Tip on the pre-discount total — what the check would have been at full price — unless the house has posted something else. The discount comes out of the restaurant’s margin. The bartender still built the same drink; the server still walked the same distance.
Worked example: Anthem, 25% off
Anthem takes 25% off the check. House cocktails are posted at $10–15. Two cocktails at $15 is $30 before the discount and $22.50 after. Twenty percent of $30 is $6. Twenty percent of $22.50 is $4.50. The difference is $1.50 on two drinks.
On a $120 dinner the same 25% is $30 off the restaurant. If the tip also drops 25%, the server loses $6 of a 20% tip. That is why the convention uses the pre-discount number.
Bar tab vs dining check
House of Blues at Disney Springs is a bar tab: $6 wells, $8–12 bites, Mon–Thu until 5, bar only. Same pattern at Bulla in Winter Park (daily 4–7, bar only) and Russell’s on Ivanhoe. A dollar a drink is a floor on discounted wells, not a target. Closing out on the pre-discount total is the simple version.
Anthem (25% off the check) and Stubborn Mule (25% off starters, wine, drafts, signature mules, dine-in) are dining checks: a server, a table, a kitchen. Percentage of the full-price total. If a listing does not say which you are in, how to read a deal covers bar vs dining.
When the house already decided
If the menu adds a service charge, auto-grat for a party size, or a note that the discount already includes it, follow that. Tips are reported as income; the IRS tip-income rules apply to the employee, not to the discount.
Apply it somewhere: On now, or the weekday table in the weeknight roundup. Downtown 25%-off checks: Downtown.
Sources
Tip-income rules are federal. Florida does not add a separate happy-hour tipping statute.
- IRS tip-income guidance — irs.gov search “tip income”.
- How to read a deal