Late one Saturday at Bar Lubitsch, a West Hollywood, California, cocktail bar, Scott Korinke and Nolan Marks made their way to the bartender.

Korinke, 26, ordered a martini for himself and a vodka Red Bull for his friend Marks, 25. As he fished out a Visa credit card, the bartender yelled a question over the music: “Do you want to start a tab?” Korinke shook his head no and swiftly closed out.

The pair might order more drinks later on, but the prospect of opening a tab was verboten. “Why leave a credit card with the bar? I don’t know if I’m going to be here that long, so I don’t want to leave a tab open,” Korinke said.

His ethos reflects a growing phenomenon among Gen Z bargoers: an aversion to opening bar tabs. Much to the dismay of bartenders, many 20-somethings prefer to close out and pay after every drink, no matter how many they end up ordering.

Michael McMillan, a former portfolio manager and securities analyst who teaches personal finance at the University of Maryland, said the accessibility of online financial literacy tools shaped his undergraduate students’ hypercautious money habits.

“By opening up a tab and saying ‘Yep, I’m buying a round of drinks and closing it after that,’ you know how much you’re spending,” McMillan said. “It’s not going to be some great surprise at the end of the evening.”

It’s unclear when younger drinkers started souring on bar tabs, but there’s a through line between the COVID-19 pandemic and shifting bar habits.

“During and after the pandemic, more people started using cards,” said Doug Kantor, an executive committee member of the Merchants Payments Coalition, a retailers group. Coupled with Gen Z’s distaste for carrying around cash (or a physical wallet, for that matter), the ubiquity of mobile payment options, such as Apple Pay, has contributed to the decline of bar tabs among 20-somethings.

Bartenders aren’t thrilled with this pay-as-you-go mindset, especially if customers ask for elaborate drinks. “We’re trying to be superefficient because we know that these cocktails take, like, 10 to 15 steps to make,” said David Perez, a bartender who has worked in Houston-area restaurants and bars.

When bars are slammed with throngs of people waiting to order drinks, constantly opening and closing tabs slows down service for everyone, bartenders said.

“For each moment that one of my guys is standing there fumbling with your cellphone trying to unlock the code, that’s time that is missed out on serving the next person when you’re three deep on a Friday night,” said Al Barber, who manages the bar at the Prince, in Los Angeles’ Koreatown. “So there’s an opportunity cost.

“These kids never learned the proper way to be a barfly.”

Constantly closing out can also hurt a bar’s bottom line. Every time a bartender swipes a customer’s credit card, the bar pays a fixed fee of 30 cents plus a percentage — merchant fees range from 2% to 4% — for that transaction. Single transactions done repeatedly can cost the bar more than a total bill that is paid all at once.

Credit card fees, which soared 80% from 2020 to 2024, Kantor said, are one of the highest operating costs for bars and restaurants besides labor and rent.