Lawmakers want to crack down on “junk fees,” but restaurants are trying to stay out of the fight.
Surcharges or fees covering everything from credit card processing to gratuities to “inflation” have become more popular on restaurant checks in recent years.
Last year, 15% of restaurant owners added surcharges or fees to checks because of higher costs, according to the National Restaurant Association. In the second quarter, 3.7% of restaurant transactions processed by Square included a service fee, more than double the beginning of 2022, according to a recent report from the company.
Opponents of the practice say those fees and surcharges may surprise customers, hoodwinking them into paying more for their meals at a time when their wallets are already feeling thin. Fed-up diners compiled spreadsheets via Reddit of restaurants in Los Angeles, Chicago and D.C. charging hidden fees. Even the Onion took a swing at the practice, publishing a satirical story in May with the headline “Restaurant Check Includes 3% Surcharge To Provide Owner’s Sugar Baby With Birkin.”
Restaurant operators say the fees keep their menu prices lower
lmao, they just want to use deceptive pricing in their menu.
Fuck that, increase the price of your stuff instead of being dishonest.
“Lying about our prices on the menu keeps the prices on the menu lower!”
We need to go to what other countries do.
No tips, people earn a living wage. And all taxes and percentage fee charges are baked into the price you see.
If something is $99.99 on the sticker/menu, then you pay exactly $99.99
I forget how much I take this for granted until I visit the US. It’s such a hassle, I guess it’s one of those things you just get used to after while to be fair but when you’re not used to it it’s baffling.
It’s purposeful forced mental labor.
They want the customer to be confused, stressed, and ready to just pay to make it all go away. They make the customer do a lot of work to be informed about their products.
Anything where the customer knows the situation and the price is anathema to these dorks.
Exactly. Perfect example: Microsoft 360 pricing.
Yeah, you just always assume you’ll be nickle and dimed.
People bitch about it in food delivery apps, and it is a problem there, but it’s a problem offline too. You just see it immediately on the apps, where if you’re sitting down you don’t realize till after you ate and you don’t care as much.
Ironically seeing the real total up front makes people more angry than if they don’t know till after they ate.
I’m from the US. I assume outright beforehand that any private business I have to deal with is trying to scam me, because in my experience they are. After speaking to a few contenders, you pick the one that comes off as least slimy or do whatever it is yourself if they’re all completely shitty.
My tinfoil hat theory is part of this is because conservatives want to keep people low grade mad at government. Like they keep stuff like “5% tax” highly visible so people see it and get mad, then later they can campaign on how the government is axiomatically bad etc etc.
I mean, the strategy itself isn’t even a conspiracy theory. That’s literally their game plan for dismantling established departments and government branches. The US Post Office is a great example. Conservatives make it harder and harder for them to stay funded every year, all in an attempt to slow down postal service and drive up delivery prices. They intentionally add bloat, cut funding, and increase costs. This is explicitly so they can point at the USPS and go “look at how bloated and ineffective this is! We should privatize it instead!”
Agreed. The counter argument is that every state and county has different tax rates. One valid reason taxes that are percentages.
But the register can deal with all of that just fine.
I’ve been visiting Brazil the past couple weeks and this is something I see here, it’s so nice to not have to arbitrarily round up prices in my head to figure out the true cost before going to the register. I’ll miss that when I get back home.
This shit is just as abd in Japan. So many places have bullshit seating fees or they make you buy cabbage as an appetizer or something.
Taken the practice from host clubs and just ran with it.
All listed prices should be the final maximum cost for any specific product. “Additional fees may apply” should not be allowed, as they exist to deceive the user about the final cost.
Upcharges for additional things is fine, as long as the customer knows what the additional cost is.
Also, tipping needs to fuck off and all employees need to be paid a living wage. If businesses can’t pay a living wage they don’t need to exist.
Yup, at this point it’s just false advertising. Per the article, restaurant owners are saying they want to keep menu prices low as to not scare off customers, which is really just a fancy way of saying they’d rather bait them on the promise of low prices, and then ram the full cost of the meal up their asses at the end of it.
Just roll everything (cost/taxes/tips/fees) into the menu price. This constant bait and switch in the US needs to finally die. If you won’t survive by showing the true costs your customers need to pay, maybe you need to rethink your business model or find a new profession.
The way I see it, if a restaurant can’t provide a living wage and also provide reasonably priced food, then the restaurant is being run poorly and the money is not being managed properly.
And/or the cost of materials is also extortionate. I’m sure Sysco and other restaurant supply companies have also jacked their rates in recent years.
The thing is, they most non chain restaurants could just buy locally and it’ll be cheaper. It just takes some elbow grease and effort which owners don’t wanna do for better quality stuff.
