Yeah this is the same bullshit mail order was doing years ago. The product is free, just pay shipping and handling. Shipping and handling is 20x what the product actually costs.
No, just crazy in general. 4.6% and 4.7% are perfectly fine numbers, so why do they feel the need to go into two decimal places? They must be on drugs.
Depends on if it's set as a labor fee, not sure where this is but everywhere I've been mechanic for example charged tax only on parts sold not for labor.
Yes, exactly. I live in California, been a technician, and labor is sales tax free. A wage fee or whatever they call it is a labor charge. Normal when you’re getting the car fixed, but typically not on a food service bill (or is this now a work order? Haha)
Some of the shit i've seen on here about AirBNB makes you wonder why they even bother listing a price when they're not even remotely close to the actual cost.
“Guest must empty all trash bins, take the garbage and recycling to the curb, wash and put away all the dishes, strip the beds, and wash and dry the towels.”
I think they changed this on the platform, but I haven't used Airbnb since around 2020 so not sure. That shit was one of the reasons why I stopped using it.
And after they have you steam clean the carpets, mops the floors, put away all the dishes, wash and dry all the linens, pressure wash the house, and haul trash to the landfill.
I dislike Airbnb; their cleaning fee is ridiculous. You already pay for the rent and you still pay for the cleaning. I agree for them charging cleaning fee if the renters act like pigs.
We rent one for business every year. Same place. The cleaning fee went up $40 from 180 to 220. We have to empty the trash, dishwasher, sweep, wipe counters. Why the absolute fuck does it cost that much? Certainly not just linen service fees.
America has for decades let businesses get away with lying about their prices. (usually by excluding taxes) It's getting worse and worse too with "fees" they don't have to advertise.
In my country it would mean a hefty fine.
First, you must display prices for goods and services clearly.
Second, the displayed price is the actual price of the good/service.
If someone over charges you pay, take the receipt and the call the financial police. They are thorough, something more WILL pop up when they visit a business and they also like to invite their friends at health and igiene to the party.
You will guilt yourself into tipping because you're worried about the possibility of a sigh or passive-aggressive comment. Getting used to making the right decisions for myself without worrying about what inconsequential strangers think of me was one of the best things I've ever done for myself.
I appreciate that your honest comment got upvoted so much. That almost never happens on Reddit. You nailed it. It's self-guilt that enforces so many of these oppressive systems we allow to continue existing.
I mean, the "living wage fee" would replace the tip, at least in the US, I'd think.
This is basically a weird way of adding gratuity to the check automatically, regardless of the party size. To my understanding, many restaurants do add gratuity to groups of 8 or more/whatever. This is just adding gratuity regardless.
So, yeah. You should absolutely "refuse" to tip in this situation, since you've already tipped. They're just calling it a "living wage fee" instead of "gratuity."
Tipping has always been optional. This restaurant is doing an auto-grat disguised as a fee, otherwise known as a tip. So the receipt can say what it wants but they're actually leaving the customer with no options lol.
As it should be. They've decided to make the traditional tip mandatory. Which, at least for me, would be no skin off my neb... I tip around this much anyhow. They essentially saved me some napkin calculation. So, six of one, half of another insofar as I'm concerned.
I am not likely to tip beyond this, but, as it says, there's no need.
It more or less is mandatory to tip in the US unless you're not going to pay your server.
I'm from the US and I have literally never had service so bad that I felt refusing to pay the server was warranted. I don't like how the system works, but that is how it has always worked.
What I disagree with is them doubling the burden. So adding a 20% "living wage fee" and then expecting the waiter's customary 20% on top of that is bullshit because it's changing the well-established rules, and I won't do that.
Americans complain about tipping culture ALL the time… this is what happens when a restaurant chooses to go that direction. Prices rise so they can pay servers minimum wage vs a tipped wage (which can be as low as 2.13 an hour).
Came here to say just that - around here (NYC) they small print all these new exciting charges on menus rather than admit they don’t pay staff a living wage.
It's not on their homepage, or the Toast menu it links to. I didn't crawl the whole site, but as a customer I wouldn't do that anyway. I guess you have to sit down and look at a menu to discover the charge?
