Restaurant Bill

That would be consequent, but usually it's not worth the trouble.

I'd rather leave with 20 quid less than wasting 30 min of my time.

I have never eaten at a restaurant that did not disclose a mandatory gratuity ahead of time, but I suppose it could happen.

They should have it listed somewhere in large print and/or verbally inform people so patrons are aware ahead of time

By tradition, the service charge is supposed to be paid to the staff. Therefore, it's not customary to tip when you're assessed a service charge, although many restaurants choose to ask for a tip anyway.

If you work in a restaurant that charges a service charge but pockets it... you're being robbed.

The cost of food in American restaurants includes service charger. It just not itemized. Waiters do have salaries, so it comes from somewhere.

I'm an American, and I can't explain this to you. If I saw this on a receipt, I would write down on it that I'm tipping $0 because of the service fee and to consider the fee my tip.

It doesn't make sense to any sane person. But basically:

The restaurant feels that costs have increased and in order to remain profitable they must raise prices. Instead of raising prices on the menu, take the canoli as an example, from $11 to $13, they decided to add it after the calculation.

This means the customer may go out with an idea of what they would like to spend (maybe it's a special treat for them) orders based on the menu, figures tip and tax... Expects to be out for $100.... But surprise! You owe a fucking service charge.

Now-- I'm not into this particular restaurant's finances. Let's be generous and assume they need to charge more to break even. This is the shady (and should be illegal) way to do this. They should instead raise prices and be honest with the customer what they feel they need to charge.

The tip specifically is "we pay them less than minimum wage

Not everywhere. Some areas don't allow wages that are lower than minimum wage for tipped jobs. The area I live in in California is around $17-18/hr minimum wage regardless of if the job is tipped or not.

Except you're wrong. Service charges are not considered tips under FLSA rules within the US. Many states and local jurisdictions have special rules for tipped wages, how they're taxed and those taxes are collected, and service charges are not included in that definition.

https://www.dov.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-employees-flsa

If they charged a mandatory gratuity, I would agree with you. An 18% mandatory gratuity is an 18% tip to the waitstaff; you are not expected to pay an additional tip on top of that.

A tip is money directly to the waitstaff. The restaurant can't touch it. The restaurant is not charged sales tax nor income tax on money collected as tips. When they collect a gratuity, it goes directly to the staff.

This "service fee" was taxed. It did not go directly to the waitstaff; it was recorded as sales revenue, and thus income to the restaurant. The restaurant is being taxed on it before any of it gets to the staff. They would only do that if they are keeping a part of it, which they could not do if it was considered a "tip" or "gratuity".

Charging a "service fee" is a legal way for the restaurant to steal tips from employees, while making you think they are paying it to their staff.

Most likely, they pay minimum tipped wage plus $1/hr. They are making $3.13/hr plus tips instead of $2.13/hr plus tips. That extra $1 is the higher "base wage" they are talking about.

About $0.75 of that $17.22 service fee goes toward increasing the "base wage", with the rest counted as income to the restaurant.

This is not the perfect opportunity to say "you already charged me for the service". This is the perfect opportunity to name and shame this scumbag restaurant for its shitty business practices, and never eat their again.

They probably pay $1/hr over minimum tipped wages. About $0.75 of that $17.22 fee goes to paying that increased wage, and the rest is pocketed.

If they wanted to subsidize worker wages, they would include a mandatory gratuity rather than a service fee. Gratuities are passed directly to workers.

This is truly scummy behavior.

not a casual FedEx or UPS employee

Do you want corporate efforts to reduce delivery driver wages and processes to demand you pay their wages through delivery tips? Because I am sure are ready to go on this endeavor as soon as you want.

ALL cities in all states have a minimum wage for all workers. By federal law

What a lovely way to ensure that your customers will never return.

How about just raising prices since it is a cost of running the business.

That sounds just like tipping, but with more steps. And also the resteraunt skimming a chunk of it too I'm sure. 18% service fee so we can pay 8% higher wages.

LOL

I had a service charge like that added in Rome once. It is most likely illegal, but Rome is a pretty lawless place as it is where everybody tries to scam you all the time, so I didn't bother spending time arguing it and getting all worked up about a couple of euros during my holiday, just avoided the place thereafter. I know that's probably what they're counting on ...

I the s legal most places in the US, some big cities like New York City have outlawed it.

Alternative option: the service fee is the tip because there's no way I'm paying more than what's on that bill.

It's failing. I'm just mad at the employer.

It's illegal if the fact that a service fee would be added wasn't shared before ordering (on the menu / by the waiter /...)

Possibly. Local laws vary heavily, and could limit hidden fees like these. If the franchise is in one of these places, but the parent chain is not, it could easily be implemented despite being illegal. It's a similar case if the local operator didn't have the required notices in the required way, since it would be done separately. Not necessarily out of malice, but a ton of places simply do not run a tight ship. The receipt is absolutely not the place these notices are required; that's just a convenience.

It's also possible that the POS has a bunch of options that can easily be set by management without involving lawyers. A required tip (often for large groups, but not always) is an easy use case for this. So are the various messages, including the tipping scale, or adding a promotional QR code (e.g. scan the code to fill out a survey and get $5 off your next visit)

In any event, I stand behind my advice- check if it's illegal, and push to make it illegal.

First, many places have a local, state, and national government. Particularly the ones that use dollars and expect an additional tip, as shown on the receipt.

Stop trying to be offended at everything.

The rest of the world doesn't exist, it's just a scam made up by the passport cartel to fleece you of your money every few years.

