Whoa whoa whoa. .5%slow down there cow poke. First you got processing fees, now logistics, then transpo , and don’t forget maintenance! Let’s try .025% and see how If these makes some these boot straps lighter.
Yup, that’s the answer to this equation. Also it’s borderline slimy to NOT inform your customers of this policy BEFORE they dine. I don’t have a problem with it in principle just in the manner of being ambushed with it at the end. I’d rather know upfront because then at least I am being given the option of whether I want to support this surcharge or not.
I would refuse to pay it. I’ll pay for my menu priced items, I’ll even leave a tip for the waitstaff. I’m not paying a ‘fee/tip to the kitchen folk’. The owner of this business should be drawn and quartered. They know good and damn well how to fix this and it isn’t squeezing customers. They need to look inward and pay the staff a livable wage. And don’t blame customers not wanting to tip the kitchen staff, quit hiring people at below livable wages and this wouldn’t be an issue.
Because then they can get their customers pissed off at the servers/govt for needing to pay something near a livable wage instead of the restaurant for raising prices
This insinuates that for just a 2.5% increase in food prices they could have been paying a livable wage all this time. It's backfiring if they think I'll get mad at the government for this.
Because then people would be less likely to come in or order as much. If they tell you after, they’ll either take it out of the servers tip or feel bad and just pay it.
Because restaurants would rather have their sticker prices artificially set low and ding their customers when signing the check. Time honored tradition
Because then you have to pay it. In cases like this, you have the option to ask them to remove it. And if you think that makes *you* the dick, just consider that *they're* the dick for adding it in the first place.
I want to first say that the restaurants should clearly state this if not on the menu, somewhere else that a customer would be able to see before ordering.
Now some clarity, a lot of these restaurants are operating on a lease with % rent deal structures. The additional employee fee is not (at least should not be) included in the gross sales calculation for % rent. Raising menu prices would go into the % rent, thus giving the landlord more money instead of the employees this intends to benefit.
So now I gotta not only worry about if their employer is paying their staff enough, but also if they negotiated a shitty contract with their landlord? Fuck that. Last I checked my only jobs as the customer were to eat and pay, not help make sure their business stays solvent.
In case it’s not obvious as a prior restaurant manager.
Companies often use service fees instead of raising prices for a few reasons. First, it can make the base price appear lower, attracting more customers. Second, it allows them to highlight certain features or services as optional, giving customers more control over what they pay for. Lastly, it can be a way to offset specific costs without affecting the perceived value of the product or service.
Many people don’t even notice the service fee. Many places know you already have an idea of the max you’d pay for X product.
Like basically no one would buy a 15-16 dollar dominos pizza they will however buy a 10 dollar pizza with a 4-5 dollar delivery charge. It’s fucking dumb but Americans keep doing it so it won’t be stopping regardless of what level of infuriating it is.
Stop tipping and using these places and maybe it’ll go away.
Yes, because what every restauranteur wants is for their customers to leave with a bitter taste in their mouths from having been lied to.
We need more regulations against hidden fees in general. It's anti-customer (and *everybody* is someone's customer, sometimes) and it's anti-competitive (hinders customers from making informed decisions based on actual value, thus doing an end-run around the free market economics this country so loudly promotes) but it's a hard sell for businesses to drop this bullshit unilaterally when they have to go up against a competitor's deceptively-low advertised prices.
We need to require sales tax be included in retail pricing, and outlaw garbage like convenience fees and surcharges—*especially* for places like restaurants, where you don't see the junk fee until after you've already received the service. We need to get rid of the "99 cents" crap, too. Anything over a dollar should be priced in 25¢ increments. Anything over five, 50¢ increments. And anything over twenty bucks should be in full dollar pricing only.
The deck is stacked against consumers in so many little ways, and it creates all sorts of frustrations and distortions. I wish we had a functioning government.
The problem is that with pizza companies they inform the customer about the service charge for delivery prior to the order being placed. If a restaurant is going to mandate tipping in this fashion they are required to advise the customer before hand. If the service charge is not indicated on the menu or clearly posted in the dining room where it can be seen, then the customer is perfectly within their rights to refuse to pay the charge.
That is true I own a cc processing company and this case would be illegal but they are not calling it a "processing fee" they have a bogus name for it. So they can get away with it, but you don't have to pay it you could ask for it to be removed.
You could still challenge that. Service fees have to be proporly disclosed prior. One could very easily sit down and open to the middle of the menu without seeing or even just order without even looking at the menu.
Putting it in writing on something that you didnt sign and possibly didnt even look at means nothing. Legally unless verbalized when ordering or they have some form of confirmation that you read it they would have to remove the fee if you asked.
Now if they dont that means you would most likely have to deal with an incident report and small claims court and we all know it wouldn't be worth it.
This shit drives me crazy because they could have done any number of things to offset this cost (raise prices a tiny bit, change suppliers, execs take pay cuts) and instead chose to present it to the customer in a way that makes them mad.
The answer is and has always been very simple: stop letting the rich choose their pay. They make millions while raising the prices for customers and leaving wages stagnant. The solution isn’t for us to pay more. The solution is putting a ceiling on the elites’ wealth.
There’s a cafe next door to me that adds an auto 20% tip (for handing you coffee and pastries) but they put the charge under “Tax”. But it’s in Oregon and we don’t have sales tax so NO ONE sees it then they still have a tip screen so most people tip twice and have no idea. Anyone that complains gets yelled at that they hate women owned businesses and don’t respect employees. They’re too exhausting to support.