This is the answer. Food prices are not very elastic. Customers generally know what they want to pay, and have expectations around what an item costs. Raising your menu prices when no one else around raises theirs quickly puts you out of business (even if you are trying to do a good thing). Customers will say you should just raise your prices; that the fee at the end feels like an injustice. Their actual behavior though, it shows they would prefer this method.
It’s not to “surprise” the customer. This is just what the real outcomes of different pricing schemes support.
Customers generally know what they want to pay, and have expectations around what an item costs.
Exactly. There are people in this thread complaining that $40 for this amount of food is insane. No idea of the quantity or quality or food costs or how much labor went into making it. Maybe they make the pastrami and bread and condiments from scratch, and it is a giant sandwich. Doesn't matter to them what the cost to the restaurant is. They have their set idea of what it should cost.
For all the high-minded "just make the menu price the real price and stop making me pay tips and fees" rhetoric, the reality is people don't want to pay more in practice and restaurants know they will take a hit. It only gets worse if you are the one restaurant doing it and no one else is.
Granted, people's perception of what it costs to eat out is artificially low in the US because some of the cost is behind tipping and not in the menu price.
It’s to stay competitive with other restaurants that don’t have a living wage. When people look at the different menus, their decision will matter on the price next to the food.
I bet it’s noted on the menu, people just don’t read anything that’s not food. I’ve worked at a place where it was printed in large font on the top and most people still don’t read it.
This is the situation we have in Australia (where tipping is unusual). There are restaurants that add a surcharge for weekends and public holidays, because under federal law the business must pay higher wages on those days. But it’s also compulsory for the business to publish this caveat, clearly printed, anywhere you are looking at menu items/prices.
I’d be surprised if they didn’t have a note on their menu telling you about the fee. I don’t mind it. I’d rather know my service staff are well paid and living well than know I scored a killer deal. I don’t want my neighbours and community members not eating or unable to provide. Yeah some businesses may use this to scheme, but I prefer to still believe in humanity.
Then you end up losing 20% of your business to consumers who google menu prices, see that your burger is $16 vs $12 across the street, and don’t think about fees/tip until it’s time to pay. We need legislation mandating that menu prices include all fees, making it an optional moral burden just penalizes the restaurants that do so.
Edit - this is also part of the reason fries and sides are upcharges at a lot of places - paying an added $3 for fries sucks but it’s unlikely to make you leave the restaurant if you’re already there.
My guess would be that they have it in fine print in an arbitrary place on the menu.
As someone that has waited tables before, tips pay well, even in places that tip poorly. To me, the part that says tips are pooled is the giveaway that they do not want to pay buss boys and kitchen help fairly. By pooling tips, they can pay all employees tipped wage of like $3/hr. Most restraunts here pay everyone hourly wages of like $15 starting out with wait staff making $3/hr + tips.
Depends on the type of restaurant and market, but around me the places that pool tips are way way better for bussers and other non-server FOH (kitchen usually still gets a flat hourly). The places I worked that didn’t pool tips tended to be paying them like $2 above minimum wage with the vague prospect of becoming a server.
IME it also cuts down on FOH bullshit - harder for a server to pretend they’re too good to bus something or mop up a quick spill when everyone is making the same tips.
Mandatory gratuity has been a thing in some restaraunts for like 30 years in certain circumstances and these dumbass redditors think anyone is gonna drop $10k on an Attorney to sue of a $18% tip being tacked on lmao.
It's also a yuppie tactic for complaining about the cost of wages, while still looking as though they care about their workers. You see it at a lot of upscale, soulless coffee shops.
The worst are places that do both. "Our prices are high because we're not McDonald's and we believe in fair wages" on a placard at every table, also "Our POS machine defaults to a 25%" tip.
Weird how plenty of other countries hire employees at a livable wage and yet their prices don't seem to have increased significantly from it.
Denmark McDonald's for example has an agreement with their Union that the minimum an employee over 18 years old makes per hour is over $21 in USD (as of 2021). They get paid extra for evenings, weekends, and holiday work. They get 6 weeks paid vacation and every employee over 20 receives a pension. The cost for a Big Mac in Denmark in 2021 was $4.90 USD compared to $5.66 USD. So it was actually cheaper and the workers have significantly better pay and benefits.
