This is great. I would really love to see this tool with a curated list of recipes. The recipes from scraping are hit or miss. Please message me if you want to chat about it, maybe I can help.
I would also have a couple suggestions for improvement.
(1) include the recipe for how to make the cocktail, as opposed to simply the ingredients. This can make a big difference in the result.
(2) include an AND function for the ingredients search (eg. a search for pisco AND lime, I didn't see that this exists currently).
Powera, this was my first thought as well, but even looking at the question this way is not realistic because the variables don't match. To answer this question, we would need to test (a) credit card machine payment without tip suggestions vs. (b) credit card machine payments with tip suggestions. By comparing machine vs. cash, the fact that cash tips would never be declared accurately skews the results to where the test fails.
Your math for the $144 million button makes for a good headline, but seems a bit dodgey. Plus, why is this article linked to instead of the New York Times article it references with actual information?
WHEN TIP WAS 10%:
BASE REVENUE = 82,497
TIP REVENUE = 8,250
TOTAL REVENUE = 90,747
TIP UP TO 22%, ASSUMING SAME BASE REVENUE
BASE REVENUE = 82,497
TIP REVENUE = 18,149
TOTAL REVENUE = 100,646
ASSUME 5% CC FEE, BECAUSE THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE SAYS "higher tips are tempered by a 5 percent service fee applied to fares that are paid with plastic," TOTAL REVENUE, LESS CREDIT CARDS = 95,616
TOTAL TIP INCREASE = ~131.3 MILLION
TOTAL CC FEES = ~66.7 MILLION
TOTAL INCREASE FOR CABS, LESS CC FEES = ~64.4 MILLION
Now, since the credit card tips are going to have to be fully declared for tax purposes, since they will come back to cab drivers in paychecks and with 5% of the TOTAL FARE taken out, I would actually guess cab drivers are seeing LESS MONEY than they were before the credit card machines were installed. I would bet that the 10% tip average pre-card machine is actually low based on undeclared cash tips, and having tax taken on a full 22% will drop the net significantly. When factoring in credit card fees and taxes, cab drivers are probably making less on this deal. But hey, at least Visa and MasterCard must be psyched.
NYT:
Told of the statistics that showed higher tips, some drivers scoffed. “I know that’s not true,” said William Lindauer, a driver and coordinating member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “They get no tips, or less tips.”
I agree 100% that this is how paywall news/magazine content should be distributed online. But you say "publishers would need to get used to running with lower profit margins than they'd like." This isn't really accurate - revenue per user is irrelevant, they need to push volume. They have a fixed price to produce content and digital distribution is basically the same price whether they distribute 1 magazine or 10,000.
the future!