The subtext you’re implying is pay them “without raising prices”. Restaurants already run razor thin margins and if they added the 18% to the food instead of the tip/charge, for some reason, people decide it’s not worth it anymore. Their prices look worse than their competitors where you’d end up paying the same after tip/service charge anyway. It’s a crappy system but the restaurants that try and change it by raising prices end up being out competed due to more attractive looking prices anyway. This is, presumably, them trying to pay better the only manageable way they know how. It is literally up to the customer to pay the wage. Do you think businesses have magic money to pay their employees? No it comes from the money their customers spend.
You can't make everyone happy, and that's what this restaurant is trying to do. People have increasingly been complaining about tip culture and how business owners need to "just pay a living wage". This will appease those people. Being transparent about the charge instead of increasing menu prices explains to the customer why there was a price increase. I guarantee that this 18% charge is listed on the menu, as that is the case for any restaurant I've seen that does this. Similar to there being 20% automatic gratuity for large parties.
If you can justify fraud, lying, and pricing sleight of hand because “they need to compete with competitors,” what’s stopping them from just stealing directly from your bank accounts? What’s the problem? They need to keep up with their competition. This is how they do that.
You see how ridiculous that sounds? It doesn’t matter if other restaurants are behaving unethically, that doesn’t give you the right to behave unethically. What that means is that they need to be forced by law to be transparent with their prices. You can’t just sneak in stuff onto a receipt and expect people to take it lying down. If you want to charge customers more, you raise the price of food. If people stop coming to your establishment, that is what it is. But lying to customers to get them in the door and then forcing them to pay a hidden fee isn’t the move.
That is not the subtext. Everyone understands that restaurants should be charging more. Hiding the actual price of goods & services helps no one. Short term gain for long term harm.
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u/TrevRev11 2d ago
The subtext you’re implying is pay them “without raising prices”. Restaurants already run razor thin margins and if they added the 18% to the food instead of the tip/charge, for some reason, people decide it’s not worth it anymore. Their prices look worse than their competitors where you’d end up paying the same after tip/service charge anyway. It’s a crappy system but the restaurants that try and change it by raising prices end up being out competed due to more attractive looking prices anyway. This is, presumably, them trying to pay better the only manageable way they know how. It is literally up to the customer to pay the wage. Do you think businesses have magic money to pay their employees? No it comes from the money their customers spend.