recent addition rather than an established expectation.

How much is 18% on a Tim Hortons coffee?

On a $1.83 medium Original Blend, 33 cents on the pre-tax price. Because the coffee is under $4.00 it is taxed at 5% in Ontario rather than 13%, so tipping on the post-tax total makes almost no difference at that size.

Does tipping on a delivery app cost more?

Yes, when the tip is calculated on the app's own menu price. That price is already marked up — a flat 20.0% at Kelsey's, the one Canadian chain where this has been matched item by item — so an 18% tip on a $27.59 app listing is $4.97 against $4.14 on the $22.99 restaurant price.

Is a tip taxable in Canada?

Sales tax is charged on the food and the fees, not on a voluntary tip you add. What varies is whether the terminal calculates your tip percentage on the total before or after that tax has been added, which is the gap this page measures.

Methodology and disclaimer

Menu prices come from the verified files behind this site's Kelsey's, Swiss Chalet, Montana's, Boston Pizza, White Spot, Chuck's Roadhouse and St. Louis Bar & Grill pages, recorded August 2026. Every tip figure on this page is arithmetic done here on those prices; no chain publishes them.

No tip-prompt default, gratuity policy or service charge is attributed to any named chain on this page, because none has been verified. The service-model groupings above describe how each chain takes an order, not any policy on tipping. Tax calculations use Ontario's 13% HST and the 5% GST for provinces and territories charging GST alone; provinces outside the HST group treat restaurant food differently and are not modelled. Provincial rates change; confirm your own before relying on the arithmetic. Nothing here is tax or employment advice.

Froqel is an independent price guide. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any chain named here. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.