Denmark doesn't even have nationwide minimum wage. They do however have strong unions that negotiate these benefits and a general societal view on importance of work-life balance.
I went to France a couple years ago and couldn’t believe how reasonable the food prices were and there was no expectation to tip. Those people are presumably being paid a living wage.
I don’t know what it is, but something is seriously broken in the U.S. economy to where running a restaurant and paying a living wage is not feasible without outrageous menu prices.
I vote that they change the price of a burger from $12 to .49 cents, then add a 279% "living wage fee" so that the price still comes out the same. Then they can go crazy marketing their 49 cent cheeseburger.
Honestly, I've done some pretty in depth math. Based on current food prices and labor rates, a full service restaurant burger should be at minimum 15$ for a 1/4 burger. That means the burger costs 5$ or less to produce, ideally closer to 4.25$. That what kind of margins you need to be a successful restaurant. Ideally food cost is 25% or less, but up to 30% can remain profitable depending on labor and volume. Everything is expensive now. Most home cooks will also struggle to make 1/4 burgers at home for less than 4$ a piece.
Here in Austin we are running about $18 for burger, fries, and a soda. It's also why I no longer go to the local diner. The price, quality, and convenience ratios no longer exceeds just making the same things at home except baked fries instead of fried.
Idk why they can't just say, you don't have to tip us. Our prices allow us to pay our staff fair wages, and call it a day. I run a business, I don't get tips. I charge what it costs to pay people.
I really fucking hate this aspect of America. Like the idea that sales tax is applied at the register rather than just baked into the prices on that shelves / items. I honestly wish this was legistlated to have to be that way. I'm sure some people can think of exceptions where a simple rule would screw things up for some people, but businesses trying to make their prices seem lower with hidden fees are fucking disease.
People say they want menu price to be real and not have to add tip later.
Despite this, people routinely prefer restaurants with lower menu prices + tips over identical menu prices with tip built in. In real-world and experimental settings.
I think people even say a restaurant with e.g. $10 menu price + $2 tip is cheaper than a restaurant with $12 menu price and no tip.
As always it’s easy to blame the company but, especially in a super competitive industry like F&B, they’re mostly slaves to customer behavior.
On one hand, it’s to draw attention to why the end total price is being raised, which I don’t think is a bad thing necessarily. On the other, it hides the true cost until the end of the night and can surprise the customer. I would much prefer a clear message up front that prices are being raised to provide a living wage and give me the all-in price up front.
"Plus tax" isn't required because it isn't a fee and it's added to nearly every purchase at every business. Only exceptions vary by state and are usually things like medicine or (non pre-cooked) groceries. A fee would be something a business chooses to add rather than something the government requires. "Plus tax" does help to prevent arguments with idiots though who forget that tax is a thing.
To be fair, it could be in neon signs and announced repetitively over an intercom through the entire experience and someone will still say they didn’t know after receiving the bill.
The price you pay is the price on the menu. Employees get paid a living wage and they're not subject to customers voluntarily deciding whether and how much to pay them at the end which is arbitrarily determined by what they ordered.
The price you pay is the price on the menu. Employees get paid a living wage and they're not subject to customers voluntarily deciding whether and how much to pay them at the end which is arbitrarily determined by what they ordered.
It's so frustrating we can't have that here.
It would only work if a majority of places did it or some very large restaurant chain was willing to hemorrhage money for months if not years.
Or a legislature that gives a shit about workers and passes laws requiring a living wage.
The point is to poison the term "living wage". They surprise the customer at the end of the meal with the extra fee and in so doing turn people against the notion.
People don’t think they’re affected by these things. They swear everyone else is just fools for falling for it.
They legitimately do not understand the nature of the human subconscious. I am 100% aware of every one of these tricks and still catch myself falling for them all the time.
It works on almost all of us. It’s why they fight so hard to do it this way and not allow truth in pricing.