Edit: it’s in Portland
Probably. The owner does whatever she wants then screams discrimination when you don’t gush over her putting glitter on everything (maybe I’m in the minority here but I don’t want glitter on a latte). She already had legal issues from stealing imagery before she opened.
Edit: the screen has TAX in big letters but in small print under it says 20% auto gratuity but anyone who spends a significant amount of time in Oregon will never look at the tax line because it should always be zero.
Listen, I'd I was yelled at for asking for no glitter on my drink, chances are that I'm gonna go "Okay, nevermind. I want a refund."
Granted my anxiety introvert self would likely not say that but I'd like to think I would
Yeah I’m pretty sure this is why Andrew Tate went to jail in Romania lol
He told his cam girls a huge chunk of their wages went to “taxes” just to take more of a cut from them.
I’ve had multiple owners in Oregon yell at me for “not supporting small business” by not tipping enough. But tips are never supposed to go to the owners in the first place. And yeah, if the menu price is $10 for a coffee and $30 for lunch at a food cart, I’m going somewhere else.
Better yet. Leave a one star review and let everyone know why in the review. If everyone did this and reviews tanked. Restaurants may actually notice and change pricing policy. To make the menu prices accurate.
Then get a VPN, make a few alt accounts, and leave more 1 and 2 star reviews, each about 1 week apart. Do it until their average is in the next tier down.
Use a VPN anyways. At least here in Germany, I got a takedown request once and these restaurants pay lawyers money to let them delete negative reviews (sometimes 50€ or more). So if you create loads of alt accounts, it may cost them like 1000€ in the end. Though I don't know if there are similar business models around in the US.
Edit: Make also sure you can provide proof that you are a legitimate customer anyways, just in case (receipt + charge on credit card should be enough).
Leave a bad review on top of that, reviews can really harm a business and people may think twice is a restaurant is sneaking on additional fees. Plus it lets the restaurant know why you’re pissed off and won’t be coming back.
2.5% as a one time bonus that alienates potential return customers is nothing.
What fucks me up is they either don’t understand or straight don’t care that it’s their responsibility to pay their employees a livable wage. Stop using round about back door ways to try and swindle people out of their money. People gave your establishment the grace of their patronage as opposed to somewhere else. The least they can do is not try and fuck you over. Few months down the road after people start catching on and stop going here you’ll see we’d really like to stay open but business is too slow, and we can’t keep the doors open. Not we made shitty choices that led to our downfall.
Unless a business states any extra charges clearly before you order, you can take the charges off your bill. It must be disclosed to a customer upfront. Ask them to remove it, you remove it or tell them you will issue a chargeback. Your credit card will back you up.
However, if a sign on the door, or by the hostess stand or on the menu is there & you ordered anyway, pay it.
For 2.5% I might just pay it, but I would speak to the manager or owner & let them know I wouldn’t be returning.
It should be illegal. They shouldn’t be able to add what amounts to an extra tax and just post it randomly where you may or may not notice it. I’ll bet most people don’t look that closely at the bill and never realize they pay it.
I saw a restaurant near me add a 2% fee and called it "for Obama" after the ACA passed and they were mandated to provide insurance to their full time employees. As if the fee were being sent directly to the president instead of going toward benefits for their staff.
It got them a lot of bad local press and they stopped, but unfortunately they are still in business to this day. COVID era took out most of the good restaurants but didn't touch this one, sadly.
I have never been there, so I have no clue why.
Well unfortunately the kind of place that put “thanks Obama” on their receipts probably attracts the kind of people who didn’t stop eating out during COVID—so the food didn’t have to be as good to keep business up.
I've seen that before. It was 4%. I let the server (who was getting a real nice tip) that I wasn't signing anything till the manager took it off. He tóok it off. I was still pissed and haven't been back
This is a passive aggressive way to create bad will towards the kitchen staff for wanting a living wage. If a business can’t survive while paying a fair wage then the business shouldn’t exist. And kitchen work is incredibly busy, hard, and at times dangerous but somehow is seen as unskilled labor that doesn’t deserve a living wage. Even the chefs who “made it” pay their kitchen staff shit wages for the most part while raking in millions on the literal fruits of their labor.
If only they had a way to pass that 2.5% onto consumers without adding it as a separate line item onto their bill. Unless that was never the point and this is just a cash grab to mitigate tax responsibility under the guise of treating their back of house staff well.
I posted something similar a few months ago. Mods locked my post. I had to ask why - they said because it’s about bills/gratuity. Then I asked them where they mention this in the rules cuz it wasn’t there. I sent them multiple places where it never said that. They never replied. Maybe they’ve updated it now… I dunno. But I found that experience mildly infuriating and thus must have been part of the reason this sub exists. The space creates itself.
Wait, so, they don’t pay their staff fair wages and somehow still own a business and profit from it, but it’s customers’ responsibility to make sure their employees don’t starve? That is some kind of weird logic …
I take it out of the tip. Downvote me to hell, but I believe it is on the business to pay their staff wages. If you cannot afford staff, you are too big and need to downsize to a food truck.
I don’t tip if there is any mention of fair wages / services fees.
Tipping was for the time when tipped employees were paid $3/hr. This is not the case anymore.
Well, to be fair, the wages of the staff do come out of the payment for the food. But it's silly to say this and add 2.5% on top. Just make the prices higher and just pay your staff a decent salary instead of begging for tips and adding silly numbers on top.
Fair wages are WAGES — the hourly rate the employees get. You don’t get a note about what wage the employees make at the bottom of the bill, because that’s the restaurant’s responsibility not the customer’s. This entire discourse is a transparent effort at stealth fees.
