EezyvilleCalifornia says restaurants must bake all of their add-on fees into menu prices
Kid_ThunderThe restaurant owner arguments are all super weak as usual.
"Menu prices will rise!"
No shit, but everyone was already paying the prices but now you can't just surprise patrons with the increase.
"There will be pullback. People will lose jobs and hours!"
Doubtful but even if true, that means that they knew they were lying to customers and clawing extra charges that they wouldn't know about already.
"'They' are thinking restaurants will absorb the costs"
Not exactly but they will have to compete with pricing as it should be.
They're just trying to get away with playing the same game Telcos have gotten away with for far too many decades.
What are the service charges that are being put on after the fact? From this I’m assuming it’s separate from the customary tip and any sales tax.
ElderWendigoMany restaurants have started adding a “service charge” that is not a tip in addition to menu prices. It’s super fucking shady. There is rarely an signage indicating the charge, relying of the hostesses to inform you. It isn’t always clear on the itemized bill they hand you, since it’s grouped down with the tax. It’s not the standard gratuity added for large groups. There is a restaurant near me that suddenly started adding this kind of charge. They did not notify me when I sat down and I didn’t see any indication of it on the itemized bill and only noticed when calculating the tip, after they’d run my card. I made a huge stink about it because it’s a fucking scam and they did discount my bill, but they refused to remove the service charge. I liked their food, but that was the last time I visited and I stopped recommending them.
I think what really kicked this off is that restaurants started putting surcharges on bills by directly passes specific legal requirement costs directly to the customers without increasing their menu prices. For example, now that servers get some health benefits in SF, they'll have a surcharge that says something like "SF Mandate" or "SF Health Surcharge".
This would also cover stuff like to go order surcharges where some places are charging more for takeout sort of like Doordash or Grubhub do, except of course, you're picking it up yourself.
I do wonder how/if places with some more traditional surcharges are going to comply now. For example pizza places charging delivery fees.
Places will still be able to get away with "X% gratuity added to bill for Y seats (though I've seen some places do it for any number of people, including 1)" because that's optional, even if they put it on your bill because you've always been able to make them remove it.
It is like on most people's cell phone bills in the US. You'll see stuff like "FCC surcharge" which is the company passing their FCC regulatory fees directly to the customer without changing their advertised prices for a plan, E911 fees for 911 services, various taxes levied on the company but not the consumer are also passed to the customer.
The purpose is to have restaurants take these fees/taxes/whatever and make them build those costs of doing business directly into their advertised pricing on their menus. Companies don't like this because they can advertise cheaper prices and psychologically the customer doesn't usually think or even know about the extra surcharges, companies can set those surprise charges to whatever they want (they aren't regulated) and they do not have to really compete with those prices wherever they advertise (menus, flyers, etc.) thus driving them down for the consumer.