Attention Restaurateurs

[Everytime]

At Taco Bar you order at the counter and pay when you order. They tell you when you order that a gratuity is added, plus the policy is clearly posted on the chalkboard menu. You can take it or leave it. A runner brings the food to your table.

At Pizza Bar you order at your table or at the bar and then pay when you are finished. No automatic gratuity (well, there might be for large groups, but I've never seen the check in those situations). As a pizza restaurant they get a lot of takeout orders. When you order takeout, they make a point to tell you up front that there will be a 15% gratuity added to the check. At that point you can take it or leave it.

I think it's a fair policy because you are told up front about the gratuity being added, rather than being told after you've gotten your food which is too late.

Some amount of gratuity at the Taco Bar sounds reasonable since a runner brings the food to your table. What is the take-out arrangement there?

But the fact that the Pizza Bar is a pizza restaurant and therefore gets a lot of take-out traffic makes me wonder even more why they impose an auto-gratuity when Pizza By The Sea and Angelina's area also dine-in and take-out and do not impose an automatic tariff on take-out orders. And I usually tip something when I pick up at those places because we often ask for extra ranch dressing, red pepper & parmasean, etc., but I'd be surprised if it were automatically imposed at either place. Is it something that is done in other countries or resort areas and perhaps a segment of the local restaurant industry is experimenting with it here?