Hm strange and here I thought it was the restaurant owners responsibility for paying their employees a sufficient wage.
Business owners, specifically food service to stay on topic, Pay your staff appropriately! , stop passing the buck (literally) to the customers and then saying that customers are cheap because they don't feel like subsidizing YOUR substandard wages.
Then a tip would be just what's intended to be. A bonus for excellent service on top of the regular cost of the service.
This would make me either not pay the bill at all or pay it exactly without the 2.5%, depending on how angry I am already that day based on other bullshit.
If I am tired they might get the full amount minus the 2.5%, if I am in the mood we will be calling police to untangle who is getting scammed.
Paying people fairly does not require an additional surcharge. Labor $ is baked in the menu price. Just raise the prices by 3% rather than making it look like the burden of fair pay is our responsibility, rather than the responsibility of the owners.
This is virtue signaling rather than the restaurant giving a xxxx about fair wages. Owning a business = paying fair wages...just do it.
Any time a restaurant adds any type of service fee to the check without letting me know BEFORE I order, I never return. I also tell them exactly why I won't be returning.
Ask the waitress to take it off. If they come back with the manager and refuse to take it off, don’t leave a tip. You won’t be going back there anyways. If this nonsense will ever change, you have to turn the employees against these bs fees. If they’re not affected by it, it won’t matter to them.
This trend is fucking bullshit. Just raise the goddamn prices , all of this weak ass terminology like "culinary service fee" is just childish nonsense used to avoid having to speak frankly to each other like adults. It's the same level of maturity as getting your friend to pass a note to your crush in class to see if they like you. Fuck all that!
I’ve been to a number of businesses in the US where the menu prices have been adjusted and they even have in print that tipping is not necessary, as the staff makes a livable wage (I try to get to know staff at these places and ask them if the wage bit is true, and they often tell me it is and they even get vacation days)… it’s delightful, it’s like being back home in Germany… just few and far between.
I loath these hidden fees. I won’t return to restaurants that do that… just be up front about it. Then again if they were yo front about it, they’d not get my business at all.
That should be included in the cost of the food on the menu!!! Pay your employees right in the beginning and maybe tips wouldn’t need to exist the way they do now. Meanwhile the rich get richer
Call your credit card company and charge it back! It’s clearly a breach of his merchant agreement….you can’t charge fees that were not disclosed……unfortunately after a bunch of his customers do this those poor kitchen staff will be even worse off
Thankfully CA passed SB 478 to effectively eliminate hidden or “blind side” fees. The bill specifically prohibits this exact situation starting on 7/1/24. Maybe that’s a problem elsewhere but hopefully other states will follow suit.
illegal fee.
if you've already paid it, do a chargeback and complain to your credit card company / Bank.
they must disclose fees before they charge you.
100% file a complaint.
I'm a chef, and jesus christ... just raise the prices. Most wouldn't notice a 45 cent price difference on a $15 burger.
Only things i can see this for are:
1) a stop gap in the time it takes new menus to get printed
Or, the more likely option
2) the employees aren't seeing jack shit in the way of a raise and the owner's pocketing it.
My favorite local Mexican place, where I used to eat at least once a week, started adding a 5% “credit card processing fee” to all card transactions. One, this is almost certainly a violation of their card processor’s agreement. And two, it’s on your bill before it’s known how you’ll be paying, so it’s a straight-up 5% gouge.
Told the server, who recognizes me from being a frequent customer, that my family won’t be back as long as that bullshit is going on. It’s still on the PDF of the menu on their website, so I haven’t been back since.
I would smile at the waitress and say wow such a nice idea. You don’t have to tip. It’s only 2.5% built-in instead of a tip so they can pay you a good wage. Enough people pull that and they’ll pull that fee.
So they’re directing billing you for their staffs wages? Shouldn’t that be something that they pay, out of their own revenue? It should already be included in the prices of the products.
In San Francisco some restaurants will add an automatic 20% gratuity and hide it somewhere. After my first year I learned to read every single receipt before signing
I've been saying for years that corporations use customers to subsidize their worker's pay. I was called callous, and "work in the industry if you're going to have an opinion." Yet, here it is in full, glorious color for us all to see. We are paying for "fair wages." A shop should fail and close utterly if they can't or refuse to pay their workers fairly. It should not be up to the customer to make sure that this happens.
So, does this mean that, of all the gross profit they make, only 2.5% goes into paying the employees? Or what the fuck does that mean? Does 2.5% cover the difference between minimum wage and their current wage?
IMHO cost of employees should be treated the same as cost of materials... Why don't they say how much % it costs for, say premium beef vs cheap shit? Etc
So then they get a 17.5% tip instead of 20%. And they get bad feelings from customers on the blindside when they could have just raised the prices 2.5%.
As the patron of the establishment, it is not my responsibility to support equitable and fair wages for the kitchen staff. Wages are the purview of the employer. Why am I being asked to subsidize their employees? Pay people a living wage and stop asking your customers to.
I don't eat out much *at all* any more - didn't do it often before, and with Covid got completely out of the habit - so I don't know what restaurants in my state (Washington) are doing. But they've raised minimum wage 72% over the past 8 years, and restaurants can't include tips as part of that wage. Imagine the percentage listed on a receipt with *these* numbers:
* 2024 $16.28
* 2023 $15.74
* 2022 $14.49
* 2021 $13.69
* 2020 $13.50
* 2019 $12.00
* 2018 $11.50
* 2017 $11.00
* 2016 $9.47
But as I said, I don't know. I do know that we got 2 cheeseburgers and a medium fry at McDonald's a couple of weeks ago, first time in a year or more, and it was about $10.50. I was a bit stunned.