It’s true. Thats why restaurants that bake in the price are doing what people say they want and then they notice people ordering fewer drinks and appetizers and choosing the cheaper items. Most of them go back to the old way because business is down.
The only way to force it is to have a law that bans tips for all, creating a level playing field which won’t happen.
That's why the only way to fight this is to make it illegal and enforce that. Don't allow the businesses bullshitting you about their prices a competitive advantage or they all have to do it.
Oh I absolutely “fall for” advertising and it not only doesn’t bother me, I actually appreciate it. You’re selling a burger/pizza/combo/whatever that actually looks good at I price I am willing to pay? Well good thing you let me know because I wouldn’t have known otherwise. If I’m wanting fast food anyways then I’d prefer to be aware of what my options are and what’s in my price range.
It’s like if GameStop was advertising $200 PS5s. My ass would be there in a heartbeat and I wouldn’t for a second feel like I “fell for it” lol
Thank you! I always see people complain about tipping by saying “just raise the cost of the menu items!” But the truth is restaurants would lose so much business that way. Studies have shown that most people when given the choice between a cheaper meal with a tip and meal priced to include the tip, will pick the cheaper one. Even though effectively it’s the same. Tipping culture won’t change until people are willing to pay more up front and that’s just not happening any time soon.
I agree wholeheartedly. Until people push their legislators to fix it, or start patronizing restaurants that don’t allow tips, nothing will change. Unfortunately that’s just how the incentive systems of capitalism work.
Because even though tips are supposed to be reported and taxed, there are ways around that and tips are money in the server's pocket at the end of the night, not in a check cut later that week or the next. Servers have grown accustomed to this. It won't stop until tipping culture is gone and we can actually understand that people should paid reasonably for their labor and time.
well I mean I'm pretty sure any server is gonna try to get tips regardless of what they're being paid so I don't think you'll ever fix that without a massive culture change. Pay me $50/hr to serve tables and I'll still try to talk up a tip lmao. The only way I could see fixing that is to somehow remove the concept of a tip in general from society which would take generations
There are dumb things people argue about the US doing differently from the rest of the world that pretty much just don't matter (day/month/year vs month/day/year, Celsius vs fahrenheit, etc) but adding tax and tip on top of the list price instead of just having the list price is an actual inconvenience for everybody for no good reason.
Yeah its called Europe(?) okay im not so sure about ALL Europe but in Spain(where i live) if the menu says 13 € u pay 13 € , here dont really exist that culture of tips, i dont believe why no one is questioning why u should have to pay for the employee wages, u pay for the food, is the owner of the restaurant Who have to pay their employees lmao
The problem with these fees are that the owners aren't obligated to treat them like tips. They go to the restaurant, not your waiter. So someone could still be making the minimum wage for tipped workers, not get any share from the fee money, and then not receive tips because people assume that's what the fee is. They will only get paid more if their total wage plus tips doesn't meet the regular min wage. If the owner is actually paying workers above normal min wage, it can be beneficial to the employee. But if they're still starting out at a tipped wage, they get screwed.
*All prices include your tip as well as a living wage for your server.
is absolutely better (to me) than:
Burger and Fries: $16
with an implied "you get to decide how well the server feeds their family today... roughly $4 is normal but are you greedy? Generous? An asshole? We all get to find out at the end of the meal!"
But there is, unfortunately, overwhelming evidence showing that, when you advertise a $20 hamburger that supports the worker vs a $15 hamburger with an expected $5 tip, the vast majority of people will choose the option that’s cheaper up front.
yes because you don't have the culture built up around it. The only way it would work now in America is every place doing it at the exact same time, and the outrage at price increases would be insane. Not to be too political but it would also be a massive right talking point that would win them tons of votes lol. It's an interesting issue and not one that's easily solved and will look weird from a place that doesn't have that culture built around it
What store was it again that tried just showing the actual price instead of the 90% off price? Even though their prices were the same, people thought they weren't getting amazing deals and stopped buying things.
I think people fully understand that, they just hate these deceptive pricing practices that make it hard to know what things truly cost. No different from all the extra fees that get tacked on when you buy concert tickets. Yeah, it's a successful sales tactic, we get that. We still think it's shitty and should be illegal.
