"Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market."
"Many restaurants charge such fees these days. A menu may list a price of, say, $25 for a plate of penne puttanesca, but then the house adds a 5 percent fee to fund the employees’ health insurance plan. Another may charge $25 for pad Thai, and then a mandatory 20 percent service fee on top of that."
So deception. You're openly admitting to deceiving customers to make more money.
"but if we can't trick our customers into giving us more money then we can't stay in business"
So what you're saying is that you only want the benefits of being a business owner in a capitalist system with none of the downsides. Gets fucked. I have nothing against capitalism as an economic system, but it has to cut both ways. If you can't afford to stay in business then your business model doesn't work and you don't deserve to be a business in the first place. Adapt or die, bitch.
It's the same thing with minimum wage. If you can't afford to pay your workers enough to live, then your business also isn't making enough money to survive. The rest of society shouldn't have to pay for your employees' food stamps because you won't pay them. (That's not to say that food stamps are a bad idea, but people shouldn't have to be living on food stamps while employed)
> people shouldn't have to be living on food stamps while employed
Because at that point, it's a government subsidized business. And what's really crazy is that companies like Walmart, McDonalds, and Amazon who have wealthy CEOs pay their employees so little that they need food stamps: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html
So company profits, pays the CEO and then American taxes cover the food stamps for the employees
>I have nothing against capitalism as an economic system, but it has to cut both ways. If you can't afford to stay in business then your business model doesn't work and you don't deserve to be a business in the first place. Adapt or die, bitch.
I have plenty against capitalism, and one of the big ones is that capitalists *always* try to pull this shit. Every damn time. Privatize the profit, socialize the risks, and as long as that is a profitable strategy the market will continue to be dominated by those slimeballs.
Yeah that’s where I’m at too. Maybe there’s TOO MANY restaurants and we don’t need every single one of them. It’s honestly every persons first thought when they want to open a business - “I know! I’ll open a restuarant!”
And they have no experience with it, which means they need to hire people who do it for them. Which come with higher costs obviously. They also don’t have any trusted suppliers yet which means they’re paying higher prices for food than someone who’s been in the industry for 20 years.
Also rent costs are through the roof which once again makes prices higher for new places. All of this adds up to high costs and dissatisfied customers. Which leads to mediocre word of mouth and another closure. But since the building has been remodeled for food cooking and service - nobody wants to remodel it AGAIN for retail or whatever so someone else who’s never owned one before opens up ANOTHER mediocre place which will inevitably fail.
Same with cops. We straight up don’t need as many as most places hire. Remember when 30000 NY police all took the same day off for a funeral service in NJ and said ‘haha idiots watxh how much crime happens with nobody around to stop it.’
And nothing major happened. Crime didn’t skyrocket. Murders didn’t go up. Everything was basically the same. Police don’t stop crimes, they respond to them after 90% of the time. We don’t need such hugely staffed forces even for big cities.
Some jobs and professions just are not needed in such large numbers. And that’s why so many restaurants are closing.
Wild, right?
Like I've worked food service and food handling and the last thing I'd open is a restaurant... such a pain in the ass.
Health dept, critics/ reviews, supply chain for good ingredients, thin margin, months to years to turn a profit, nightmarish staffing, not to mention the customers. Nah.
Doggie daycare, gym, coin laundromat, all better, with lower start up cost.
My uncle ran a coin laundromat in the 90s. He learned how to repair the machines and would rotate out broken/wonky ones with working ones while he fixed them.
That man lived a life of peace and job security that I fear I will never know.
If you're going to open a restaurant, it better be one that is bringing a new cuisine to the neighborhood. No neighborhood needs their fifth taco shop, especially if your prices are already higher than the other four shops in the neighborhood.
Tacos are never bad. But god I’m tired of looking for the best taco spots in different cities I go to and each rec is always birria tacos. My blind uncle can put the ingredients in a slow cooker and make something similar so I’d wish these places would stop being lazy and do some real work. Give me a good asada, a good al pastor that’s not premarinated from the butcher, or a good carnitas taco and that’ll be legit
A single restaurant is not unsustainable.
The mass of restaurants and economy based around eating at restaurants being a regular thing for convenience is unsustainable.
Imagine if restaurants where the exception, not the rule. Then higher prices wouldn't be so unpalletable because it's an exception, not the standard way of eating as it is for so many people. A treat, not an expectation.
> Police don’t stop crimes, they respond to them after 90% of the time.