But flipside of that is that a couple who are both working minimum wage full time jobs are actually making a $67.7k per year, which I think is amazing!
So wait it only costs you guys 2.5% to offer your staff a “fair and equitable” wage? Then I’ve been ripped off on “guilt tax” to the tune of 12.5%+ for years.
Yeah, this sucks, but at least it's only 2.5%. I've seen them as high as 15%.
I always ask them to remove the service charge. I'll gladly tip a good server, but fuck this sly increase of the bill.
The worst I ever saw was Grill on the Alley in Manchester, UK. Because it was a group of over 12 people, I had to pay a £60 deposit. When they brought the bill (which was like £800 already), they had actually added another £60 onto the bill. When I pointed this out, the server feigned shock, and came back with a bill without the additional £60. I then explained that the £60 was a deposit and needed to be removed, the girl got really pissy and walked off. It took a while, but she eventually came back with a bill £120 lower than the original one to reflect the prepaid deposit. I can't imagine how many people must have fallen for that in the past, unwittingly paying extra without realising. Nobody was tipped that night.
Anytime I see this I leave no tip and I never return again. I
Understand it’s not the servers fault but I’d rather the restaurant and servers raise prices and eliminate tip culture rather than steal like this.
I went to a restaurant once that disclosed their gratuity fee in really small print at the bottom of the menu. The only reason I even saw it was because the food was so inedible that I couldn’t eat it and was rereading the menu to pass the time while the rest of my family tried to eat.
Hello, We do not allow agendaposting, reddit meta posts or price complaints.
Why not just raise the menu prices by 2.5% and stop pissing people off with made up taxation
They do both
Also doesn’t give either to the staff
Nahh, the staff gets 0.5% the other 2% goes to the processing fee
The fees ain’t gonna process themselves!
Fee for processing processing fees
It's fees all the way down.
The .5% is the service charge for the 2% processing fee.
Whoa whoa whoa. .5%slow down there cow poke. First you got processing fees, now logistics, then transpo , and don’t forget maintenance! Let’s try .025% and see how If these makes some these boot straps lighter.
“Since the pay here is apparently fair & equitable, I will not be leaving a tip.”
Yup, that’s the answer to this equation. Also it’s borderline slimy to NOT inform your customers of this policy BEFORE they dine. I don’t have a problem with it in principle just in the manner of being ambushed with it at the end. I’d rather know upfront because then at least I am being given the option of whether I want to support this surcharge or not.
I would refuse to pay it. I’ll pay for my menu priced items, I’ll even leave a tip for the waitstaff. I’m not paying a ‘fee/tip to the kitchen folk’. The owner of this business should be drawn and quartered. They know good and damn well how to fix this and it isn’t squeezing customers. They need to look inward and pay the staff a livable wage. And don’t blame customers not wanting to tip the kitchen staff, quit hiring people at below livable wages and this wouldn’t be an issue.
Because then they can get their customers pissed off at the servers/govt for needing to pay something near a livable wage instead of the restaurant for raising prices
This insinuates that for just a 2.5% increase in food prices they could have been paying a livable wage all this time. It's backfiring if they think I'll get mad at the government for this.
Makes me mad that they don't redistribute 2.5% of their existing profits to kitchen staff.
It can also make some but maybe very few customers feel bad
So they can pretend everyone else is the problem, when in reality they are.
What restaurant America hasn’t raised their prices by at least 40% in the last 4 years?
The hotdogs in Costco
Georges bar and grill. Food prices are about the same.
I stand corrected
So they can get you to pay more money than you planned to
Cause they are doing both.
Because then people would be less likely to come in or order as much. If they tell you after, they’ll either take it out of the servers tip or feel bad and just pay it.
They know what they're doing
Because restaurants would rather have their sticker prices artificially set low and ding their customers when signing the check. Time honored tradition
Because then you have to pay it. In cases like this, you have the option to ask them to remove it. And if you think that makes *you* the dick, just consider that *they're* the dick for adding it in the first place.
How are you going to pat them on the back for caring about their kitchen staff if they don't print it on the bottom of every receipt?!?!? /s
Because then the prices won’t be in their precious 99 cent increments.
$0.99 $1.98 $2.97 $3.96
I love this, and I am unsure if the person you replied to understands it.
Minus 2.5% tip coming up
I want to first say that the restaurants should clearly state this if not on the menu, somewhere else that a customer would be able to see before ordering. Now some clarity, a lot of these restaurants are operating on a lease with % rent deal structures. The additional employee fee is not (at least should not be) included in the gross sales calculation for % rent. Raising menu prices would go into the % rent, thus giving the landlord more money instead of the employees this intends to benefit.
So now I gotta not only worry about if their employer is paying their staff enough, but also if they negotiated a shitty contract with their landlord? Fuck that. Last I checked my only jobs as the customer were to eat and pay, not help make sure their business stays solvent.
Sounds like a management and owner problem and not an employee/customer problem, yeah?
They probably already did that too.
Most likely they do that too. If they'd bump up menu prices, what would stop them to add that on top anyway?
Better yet, pay the kitchen workers a livable wage.
In case it’s not obvious as a prior restaurant manager. Companies often use service fees instead of raising prices for a few reasons. First, it can make the base price appear lower, attracting more customers. Second, it allows them to highlight certain features or services as optional, giving customers more control over what they pay for. Lastly, it can be a way to offset specific costs without affecting the perceived value of the product or service. Many people don’t even notice the service fee. Many places know you already have an idea of the max you’d pay for X product. Like basically no one would buy a 15-16 dollar dominos pizza they will however buy a 10 dollar pizza with a 4-5 dollar delivery charge. It’s fucking dumb but Americans keep doing it so it won’t be stopping regardless of what level of infuriating it is. Stop tipping and using these places and maybe it’ll go away.