I know it’s possible cause every trendy area I’ve gone to eat at has restaurants advertising local produce from farmers market and they’re prices are always the same or cheaper than other trendy restaurants in the area.
That would require taking the time to actually go out and do the shopping, as opposed to filling out an order sheet and having it brought to their door. Don’t get me wrong, I’m with you, I just don’t see many of the chefs/restaurant owners I know having that kind of time. Margins are already razor thin in that industry as it is, thus why they’re all so crazy about labor costs, and they’re already wearing so many hats to not have to hire someone to do things because they’d end up in the red. It’s not a great business to be in as an independent unless you can manage stupid low rent. But this is also why the chains/corps can thrive the way they do, they have the buying power to actually squeeze out a profit.
Yea that’s also why the quality of a lot of those type of restaurants is mid.
abiutbthe fi al
You okay?
My thumbs must have had a seizure!
- get rid of ridiculous fees
- get rid of tips
- pay your staff a living wage with proper benefits
- set real prices on the menu to account for the above
Which is what restaurants in a number of places that are not the US actually do.
And if we aren’t willing to pay those prices we can let the industry shrink. I love restaurants, but I see people using them as a convenience instead of a night out but that makes financial sense some places but not here not today.
As someone who grew up in the US and worked in nearly every position in a restaurant (from serving to cooking to managing) and now lives in another country, it’s wild how cheap restaurants are in the US. They can definitely shrink. Maybe at that point we might do something about food deserts. I’m also not sure if/how it’s correlated with the obesity epidemic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also a factor.
I won’t return to a place that has a “cost of living charge.” Don’t make my dining experience about your protest. If you need to raise prices… just raise them.
Yup, that’s my stance 100%
The weirdest one has been watching the “15%+ service fee” go from groups of 8 to 5 in only 2 years.
Also an easier way to alleviate junk fees would be to remove credit card transaction fees.
You know the thing that banks have been exploiting for decades to make profit out of virtually nothing.
It’s like paying for gamepass but for every time you open the game.
And don’t come in here saying that it covers PCI DSS requirement. This technology is cheaper to run than a rassberrypi mining dodgecoin.
There are quite a few places around me that add a service fee for everyone. I don’t frequent those places. Which is sad because some of them actually have good food.
Just make people pay the fee when they dine and you will see how many switch to other payment options
They should have started cracking down years ago when restaurants started charging “delivery fees” that the delivery drivers didn’t get.
Add a service fee or an inflation fee if you’d like. I’ll circle it and leave a big fat 0 for the tip. Without it, I’ll leave 20% minimum. Problem solved.
I am tired of prices going up AND tips going up. It already was a percentage of a total, and now it’s a higher percentage of a higher total?
I remember 10 percent tip. Was sort of annoyed at 15. At 20 percent with five times the bill it’s gotten way out of hand.
And now my area is trying to normalize 25 percent, with 30 being “good service”.
I am about to say fuck it and go back to 15. It’s either that or never eating out again.
A “quick haircut” sort of place (kind of a barber, sort of , but super-high-volume and just one worker, the owner) that I’ve been using for a while now has a super-annoying dark-pattern in their payment flow. They book appointments, and take in-person payments using Square. After your cut, when you’re paying via their hand-held kiosk with a card, the screen shows you a bunch of huge “tip amount” buttons, and it’s implied that the customer has to choose one of them, while the provider looks on, in order to finish the transaction and leave (probably not true - they’ve already got your CC info by that point). Guess which button is highlighted/pre-selected and front-and-center! That’s right, 20%. If you want to select another tip, or no tip, you have to select another button while she watches you do so. The owner lists all prices on her square website, and it’s those prices you think you’ll be paying when you book an appointment online, but she still feels the need to be tipped. You KNOW that the provider/barber has configured Square to present that UI to the customer. Not quite the same as the restaurant fees scam, but it’s actually more manipulative though, in my view.
Bring exact change in cash and be on your merry way
Why were you down voted? I like the idea, and why do I need to tip a fuckin barber? He’s doing his job down to the letter and is being payed for it.
Avoiding awkward forced interactions like this is the primary reason I cut my own hair. Otherwise, would be fine contributing to that part of the economy.
I’m tired of tips in general. Every job should pay a liveable wage. Fix the system. The more in the middle class, the more things we can have. Healthcare, education, housing, food, innovation,…etc. Fuck ripping people off so a few assholes can sleep with women just as shallow as them or rape ones that turn them down.
I never advanced from a 10% tip…if I thought the service and establishment justified tipping at all. Otherwise 0% tip.
Tipping is strictly optional; and anyone pressuring you otherwise is an asshat who doesn’t need your business.
Unless your server has to tip out (which they all do) and so by choosing to hit that 0% your server now has to pay to serve you.