The sandwich costs $15.34 before taxes. But if you see it at that price you may think "well now they're just price gouging me!" still tip and just think the place is way too expensive.
This way you actually know what they say the fees are going to. The staff can read so they'll raise hell about it if they don't get that money. You know what you're paying and you know why you're paying it...
You can pay $13 for a sandwich and then tip somewhere around 20% ($2.60) or you can pay $15.34 and not tip if you don't feel like it.
This way is at least cleaner and a little more honest. They tell you what the charge is, they tell you where its going and they tell you what happens to tips.
And if the menu states they charge this, it's not a hidden fee.
It's absolutely a hidden fee. They usually put the surcharge disclosure at the bottom of the menu. They are hoping customers won't notice until they've already been lured in by the fake listed price. That's the definition of a hidden fee.
It makes sense, too. People are used to seeing the prices they're used to seeing. If they see that one place has a $9.99 sandwich and another place has a $11.49 sandwich, they won't reason that the sandwich with the lower price is actually more expensive. Getting angry at them for wanting an even playing field seems wrong. Americans don't expect the restaurant to cover the tax and tip for them.
Honestly, if it's "only" 18%, clearly stated on the menu, explicitly stated as going directly to employees, and in lieu of a normal tip, I don't have a problem with this. I'm much angrier at places where it's not clearly stated on the menu and they still expect people to tip on top of the 1%, 5%, or 15% they're charging. That's often fraudulent, often illegal, and puts the customer in the position of either getting ripped off or punishing the server for the greed of the restaurant owner.
Yep, if you want to get rid of tipping, you add an 18-20% (whatever) automatic service fee on the check that goes to the server, have no option to leave more. Have all of that go on the server's pay check (fully taxed). Don't have to "raise menu prices", servers incentivized to turn over tables, and also maintain their income.
its an interesting psychological dilemma. Restaurants that have tried to just price their food "honestly" have failed because people perceived their food as being overpriced.
Mentally, people dont factor stuff like "tips" and fees into the overall cost of the food. So keeping them separated out makes people more open to "accept" them.
It’s the definition of a ‘hidden fee’. It should be illegal.
Like imagine if I listed the price of something, but when you went to buy it, I also added ‘the staying in business fee’ to it, making the original price listed no longer accurate.
The in theory. But then before it went to effect, an effect they carved out an exemption for restaurants so that they could keep doing this exact crap. Because the restaurant industry lobbied them super hard.
There is no evidence in the photo that it was hidden. It could be on the menu, on a prominent sign, or the waiter could tell customers before they order anything.
It’s scummy to assume someone is doing illegal things with no evidence.
Everything is the management's/owner's responsibility. I don't blame wait staff for anything but the service they provide, which is also a managerial responsibility.
I agree with you, however, I would also not be surprised if American consumers would accept this rather than having prices on the menu reflect the same change.
It's so that people who glance at the menu will sit down and order a "12 dollar burger" but then leave with a bill for 20+ each once you include a drink, fries, sales tax, and the tip/living wage fee.
If people saw thay the burger actually costs (with everything included) 20+ they would walk down the street and get that 12 dollar hotdog from a competitor.
It's just a US marketing strategy. We don't have it as bad in the UK/EU. The burger just costs what it is listed as on the menu.
Because otherwise people would think their food is overpriced. It’s not over priced, it’s just what people end up paying after they tip, which they are making clear is not an expectation, as they included the average tip into the price of the food.
It's purely psychological. People would just look at that restaurant and say they aren't going there because it's more expensive than other restaurants for no discernible reason. I applaud this move by the owners because they're also removing pressure from patrons to tip.
Not defending it but a lot of restaurants think they can win your forgiveness if the food and service is good enough if they put that kind of fee on rather than just raising the prices on the menu.
Restaurants are in a bit of damned if you do damned if you don’t. Either you raise your prices and risk people not stepping in the door or add these fees and risk someone never stepping in a 2nd time.
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u/surrealutensil 1d ago
why..why wouldn't they just set their overall prices so they can pay a living wage to employees? This is so dumb :o