Please close the bar tab first before being seated

November 3, 6:07 PMBartender ExaminerKathleen Neves

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It’s common for a party to meet and mingle at the restaurant’s bar before being seated at their table for dinner. These people might have a drink or two and possibly appetizers at the bar while they wait for the rest of their party to arrive. When the time comes for the party to be seated at their table, the bartender will ask if they want to close their tab out at the bar. In this situation, the customers have a couple options. They can close out the tab with the bartender and start a new tab at the table or they can ask to have the bar tab transferred to the table. If someone has never worked in the bar/restaurant industry before, closing a tab at the bar or having the tab transferred to the table might not seem like a big deal, but it’s a big deal to the bartender that served them.

When a bar tab is transferred to a party’s table, the server inherits the bar tab and receives the tip from the customers at the end of their meal. Servers tip their bartenders out at the end of the night, but it is based on a percentage of either the server’s total sales or the total tips they received. Lets say that a bartender started a tab for a group of twenty people, served them a number of drinks before being seated for dinner and then transferred the tab to their table. Now, the bartender will only get a percentage of the tip they would have normally received had the customers closed out the tab with the bartender before being seated.

Bartenders make a bulk of their money off of the tips they receive from their customers. So when a party wants to transfer the bar tab to their table, the bartender knows that they will lose money on the tab they started. The bartender’s loss is essentially the server’s gain. This is why it’s always a good idea for customer to close out the bar tab with the bartender first and then start a new tab at the table with the server.

Sometimes customers insist on transferring the bar tab to the table because they only want to worry about paying one tab. In a situation like this, the best thing for a customer to do is to leave a small cash tip with the bartender. Obviously the bartender wouldn’t be tipped on the full tab amount, but the small tip would be enough to help compensate for the loss of tip for the tab being transferred. A small cash tip like this shows appreciation to the bartender for the drinks that were made and the service that was provided while waiting at the bar to be seated at the table.

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