I get that part of the reason is credit card merchant fees -- someone is paying for my 2x dining-out credit card points, after all. But part of the reason also is wait staff time... time spent running six separate cards is time not spent getting drinks or food.

Maybe I'm just a tech-city millennial who hates interacting with people, but I've always kinda wondered why there isn't any POS system that prints out a QR or text code you can punch into your smartphone to pull up a digital receipt that you can claim what items were yours, auto-tally tax and tip, and just pay for it digitally or yes, even venmo-invoice everyone in the group.

Yes, I realize this is exactly the behavior the article was talking about it, but honestly, that article was a little "get off my lawn"-ish. If it's a beer, sure, I'll get a round, but if it's a 6-person birthday party where some people get the $12 salad because they're making teacher salary and the tech-bro's get the $36 steak but you all still want to be friends without the awkwardness different financial or socioeconomic situations getting in the way, then yes, everyone paying whatever they ordered makes sense.

Technology enables new behaviors and new norms, honestly.

If it means the guy or girl who gets 2x points on restaurant bills and making tech money fronts the bill and venmos what everyone ordered later, so be it. I would ask why isn't that even easier yet with my self-invoice-via-digital-bill-and-save-the-server-from-running-6-separate-cards app?

Red Robin has little tablets at the table you can use to select your items and pay your portion of the bill (among other things, like signal a waiter or play silly games). I thought it was clever.

That said, the situation where someone ordered a $12 entree while someone else ordered a $36 one was solved when everyone paid in cash -- you just throw in your portion. It was only when everyone was trying to pay by card that this became an issue (which Venmo and ilk addressed).

People claiming that paying different amounts is some kind of "modern" problem are just ignorant of history -- everyone paying by card and splitting a bill being difficult is the modern problem.

>"In my experience, many restaurants have a limit on how many ways they can split the bill,"

That limit is artificially imposed though isn't? I also think this is mostly an American thing because its perceived as a "hassle" which is ironic because they're being tipped for their "service" in the US.

In Sweden I noticed for instance instance you can get a meal with a group of 10 people and at the end of the meal the server will walk around with card machine and run the individual cards at the table. It's not seen as a hassle at all just part of the job.

A lot of restaurants are won't split bills too many ways because it takes time and impacts table turnover. When you have a line out the door, turnover matters.

Back in Slovenia bill splitting doesn't exist. To me it's a completely American thing. The best they can do in Slovenia is charge everyone individually for their items, but that's not really bill splitting.

>"A lot of restaurants are won't split bills too many ways because it takes time and impacts table turnover."

How much time time does it really take? Let's compare it to a single check with with cash as the form of payment. Some diner at the table needs to go through the bill and and collect the money or else the bill gets passed around and then everyone antes up their portion, there always come confusion about what something on the check is or who had what. Then you need to collect all the cash and make change for everyone. Then the server needs to settle the check at the register.

Is that really any lengthier than just splitting up the check for individual diners? I am doubting it.

>Then the server needs to settle the check at the register.

This is where the time becomes an issue. Running each card can take awhile, and when you add up 4-5 cards, you get a real impact on time that the server can't be taking care of anything else. In a job that doesn't have a lot of downtime, 5-6 minutes tied to a computer can be detrimental.

Yeah people don't do that. The way splitting works in the US is that you split evenly.

So 1 person pays then says "Everyone venmo me $X" and the party leaves.

I'm quite familiar with the way it works in the US. If it's a birthday dinner or your circle of friends then yes people will likely split it evenly, but if you are a mixed group of people then people will generally pay for what they had. But regardless if its just "60 bucks a head" everyone at the table needs to settle up, and everyone throws in cash in a pile and takes their change out of the pile and then the pile needs to be sorted and counted and sometimes its short etc.

Only assholes ask for this. It's definitely not the norm. This is the fastest way to encorage me never to eat with you.

Nobody splits with cash, though.

Restaurants in China don't split bills. It's a foreign concept.

You'll often find people at a table fight each other to pay for the entire bill.

That’s the restaurants excuse but it doesn’t hold up. The couple of minutes spent doing it when places support it is usually replaced with several times longer of diners working out how to handle it amongst each other at the table

That is literally what bill splitting is

I only experienced this resistance to splitting bills in New York. Where I live now, largish city in the South, they'll gladly split the bill any which way you want. Same with Midwest cities - no issues splitting.

Indeed I was mostly thinking NYC there but its the same in LA too.

Same in Canada. Sometimes you have to tell them in advance so they keep track of each person's orders separately instead of assigning all purchases to the table. I haven't seen a restaurant that outright wouldn't do split bills.

I think it's more that credit cards charge the restaurant a flat fee per bill ($0.30ish?) So that eats into their profits at some point.

I get airline points for putting charges on my credit card. 2x for restaurants. So at meetups, I drop the 300-400$ bill on the card, get Venmos from everyone, cash is dropped directly into my bank account with no skimming. Boom, free points.

Restaurants have a limit on how many ways they will split the bill.

I used to wait tables and it's annoying to split many ways, but every POS system I ever used allowed splitting many ways. I never tested for an upper limit, but I soul routinely split to mid-teens of separate checks.

I was eating out (in the UK) with a large group earlier today and we split the bill between 13 happily. Didn't take too long with contactless cards either.

I think it depends on how convoluted your splitting is. To make things easy, my friends and I tell a waitress individual checks up front, then the couples will tell the server "pay these with this card." That is much easier than saying "these 3 on this bill, these two on one, these two on antoher, and three individuals."

In Australia it's not uncommon to see restaurants with "Sorry - No Split Bills" signs up at the cash register.

It's also not that uncommon to see the staff let you split the bill anyway on a case-by-case basis...

Really? I've seen a bill be split 30 different ways at multiple places. It must be a huge hassle, but I think it's possible.