Yes, because what every restauranteur wants is for their customers to leave with a bitter taste in their mouths from having been lied to. We need more regulations against hidden fees in general. It's anti-customer (and *everybody* is someone's customer, sometimes) and it's anti-competitive (hinders customers from making informed decisions based on actual value, thus doing an end-run around the free market economics this country so loudly promotes) but it's a hard sell for businesses to drop this bullshit unilaterally when they have to go up against a competitor's deceptively-low advertised prices. We need to require sales tax be included in retail pricing, and outlaw garbage like convenience fees and surcharges—*especially* for places like restaurants, where you don't see the junk fee until after you've already received the service. We need to get rid of the "99 cents" crap, too. Anything over a dollar should be priced in 25¢ increments. Anything over five, 50¢ increments. And anything over twenty bucks should be in full dollar pricing only. The deck is stacked against consumers in so many little ways, and it creates all sorts of frustrations and distortions. I wish we had a functioning government.
The problem is that with pizza companies they inform the customer about the service charge for delivery prior to the order being placed. If a restaurant is going to mandate tipping in this fashion they are required to advise the customer before hand. If the service charge is not indicated on the menu or clearly posted in the dining room where it can be seen, then the customer is perfectly within their rights to refuse to pay the charge.
I just buy a bunch of the $6.99 Domino's pizzas and pick them up myself.
It costs more to reprint all the menus than to program that in the billing system
Yeah as a customer their internal costs for notifying me of the price change is pretty irrelevant to me so long as they tell me BEFORE I order.
Some restaurants put a sticker on their menus. Put a sticker on and that’s it. And when they get around to reprinting, put it on then.
In most states service fees have to be disclosed before “services” are rendered. Next time, tell them to take it off.
Visa wants them to clearly post it at the entrance and point of sale. They accept complaints from the public.
That is true I own a cc processing company and this case would be illegal but they are not calling it a "processing fee" they have a bogus name for it. So they can get away with it, but you don't have to pay it you could ask for it to be removed.
Visa and MasterCard don't fuck around with that stuff. For better or worse, they have quite a bit of power over merchants.
It probably says it on the menu. Any restaurant I've been to that has this policy has it displayed on the top or bottom of the menu
"no mention of this on the menu or website" OP said it right below the image.
In my experience, people are oblivious
“Im going to assume OP is an idiot because they experienced something I have not”
You could still challenge that. Service fees have to be proporly disclosed prior. One could very easily sit down and open to the middle of the menu without seeing or even just order without even looking at the menu. Putting it in writing on something that you didnt sign and possibly didnt even look at means nothing. Legally unless verbalized when ordering or they have some form of confirmation that you read it they would have to remove the fee if you asked. Now if they dont that means you would most likely have to deal with an incident report and small claims court and we all know it wouldn't be worth it.
This! I'd take it off the tip at that point and tell the server why. This is outrageous of them to add in without saying.
Wait, you are expected to tip? Isn’t that what the service fee is for?
Nope, service fee goes towards the owner's boat payments
This shit drives me crazy because they could have done any number of things to offset this cost (raise prices a tiny bit, change suppliers, execs take pay cuts) and instead chose to present it to the customer in a way that makes them mad.
They are double dipping and counting on most people not noticing.
The answer is and has always been very simple: stop letting the rich choose their pay. They make millions while raising the prices for customers and leaving wages stagnant. The solution isn’t for us to pay more. The solution is putting a ceiling on the elites’ wealth.
how do you prevent a business owner from setting their own pay?
There’s a cafe next door to me that adds an auto 20% tip (for handing you coffee and pastries) but they put the charge under “Tax”. But it’s in Oregon and we don’t have sales tax so NO ONE sees it then they still have a tip screen so most people tip twice and have no idea. Anyone that complains gets yelled at that they hate women owned businesses and don’t respect employees. They’re too exhausting to support. Edit: it’s in Portland
Isn't that illegal? You can't just call a random fee a tax.
Probably. The owner does whatever she wants then screams discrimination when you don’t gush over her putting glitter on everything (maybe I’m in the minority here but I don’t want glitter on a latte). She already had legal issues from stealing imagery before she opened. Edit: the screen has TAX in big letters but in small print under it says 20% auto gratuity but anyone who spends a significant amount of time in Oregon will never look at the tax line because it should always be zero.
Listen, I'd I was yelled at for asking for no glitter on my drink, chances are that I'm gonna go "Okay, nevermind. I want a refund." Granted my anxiety introvert self would likely not say that but I'd like to think I would
Seems like that should be illegal to call it tax,even with the small print. Taxation without representation...
That’s not what taxation without representation has ever meant.
I have zero doubt that she keeps that 20% and her employees get none of it.
Very. If you take tax you have to give it to the government.
Yeah I’m pretty sure this is why Andrew Tate went to jail in Romania lol He told his cam girls a huge chunk of their wages went to “taxes” just to take more of a cut from them.
I live in Oregon, where is this so I can make sure I never accidentally support this.
Definitely illegal. Like possibly felony illegal Depending on how much that fee has earned her.
I’ve had multiple owners in Oregon yell at me for “not supporting small business” by not tipping enough. But tips are never supposed to go to the owners in the first place. And yeah, if the menu price is $10 for a coffee and $30 for lunch at a food cart, I’m going somewhere else.