But it probably should be noted that this is *very much not* the same as saying they respond to 90% of crimes. On the contrary, in fact, and often in many places they'll want to avoid taking a report of a crime so their statistics will look better.
> Maybe there’s TOO MANY restaurants and we don’t need every single one of them.
I see so many of what I call zombie restaurants. The business exists and has employees but there doesn't seem to be any direction or proper management. The employees continue to show up and do what they can with the products they're provided with but there's nobody trying to drive the business to thrive and be successful. Or maybe they had been successful enough that the owner doesn't care anymore. There's a bbq joint near my work and a good portion of the place is the bar. Their taps were down for several months and they didn't bring any new canned beers to fill in for it, even tho there was space in their can fridge. They are frequently out of several beers on their tap list, not sure if it's the distributor or that they can't afford them. They have a Happy Hour menu but don't have a copy of the menu. If you know it exists and ask them, they can read it to you from the POS terminal. I've never seen it more than 1/4 full.
You’re ignoring a LOT of studies that have been conducted since then. The [Newark Foot Patrol Experiement](https://www.policinginstitute.org/publication/the-newark-foot-patrol-experiment/), the [Minneapolis Hot Spots Experiment](https://crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/58#3-0), the [Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment](https://www.jratcliffe.net/phila-foot-patrol-experiment) to name a few.
Some found similar results, other the complete opposite.
Nothing has been “proven”.
More people need to learn to challenge their own bias by doing the simple thing, anytime you go to state something and you're actually going to source a study, go back to Google and look for studies with the OPPOSITE of what you believe, and then follow the money behind the study and determine if the people behind it are acting in good faith.
In Europe I rarely see police out and about in my city except Friday and Saturday nights near bars/clubs, being that it has a decent size university and a large American military population nearby. Young adults overseas with alcohol = trouble *sometimes*. But during the day, pretty much never in Germany. Maybe around specific landmarks or city center, but that's pretty much it. Pretty much no crime here too from my experience.
Thankfully they bought a state legislator (u/scott_wiener). Apparently ~~hidden~~ disguised fees are the only way to [support underpaid restaurant workers](https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1d9nnc2/senator_scott_wieners_bill_will_allow_restaurants/l7fu855/).
https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/contact
Edit: His office can be reached at (415) 557-1300 or [email protected]
>In response to the restaurant owners’ complaints, State Senator Bill Dodd, Democrat of Napa and a coauthor of the new law, returned to the Legislature last week with a new bill that would exempt restaurants, bars and other food service providers from the requirements.
>Under the new bill, known as S.B. 1524, restaurants would be allowed to charge a mandatory gratuity or any other surcharge or fee, as long as it is displayed “clearly and conspicuously” on the menu. The bill’s supporters are hoping to get it through the Legislature by the end of the month, when the new law takes effect.
>“Restaurants are vital to the fabric of life in California, and they should be able to cover costs as long as they do so transparently,” said State Senator Scott Wiener, Democrat of San Francisco and a coauthor of the new bill. “S.B. 1524 clarifies portions of the law that pose a serious threat to restaurants. The bill strikes the right balance between supporting restaurants and delivering transparency for consumers, and I’m proud to support it.”
Dear Bill Dodd and Scott Wiener, how little of a donation did it take for you to create this?
All “food providers” would be on the same playing field.
No need to create a special exemption.
Edit:
Bill Dodd.
https://sd03.senate.ca.gov/
Scott Wiener.
https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/
This need to be higher up. Initially, it was for everything and now the restaurants are trying to get exempt. They don't want to bake it into the price on the menu because with the availability to use yelp and the like, it looks cheaper until you get to the store and then get a fee added on with some line about , "the rising cost of food and labor".
Just raise your prices and stop grifting under the guise of we can't afford it. If you're a good restaurant and high in demand, people will pay your prices. And stop pretending that extra percentage in fees is going to your employees. Ask anyone that works at one of these place, and they will tell you they never see a dime of it.
> So at best you get one transaction and then never see a dime from a customer again.
When you add in the number of people you tell about this deceptive business, it probably comes up to a net loss for the company.
> And stop pretending that extra percentage in fees is going to your employees
Even if they are going to the employees, so the fuck what?
When I go to a restaurant I *already* assume a lot of the money is going to the cooks, wait staff, and dishwashers; with some other going to rent and ingredients. That's the same when I go to any business that has a non-trivial number of employees. When I buy a piece of hand-made wood furniture (which has a significant labor cost) they aren't going to randomly tack on a 5% extra for "living cost" because they need the pay the carpenter.