Let's see... dollar sign? Well that cuts out a lot of the world. Written in English, so that leaves about 3 countries. Australia doesn't have a tipping culture the same way we do in North America so that leaves either Canada or the US, in which case you can replace state with province and cover your bases.

Looks at a picture of a receipt that is almost certainly from the US:

What about the rest of the world?!

I hope their customers are exclusively people who support the the below minimum wage for servers law.

Actually, what I'm saying was that there shouldn't be a need for a tip at all. That 18% service charge is for services rendered outside of the production of the product, meaning the server, cashier, etc. In most countries that's rolled into the cost of the product, not a separate charge. In the US, that's paid for through tips instead. What they're doing is trying to double dip. They want to keep the money that normally would go to paying the service staff a wage without raising advertised prices and also have a separate tip to actually pay them.

This is a classic bait and switch where advertised price is not what you actually pay. Doesn't matter if they put a little sign to cover their legal obligations, it's still disingenuous to advertise one price and charge another. Tipping and taxes are common knowledge in the US as being added on after, but a service charge in addition to tipping is not and most people will assume that the service charge is a tip and won't also tip whereas it doesn't go directly to the service staff like a tip does. So likely in this place, the service staff just gets their $2.13/hr or whatever the tipped minimum is there, and a few dollars here and there in actual tips but doesn't get any of that 18% unless tips don't cover the required hourly $5.12 tip credit.

So they need to choose. Raise your prices for more profit and keep tipping, raise your prices to pay your service staff and do away with tipping, or keep your prices lower and risk tipping not covering the minimum wage tip credit.

Some people prefer this

Citation needed.

They have raise prices across the menu, by 18% to be more specific.

Segregating the price increase as "service fee" is only so that they can deceitfully advertise their prices a lower than they really are, a form of Consumer Fraud (I believe this one is a form of Bait & Switch)

Look at the calculated tips. They are based on $95.60, the price of the meal before the 18% service charge.

If they raise their prices by 18%, they would have to raise their tip calculation by 18%.

They are stiffing their employees.

I didn’t say I was giving them 15%. I give 18% for full service. But a buck or two for something like this.

In America, the restaurant would have to post this on the menu. Thus we have fine-print on our menus. God bless the USA.

It's nice to hear the EU doesn't let that crap slide.

Where is this common? I know you often see it in scummy tourist traps, but besides that I've not seen something like it.

Not if you made decisions based on the price on the menu. It's designed so menu prices look low.

That would be the 'take a hit to profits.' Yeah, I don't expect that either. What's annoying is that it is always the very profitable douche bag restaurants that do this. Most restaurants struggle to make ends meat.

even in countries that actually pay their staff right, there's no way those base prices don't cover the cost of food, staff and overheads.

then they have the gall to charge a "service charge" to pay the staff.

THEN they have the gall to imply you still need to tip

fuck that to hell

Sounds like sit down restaurant menus should reflect the actual costs including waitstaff then like any fast food place is able to do.

Restaurants have notoriously thin margins.

Help me understand.

Assuming restaurants have the same overhead as any other business: rent, staff, insurance, maybe equipment (manufacturing, etc.), what else?

They don't have expenses like vehicles, tariffs on imported goods, the cost to fly staff out for conferences, tech costs, and so on.

The only difference is the product they bring in, and the product they put out.

As a consumer, who doesn't get the benefit of industry discounts or high-volume prices, making food is really inexpensive.

When I see a restaurant, for example, selling pasta with marinara sauce for $15-20 a plate, I'm curious to know why they have to beg to cover costs. You can make the same dish for a family of four for under $3, and save $100 you'd spend getting the same dish at a restaurant.

So, again, if the cost of ingredients allows for such a significant markup, well beyond what most other businesses are able to get away with, why are restaurants having to charge "service fees" on top of tips?

Cheap sub contractors need so much constant control to make sure things are delivered on spec that it is almost like it costs more than to hire the more expensive company with a reputation for solid work

I worked at a pizza shop way back ages ago (early 2000's), but I think the formula is generally the same. Food costs they would shoot for 33%, labor ended up being around 33%, the rest was overhead for the facility (rent, AC, etc) and profit.

I think that's actually a pretty fair amount of profit in that. But that was almost 20 years ago. I feel like the formula is likely similar though.

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Try the pasta...

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You could go hog wild and include tax in the prices too. Then the price of an item could be the price of an item instead of the start of a maths quiz.

It’s important to require disclosure of the service fee. In my experience usually listed at the bottom of the menu. I know at least in some instances there are crowdsourced master lists of restaurants with hidden fees, and enforcement of disclosure requirements seems to have stepped up.

It's a USA thing. Other places often have rules that say the price advertised (on menu, website, in store) is the price the customer pays, all fees and taxes included.

That's the whole point of going to a restaurant. >So you can convince yourself that the food is somewhat healthy, without seeing all the salt, sugar and fat they put in it.

I thought the point of going to a reastaurant was eating tasty food. No one's lying to themselves about reastaurant food being healthy.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/YUeEknfATJ0?t=30

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I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Likely a kids pasta shell dish.

Restaurant: $11 cannelloni and $6 beer.

Lemmy: fuck the rich for paying these high prices!

That’s not the point though… it’s that everything is 18% more than advertised on the menu, regardless of whether the original price was high or fair.

You can also get a slice for $3. It's about supply and demand.

Edit: downvotes from hermits who don't understand that things cost different prices in different places

And yet only $6 for a beer

Edit: downvotes from dim bulbs who can't divide 12 by 2

It is so engrained into society that suggested tip amounts on the receipt are welcomed, because then you don't need to do the math