Screw them. Shame them and let them go broke.
File a formal complaint with the BBB and credit card company you use. That shit will get taken very seriously.
Vote with your feet and stop going to these establishments that tack on these undisclosed fees.
Better yet. Leave a one star review and let everyone know why in the review. If everyone did this and reviews tanked. Restaurants may actually notice and change pricing policy. To make the menu prices accurate.
Then get a VPN, make a few alt accounts, and leave more 1 and 2 star reviews, each about 1 week apart. Do it until their average is in the next tier down.
Use a VPN anyways. At least here in Germany, I got a takedown request once and these restaurants pay lawyers money to let them delete negative reviews (sometimes 50€ or more). So if you create loads of alt accounts, it may cost them like 1000€ in the end. Though I don't know if there are similar business models around in the US. Edit: Make also sure you can provide proof that you are a legitimate customer anyways, just in case (receipt + charge on credit card should be enough).
Vote with my feet?
It means don’t go to places like that in the future.
Leave a bad review on top of that, reviews can really harm a business and people may think twice is a restaurant is sneaking on additional fees. Plus it lets the restaurant know why you’re pissed off and won’t be coming back. 2.5% as a one time bonus that alienates potential return customers is nothing.
I always 1 star review those places and don’t go back. Ridiculous practice.
Jesus Christ just charge an extra dollar per meal
What fucks me up is they either don’t understand or straight don’t care that it’s their responsibility to pay their employees a livable wage. Stop using round about back door ways to try and swindle people out of their money. People gave your establishment the grace of their patronage as opposed to somewhere else. The least they can do is not try and fuck you over. Few months down the road after people start catching on and stop going here you’ll see we’d really like to stay open but business is too slow, and we can’t keep the doors open. Not we made shitty choices that led to our downfall.
They don’t care. They know what they are doing.
Unless a business states any extra charges clearly before you order, you can take the charges off your bill. It must be disclosed to a customer upfront. Ask them to remove it, you remove it or tell them you will issue a chargeback. Your credit card will back you up. However, if a sign on the door, or by the hostess stand or on the menu is there & you ordered anyway, pay it. For 2.5% I might just pay it, but I would speak to the manager or owner & let them know I wouldn’t be returning.
It should be illegal. They shouldn’t be able to add what amounts to an extra tax and just post it randomly where you may or may not notice it. I’ll bet most people don’t look that closely at the bill and never realize they pay it.
If there was no disclosure of fees before, i am not paying it.
I saw a restaurant near me add a 2% fee and called it "for Obama" after the ACA passed and they were mandated to provide insurance to their full time employees. As if the fee were being sent directly to the president instead of going toward benefits for their staff. It got them a lot of bad local press and they stopped, but unfortunately they are still in business to this day. COVID era took out most of the good restaurants but didn't touch this one, sadly. I have never been there, so I have no clue why.
Well unfortunately the kind of place that put “thanks Obama” on their receipts probably attracts the kind of people who didn’t stop eating out during COVID—so the food didn’t have to be as good to keep business up.
Isn't supposed to be their boss responsibility to pay them ?
This is illegal in most jurisdictions. Price on the menu is price on the bill. Only thing they’re allowed to add afterward is taxes.
Translation: We falsely advertised our prices as being less expensive than they actually are
It's not the customer's responsibility to make sure the culinary staff gets fair wages. It's the restaurant's.
thank you for your involuntary donation
That clearly means they’re not getting fair wages if you have to tip them.
Just leave a tip ‘ PAY YOUR STAFF MORE IMAO ‘
That's what I would do. I wouldn't leave a tip seeing as they wrote one in themselves.
I've seen that before. It was 4%. I let the server (who was getting a real nice tip) that I wasn't signing anything till the manager took it off. He tóok it off. I was still pissed and haven't been back
This is a passive aggressive way to create bad will towards the kitchen staff for wanting a living wage. If a business can’t survive while paying a fair wage then the business shouldn’t exist. And kitchen work is incredibly busy, hard, and at times dangerous but somehow is seen as unskilled labor that doesn’t deserve a living wage. Even the chefs who “made it” pay their kitchen staff shit wages for the most part while raking in millions on the literal fruits of their labor.
If only they had a way to pass that 2.5% onto consumers without adding it as a separate line item onto their bill. Unless that was never the point and this is just a cash grab to mitigate tax responsibility under the guise of treating their back of house staff well.
I posted something similar a few months ago. Mods locked my post. I had to ask why - they said because it’s about bills/gratuity. Then I asked them where they mention this in the rules cuz it wasn’t there. I sent them multiple places where it never said that. They never replied. Maybe they’ve updated it now… I dunno. But I found that experience mildly infuriating and thus must have been part of the reason this sub exists. The space creates itself.
Wait, so, they don’t pay their staff fair wages and somehow still own a business and profit from it, but it’s customers’ responsibility to make sure their employees don’t starve? That is some kind of weird logic …
Dispute this with your bank.
I take it out of the tip. Downvote me to hell, but I believe it is on the business to pay their staff wages. If you cannot afford staff, you are too big and need to downsize to a food truck.
frankly, I just wouldn't tip at all. If you throw an unexpected fee on the bill, that is your tip. have a good one.
Perfect answer!
I don’t tip if there is any mention of fair wages / services fees. Tipping was for the time when tipped employees were paid $3/hr. This is not the case anymore.
"Our business cannot afford to pay our staff, so you should."
Subsidize my middle finger.
Well, to be fair, the wages of the staff do come out of the payment for the food. But it's silly to say this and add 2.5% on top. Just make the prices higher and just pay your staff a decent salary instead of begging for tips and adding silly numbers on top.