I don't personally believe mandatory and gratuity belong next to each other. It is either a mandatory part of the bill or an optional gratuity. If it is mandatory, it needs to be included in the price listed. If it is a gratuity, then it is optional.
"...and they should be able to cover costs as long as they do so transparently".
Whats more transparent than pricing their food at a level that they can cover all of their costs?
Don't forget u/scott_wiener 's [response](https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1d9nnc2/senator_scott_wieners_bill_will_allow_restaurants/l7fu855/):
> I understand the desire to force restaurants to incorporate everything into the bottom line price. While there are certainly advantages to that approach, a downside is that the restaurants can simply pocket that extra money, with no benefit to workers. By requiring that restaurants be transparent about what they’re doing with these fees — and then actually follow through — SB 1524 makes it more likely workers will actually benefit.
Ouch. If you're in San Francisco (or the parts of Daly City and whatever that are part of his district) then yes, contact him. Otherwise I'm pretty sure the bill got fobbed off to the lower house. If you're in California, find your assembly member and contact *them*. If you've got time after that, then call u/scott_wiener and tell him what a ridiculous liar he is.
https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
Edit: His office can be reached at (415) 557-1300 or [email protected]
This is common in San Francisco. There was a local law passed that requires businesses to fund their employee's health care, so in response a lot of restaurants tacked on these charges because they didn't want to raise prices and wanted to make it seem like this was a tax / to blame the city.
And yes, we all hate it.
There is no way it does. Health insurance cost is based on number of employees, not percentage of revenue sales. It is literally just restaurant owners bitter about the city requiring businesses with 20+ employees to provide health insurance coverage, or pay into city’s own insurance program.
This, and also if your business model literally cannot work without passing the cost of paying your employees to the goodwill (or not) of the customers, who have been definitively shown to in general give higher tips to white people and more attractive, younger women while often giving lower tips to minorities, less attractive women, and men.
Clearly, the actual cost of providing the food and service is significantly more than the prices customers see. This wouldn't be tolerated by consumers in like a retail store (imagine you go to buy a TV, and there is a 20% gratuity or 7% "service fee" added at checkout). But, we've all been conditioned to think it's normal at restaurants when it absolutely is a ridiculous practice.
I ate out Thursday. The menu cost of the food was $17, which after 12.5% of local and state taxes and 20% automatic gratuity on the subtotal means it's $22.50 or so. The price on the fucking menu should just be $22.50.
Have a friend who got a job at a generic restaurant who legitimately talks shit about customers who order PICKUP and don’t tip. Because “somebodies taking the time to prepare your food, so you need to tip”
Like no. Not my fault
A) Your underpaid
B) The business model relies on me paying $8 for chips and queso + another $1.20 tip??????
Nobody is putting a gun to the restaurant owners head and *forcing* him to accept take-out orders. It could be a dine-in only restaurant if it wants to be. If it's not worth it to sell it at that price without a tip, then don't do it.
Just serve people in the actual restaurant and forget about take-out altogether
Oh man, there's this ecommerce site called Mercari (think eBay but simpler) that recently switched from charging seller fees to charging buyer fees and it's terrible for the reasons you mentioned. You go to buy something for 30 bucks and even on stuff with 6 or 7 dollars shipping you end up paying like 45 out the door. Of course, the whole thing is really a case of greed--they made the typical seller fees into buyer fees because they wanted to add a whole new fee they charge sellers to actually get their money out of the platform and they knew nobody was going to be willing to pay regular seller fees plus an additional fee to cash out on top of it.
Predictably, the site kind of sucks now and I find myself getting better deals on things by just YOLOing shitty offers to people on eBay. The worst part about the Mercari changes is probably that the new fees aren't even consistent--they vary by type of item, time of day, however many returns they see for items in the same category, etc. and nobody outside of Mercari actually knows how they're calculated.
For shits and giggles I just checked out r/Mercari and even a couple months after these fee changes you still see people that are completely flabbergasted at how much the price changes between their cart and the checkout page. I just saw one where the item price was $128 with $6.99 shipping but the price after all the fees is $159.67.
Fox "faux" news had their talking heads against the hidden fees already saying "so I guess business owners can't charge late fees etc.." like, no, that's not what this is about at all. Right wingers are so pro business that they didn't give two shits if Ticketmaster charges ten different fees that are *more* than your actual concert ticket.
>Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market.
