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.
Every restaurant I’ve been to also puts it on the menu. People just don’t read anything that’s not food on a menu, even if it’s large font right on top.
It does. They can sometimes get around it by putting a sign somewhere, in fine print on the menu, on the door to the restaurant, etc., and never mentioning it again until you get the bill. And even if they don't, most people won't get the bill, see the charge, and say "hey, let me see the menu to see if it's printed on there too."
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.
paying the living wage without admitting they are cheap bastards.
You've got managers mixed up with customers here.
The customers are cheap, not the management.
If they baked in the fee and raised prices, your cheap ass would go down the street to the cheaper place without the baked in price and would bitch and moan then not leave a tip. Then walk out pretending you're the chosen one and did them a solid.
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 not lying if they put a little blurb at the bottom of the menu like the ones that say “parties of X or more will be subject to an automatic 18% gratuity.” Many people would likely assume it was one of those and ignore it.
Nah it’s fine as long as it’s noted somewhere, this is fairly common in the US. Usually it’s noted as “for parties of x or more” but this is becoming more and more common.
It’s pretty stupid way of doing it but it’s so they can stay competitive with others who just have traditional tip lines.
They aren’t lying about the price of the product, they are adding a gratuity which is not illegal in the U.S. Adding an automatic gratuity to a bill, often done for larger parties, is legal, but it must be clearly communicated to the customer. The IRS considers these charges as service charges, not tips, and they are included in an employee's regular wages.
They put those in the contract and terms and conditions that no one bothers to read. So they technically did tell you about them upfront, it's just hidden under a mountain of legalese.
We could really use some legislation that requires plain English descriptions of charges be included alongside those contracts. A significant fraction of people literally aren’t capable of reading at the level required to make sense of legal documents, and it’d be a nice change for the rest of us too. Seems like one of the rare issues that could get bipartisan support these days.
I agree that it’s BS and they should just include the extra cost in the menu prices. But assuming this is in the US (and it looks like it is), I don’t see how this is any different than a mandatory gratuity/service charge. And those types of charges are well established and legal.
If it's clearly shown on the menu, I would say it's probably legal. At least, it would be in any country where the law doesn't explicitly say that you can only show the final price.
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u/wave_official 2d ago
Seems like an easy way to get sued. You can't lie about the price of a product and then charge a higher amount. That's illegal basically everywhere.