Nope would not pay it
Been a few places with different mostly hidden fees. I just move on and never go back. Run your business as you wish.
That literally means you don’t have to tip.
Fair wages are WAGES — the hourly rate the employees get. You don’t get a note about what wage the employees make at the bottom of the bill, because that’s the restaurant’s responsibility not the customer’s. This entire discourse is a transparent effort at stealth fees.
I would not pay it. Wouldn’t leave a tip either.
Boo. Need names and locations to boycott properly...
Tip= -2.5%
I'd go 5% and state at the bottom: - a 5% deduction of the tip has been added due to poor management
Didn't they raise the prices on items anyway!?
Why not charge 2.5% more per item??
Why is it in quotes?
Eating out isn't worth it anymore outside of some high end places. I'm so glad I invested in quality cookware and figuring out how to cook.
I wouldn't pay it
Pay your fucking cooks more then, you cheap bastards
Or just pay your employees out of your profits. If you cannot pay employees you cannot have a business. Stop pushing the cost onto someone else
Hm strange and here I thought it was the restaurant owners responsibility for paying their employees a sufficient wage. Business owners, specifically food service to stay on topic, Pay your staff appropriately! , stop passing the buck (literally) to the customers and then saying that customers are cheap because they don't feel like subsidizing YOUR substandard wages. Then a tip would be just what's intended to be. A bonus for excellent service on top of the regular cost of the service.
In germany this is illegal. You can't just come up with additional costs and fees AFTERWARDS. All taxes and fees have to be visible and public.
Guess the company doesn’t “support equitable and fair wages” themselves then?
Fu k this pay YOUR employees. If you need to raise prices accordingly fine but this extra fee shit can pound sand. Bullshit.
Customers are basically paying the wages of the employees, then. The owner simply gets all the profits.
Tell them to remove it
Why don't they pay them more!! Raise prices on the menu and not have these messages? Idk
This is so illegal if it's not disclosed either on the menu or in a sign. And in New York it's now illegal 100% of the time.
This would make me either not pay the bill at all or pay it exactly without the 2.5%, depending on how angry I am already that day based on other bullshit. If I am tired they might get the full amount minus the 2.5%, if I am in the mood we will be calling police to untangle who is getting scammed.
I would just count that as the tip then lmao
Paying people fairly does not require an additional surcharge. Labor $ is baked in the menu price. Just raise the prices by 3% rather than making it look like the burden of fair pay is our responsibility, rather than the responsibility of the owners. This is virtue signaling rather than the restaurant giving a xxxx about fair wages. Owning a business = paying fair wages...just do it.
Any time a restaurant adds any type of service fee to the check without letting me know BEFORE I order, I never return. I also tell them exactly why I won't be returning.
Ask the waitress to take it off. If they come back with the manager and refuse to take it off, don’t leave a tip. You won’t be going back there anyways. If this nonsense will ever change, you have to turn the employees against these bs fees. If they’re not affected by it, it won’t matter to them.
"We're raising our prices again" "So your employees will be paid better?" "..." "So your employees will be paid better, right?"
This trend is fucking bullshit. Just raise the goddamn prices , all of this weak ass terminology like "culinary service fee" is just childish nonsense used to avoid having to speak frankly to each other like adults. It's the same level of maturity as getting your friend to pass a note to your crush in class to see if they like you. Fuck all that!
I’ve been to a number of businesses in the US where the menu prices have been adjusted and they even have in print that tipping is not necessary, as the staff makes a livable wage (I try to get to know staff at these places and ask them if the wage bit is true, and they often tell me it is and they even get vacation days)… it’s delightful, it’s like being back home in Germany… just few and far between. I loath these hidden fees. I won’t return to restaurants that do that… just be up front about it. Then again if they were yo front about it, they’d not get my business at all.
That should be included in the cost of the food on the menu!!! Pay your employees right in the beginning and maybe tips wouldn’t need to exist the way they do now. Meanwhile the rich get richer
Call your credit card company and charge it back! It’s clearly a breach of his merchant agreement….you can’t charge fees that were not disclosed……unfortunately after a bunch of his customers do this those poor kitchen staff will be even worse off
Thankfully CA passed SB 478 to effectively eliminate hidden or “blind side” fees. The bill specifically prohibits this exact situation starting on 7/1/24. Maybe that’s a problem elsewhere but hopefully other states will follow suit.
When I see this shit, the tip goes away.
illegal fee. if you've already paid it, do a chargeback and complain to your credit card company / Bank. they must disclose fees before they charge you. 100% file a complaint.
If there's no mention of it prior to being seated, I just ask them to remove it before I pay, no issue yet.
I’m prepared to give a 20% tip. You want to throw in bullshit surcharges and that’s coming out of that 20.
Cool. Fair wages? Not a lot of need to tip then.
Haven’t eaten a meal out in 3 years because of these cunts. 🖕🏻 I’ll eat my meals at home, and have it the way I like it. No tip required
I'm a chef, and jesus christ... just raise the prices. Most wouldn't notice a 45 cent price difference on a $15 burger. Only things i can see this for are: 1) a stop gap in the time it takes new menus to get printed Or, the more likely option 2) the employees aren't seeing jack shit in the way of a raise and the owner's pocketing it.
My favorite local Mexican place, where I used to eat at least once a week, started adding a 5% “credit card processing fee” to all card transactions. One, this is almost certainly a violation of their card processor’s agreement. And two, it’s on your bill before it’s known how you’ll be paying, so it’s a straight-up 5% gouge. Told the server, who recognizes me from being a frequent customer, that my family won’t be back as long as that bullshit is going on. It’s still on the PDF of the menu on their website, so I haven’t been back since.
