Sonic Drive-InReviews 288

Like many people during this pandemic, my wife & I try to support local businesses that are still open. We don't eat a lot of fast food, but decided to go to our local Sonic Drive-In. The food was good and the server (Carhop as they are known) was wonderful. A woman in her 50's just trying to make a living.

We paid on the menu board with our credit card but could not add a tip. When the carhop arrived with the food we asked how to tip on our credit card. She informed us that management was aware of this but didn't care, that only cash tips are accepted if you pay with credit/debit on site. It was hard for me to believe that a company would knowingly hurt the livelihood of their near minimum wage employees. We were in disbelief, so we wrote to Sonic customer service to ask if there was a glitch or something that did not allow tipping on credit/debit cards. I was in shock when I received the response about 4 days later (attached).

"The decision to tip, or not, remains with you. SONIC understands this may sometimes result in a carhop not receiving a tip." The entire response is in my upload.

I wish I had a bigger voice in social media, this is unfair and truly hurts low-income workers. The only reason for this unfair policy I can think of, maybe SONIC doesn't want to pay the small percentage of the credit card fee that a tip would cause them to incur. I hope anyone who reads this will at least reach out to SONIC or post this somewhere that it will be seen. I'm not sure why a company would treat it's employees like this. I remember the CEO of Uber (TK) saying drivers didn't want tips, he was quickly shamed and eventually resigned.

SONIC - THIS IS JUST PLAIN MEAN!

Love the food, but unfortunately, it depends on which location you go to to get good food in a good time frame. That's what Sonic used to be all about and why I've been so loyal for decades... loyalty is waning.