Businesses that do this do not get my visits usually. It’s usually pretty evident.
I’m not going to fund that; and they should be demanding that the system stop and be adjusted so that such cases do not in fact happen.
Golly, I guess we’ll just keep subsidizing the fucking restaurant owner instead of doing anything.
The owners do not give half a shit if you tip their workers or not. They get their tipout regardless.
You can actually help by tackling tipping culture on a city/province/state level. You’re not doing anything by stiffing your server besides saving yourself money and costing your server. If you don’t go out to restaurants then whether your tip or not is no one’s concern.
Otherwise you’re still rewarding tipping culture by patronising venues that pay their workers a sub-livable wage.
Your options are tip well, or don’t eat out. It absolutely sucks that owners are making customers subsidize their employees’ wages, but by receiving the service you are expected to pay for the service. Tipping culture does suck. But it helps no one to tip poorly.
It helps me and erodes tipping culture as a whole. I’m curious how you think we’ll ever get past tipping culture without one of the first steps being “stop tipping for everything”.
And I absolutely do pay for the service. I pay the listed price of what I’m purchasing. That should be all that’s “expected”. You have been brainwashed into thinking that somehow shouldn’t include the cost of service. Absolutely insane.
I have never left 15% and if I’m not happy with the service 10% or lower.
I’m sure your server will understand. They’re usually the ones in charge of decisions like these. /s
I hope they do understand, and quit. Workers need to stop working for shit employers.
The only employers that are hiring are shit. I’m very worried about the service industry.
Are you kidding? Everyone is struggling to find workers at that level. It’s also a great time to level up. Receptionists and various no experience needed office jobs are struggling to find people to hire too. It’s a workers economy right now, but it won’t stay that way long.
Everyone is trying to find workers for the piss-poor wages that are being offered. Add in tip pools and positions being tipped that have no business being tipped and it couldn’t be further from a worker’s economy.
Wages offerings are up significantly… https://restaurant.opentable.com/resources/minimum-wage-restaurants/
But you have to move to get them. And guess what, the good employees are more likely to be offering more money.
You mean the servers that are overwhelmingly opposed to minimum wage laws applying to servers?
The same ones that complain all day about their wage and make >$40/hour with no education or training while not reporting their cash tips to the IRS?
The same ones that just drop off your food, never come back and take 20 mins to process a tab?
lol.
You’ve clearly never worked as or known anyone working as a server holy shit lmfao
THIS is why we need Government OUT OF OUR LIVES (except in the Bedroom and Doctors Office)! If these Regulations go away then OBVIOUSLY Prices will DROP!
Give me the real price or I will go elsewhere.
I’ve started doing Google reviews of these “fee” places, giving an honest opinion of food/services received and adding a simple statement of any fees added to menu prices. At least it makes it a little more visible.
The credit card fee is the only one I don’t mind. CC fees siphon a lot more money out of what we pay than people think. It’s unfair that restaurants/stores have to take that hit because the CC industry has been successful in making credit cards ubiquitous.
All those rewards we get as consumers for using CCs come straight from the vendors pockets, and the banks get a much larger cut of the fees than they “give” back via rewards.
There is no reason why credit card fees need to be so steep in the digital age. And most vendor agreements require that vendors aren’t allowed to charge a separate CC fee to cover the cost to them, so they instead have to raise prices on all (cash) customers through a menu price hike.
It’s the same kind of bullshit as Apple requiring that app owners are not allowed to sell their app on other platforms for less than their Apple Store price.
Yeah. I used to work at a retailer that had a credit card for the business. People think the incentive for the business is to get the $80 commission for signing up new people. And while that’s nice, the real reason for us was that processing fees were waived at our store for anyone using the card.
That’s why you’ll get get more “points” for using the card at the retailer than you do elsewhere. That 2-3% back or whatever is way less than the processing fee the business would otherwise be paying.
“Restaurant operators say the fees keep their menu prices lower, improve employee compensation and are better for customers.”
HA!!! *but we want it this way so people don’t realize how expensive their meal will actually be until they’ve already eaten and it’s too late. We want to hide our profit grab in innocuous fees that visually feel like non-negotiable taxes they are just used to paying without objection!!!"
What is the purpose? They control the base price, so why break it out? I guess they are just trying to pass the buck symbolically and literally.
It’s bait and switch. You display prices to attract customers (think how restaurants display their menus out front or online) and then raid them with add-ons at bill time.
bait and switch
Aka fraud
It’s only fraud when the plebs do it, to business owners it’s “strategy” /s
Sometimes the fees are in small print somewhere on the menu. I suppose that gives the restaurant some legal protection, although I’m still totally on the “menu prices must actually show how much that food costs” team.
Get rid of banks processing and merchant fees to start. Banks can make it by just fine without those.
