DipJar

In October of 2008, Ryder Kessler was at his favorite coffee shop. Outside, there was an Oktoberfest celebration, and the festival-goers were crowding the store as they streamed in for caffeine breaks between beers. The usually energetic and enthusiastic baristas seemed uniformly overwhelmed and exhausted. Ryder asked them whether there wasn’t some financial upside to having an endless line to serve — didn’t they make any extra money when the store was packed with customers?

They used to: it meant a ton of cash tips and a meaningful addition to their hourly wage. But as more and more people paid with credit and debit cards for small purchases, like buying a cup of coffee, tips plummeted — even on the busiest of Oktoberfest days.

Ryder thought this didn’t make sense: not for employees who were working just as hard but getting paid less, not for customers who liked the ease of paying with plastic but had no cash on hand to show their gratitude, and not for retailers whose employees had no reason to prefer busy stores to empty ones.

On that day, the idea of DipJar was born. Three years and lots of thinking, research, and design later, the DipJar itself is finally on store counters. With DipJar, tipping technology can catch up to the easy and efficient payment technology that already defines so much of our daily lives.

Find out how DipJar works, or learn more about getting a DipJar for yourself.