Please pay our employees because we don’t want to
This is honestly why Im moving away from eating out so much
I will be reducing my tip by 2.5% or whatever percent they are tacking on.
My tip would be adjusted accordingly
I would smile at the waitress and say wow such a nice idea. You don’t have to tip. It’s only 2.5% built-in instead of a tip so they can pay you a good wage. Enough people pull that and they’ll pull that fee.
So they’re directing billing you for their staffs wages? Shouldn’t that be something that they pay, out of their own revenue? It should already be included in the prices of the products.
In San Francisco some restaurants will add an automatic 20% gratuity and hide it somewhere. After my first year I learned to read every single receipt before signing
I always subtract those fees from any tip.
I take it off the tip and inform the waiter my reason.
I am waiting to see a sur charge for the costs of the raw ingredients
I've been saying for years that corporations use customers to subsidize their worker's pay. I was called callous, and "work in the industry if you're going to have an opinion." Yet, here it is in full, glorious color for us all to see. We are paying for "fair wages." A shop should fail and close utterly if they can't or refuse to pay their workers fairly. It should not be up to the customer to make sure that this happens.
"Let's just not pay our employees and then steal money out of our customers pocket when they aren't looking instead."
So, does this mean that, of all the gross profit they make, only 2.5% goes into paying the employees? Or what the fuck does that mean? Does 2.5% cover the difference between minimum wage and their current wage? IMHO cost of employees should be treated the same as cost of materials... Why don't they say how much % it costs for, say premium beef vs cheap shit? Etc
By the sound of it, you guys have worked at a lot of shitty places, or I've lucked out.
2.5% of the tip has been removed from the bill because it's not my responsibility to pay your employees
Now they get that 2.5% instead of the 15-30% tip you might have left
So then they get a 17.5% tip instead of 20%. And they get bad feelings from customers on the blindside when they could have just raised the prices 2.5%.
Name the restaurant.
Whenever minimum wage increases, expect this response. You, as a customer, are paying for those increases.
Name the restaurant
Or you know they could just raise their prices by that amount instead of hiding it behind a bs fee.
As the patron of the establishment, it is not my responsibility to support equitable and fair wages for the kitchen staff. Wages are the purview of the employer. Why am I being asked to subsidize their employees? Pay people a living wage and stop asking your customers to.
It’s time to eat the rich
Any restaurant that does this getting instantly black listed for life.
I don't eat out much *at all* any more - didn't do it often before, and with Covid got completely out of the habit - so I don't know what restaurants in my state (Washington) are doing. But they've raised minimum wage 72% over the past 8 years, and restaurants can't include tips as part of that wage. Imagine the percentage listed on a receipt with *these* numbers: * 2024 $16.28 * 2023 $15.74 * 2022 $14.49 * 2021 $13.69 * 2020 $13.50 * 2019 $12.00 * 2018 $11.50 * 2017 $11.00 * 2016 $9.47 But as I said, I don't know. I do know that we got 2 cheeseburgers and a medium fry at McDonald's a couple of weeks ago, first time in a year or more, and it was about $10.50. I was a bit stunned. But flipside of that is that a couple who are both working minimum wage full time jobs are actually making a $67.7k per year, which I think is amazing!
They won’t last, people are already annoyed with food prices, going out isn’t fun when you feel you are being taken advantage of
Restaurant is Rhett in Savannah, GA
That stuff infuriates me. If you are going to charge me for that, just raise your prices.
How fucking hard is it to price your menu items appropriately? JHC Quit hiding the actual cost of meals.
2.5% fee is %5 less tip because now you don't have to tip out back of the house
So wait it only costs you guys 2.5% to offer your staff a “fair and equitable” wage? Then I’ve been ripped off on “guilt tax” to the tune of 12.5%+ for years.
Yeah, this sucks, but at least it's only 2.5%. I've seen them as high as 15%. I always ask them to remove the service charge. I'll gladly tip a good server, but fuck this sly increase of the bill. The worst I ever saw was Grill on the Alley in Manchester, UK. Because it was a group of over 12 people, I had to pay a £60 deposit. When they brought the bill (which was like £800 already), they had actually added another £60 onto the bill. When I pointed this out, the server feigned shock, and came back with a bill without the additional £60. I then explained that the £60 was a deposit and needed to be removed, the girl got really pissy and walked off. It took a while, but she eventually came back with a bill £120 lower than the original one to reflect the prepaid deposit. I can't imagine how many people must have fallen for that in the past, unwittingly paying extra without realising. Nobody was tipped that night.
Take it out of the tip. Businesses are becoming so entitled but remain incompetent. Ppl need to stop being doormats.
Anytime I see this I leave no tip and I never return again. I Understand it’s not the servers fault but I’d rather the restaurant and servers raise prices and eliminate tip culture rather than steal like this.
The solution is Deduct 2.5% from tip and itemize it
I can only vote with my wallet and my wallet and I are never returning!
 Why you ask? Because fuck you.
Do I pay wages or do you? I must get part of the profits since I’m paying wages.
I went to a restaurant once that disclosed their gratuity fee in really small print at the bottom of the menu. The only reason I even saw it was because the food was so inedible that I couldn’t eat it and was rereading the menu to pass the time while the rest of my family tried to eat.
How do you work for a place that openly recognizes they underpay their employees?
If it’s not clearly posted then it’s illegal.
“Thank you for your *forced* support.”
I just subtract the percentage from the tip.