"Criminals argue that laws are against their best interest"
I'm impressed Americans in general seem pretty trained to be okay not knowing *exactly* how much something will cost them at a point in time where they're effectively committing to the purchase.
From tickets, to sales tax not being included in the price, to small-print fees on fees for food; how do you people budget if all the prices come with hidden markup you'll find out at a point where you can't back out without a fuss?
> So deception. You're openly admitting to deceiving customers to make more money.
This entire practice is "cultural" at this point, given how normalized it is to get surprise-fees at checkout.
Health care is the worst example. Moment you walk into a hospital you start wracking up a bill with no way to know how much it will cost. The doctors don't know, and the hospital front desk often doesn't know either!!! Theyll tell you talk to the billing department and also it "depends on your insurance". It's insane.
Which is what's letting suppliers and landlords get away with gouging. Financial tricks to get customers to spend more are fucking everything up, same with real estate and cars. As long as people can meet their minimums keep changing loan terms and you can squeeze more money out.
For restaurants, you surprise people with a higher bill and at the end of person's pay period they are running on credit cards so you don't get blamed. The customer gets screwed, the restaurant scrapes by, the landlord kills it and Sysco stock goes up a few points.
None of this sustainable
it's so frustrating. I was at the movies last year, there was a random fee like 10% on top of everything else. why not just make everything 10% more expensive
😂 out of all the industries that shouldn't be giving customers yet another reason not to pay for them, movie theaters are at the top. Like, what kind of balls does it take to charge additional fees for your dying business? Just want to make the death a little faster?
I've just stopped going to restaurants entirely. And this open admission of deception isn't helping any. I feel bad for the employees but I suspect they'll become competition that isn't fueled by pure dishonesty.
Unbelievable. They've been gaslighting people for so long they've started actually believing what they're doing is legitimate. There's no way any reasonable person can say something like that with a straight face
Had a resturant add a 25% fee at the time of payment. Called American Express to initiate a chargeback. Worked. Now thankfully they are out of business.
>Some restaurant owners said raising menu prices that way without providing the context could hurt their business.
UM then provide context and take ownership of the law, like right wingers do after voting against them
"you hate hidden fees, we hate hidden fees, the prices on our menu are the price you pay, no more wallet shock embarrassment"
"no context".. lol thats another way to spell opportunity.
> except for sales tax
Why should this get an exemption? This isn't even a "make us pay less" thing. It's literally simply telling someone the full cost for the service that they're offering. The *only* reason to allow this sort of thing is to deceive people that they'll pay a lower price, then give them a higher cost after they've committed to paying for the service.
Sales tax is a *little* iffy because of the vast numbers of varying jurisdictions, but a brick-and-mortar establishment (that exists at a defined address and is subject to a single juristdiction) like a restaurant should be capable of properly notifying customers what the sales tax on their purchases will be prior to ordering.
Tipping/fees are wild in the US, even compared to Canada.
When I visited my wife in San Diego restaurants were all like $25 minimum plus they all add fees plus it's rude to not tip 20%?? 15% is a generous tip to me, 20% is wild
Which is crazy because it also has places that are cheaper than anything in Canada, all the taco shops were like $2-$3 per taco, but I got fish and chips at a place in LA Jolla and it was like US$50, or like $70CAD,for the fish, a single beer and fees/tip. Crazy lol
I’ve always believed they should just charge everything up on their menu with 10% and just not say that. Factor that into the sticker price onto each individual item on the menu. Don’t tell me,” oh there’s this extra shit you’re gonna pub for on top of this meal.” Factor it in and don’t say anything. Just do it.
Chevron is doing that in their attempts to get the gasoline tax repealed and a per mile tax put into place. Its kind of silly since the gas tax was originally to get car manufactures to improve on fuel efficiency. If they were really worried about electric cars also paying a tax then that could be arranged that there would be a tax on the charging stations instead of trying to require a tracking device get put into every car.
WA state adds the lost gas tax cost into the yearly registration. It made my electric car registration like $875 with something like $200 in the gas tax fees
Yeah, I got a promotion and shortly after, my wife and I decided to move back to California to be near family and the state income taxes took all the extra income I gained from that promotion lol
Washington already has bonkers registration fees. Even a gas vehicle is going to cost upwards of $500 a year just for tags. And of course the rich walk to work wankers who can afford two million dollar condos don't pay and and spend their life whining about how bad cars are. Meanwhile it's the poor who are forced to commute hours a day that pay the price. It's always the poor that get hurt, never the billionaires.
What??? My WA registration fees aren't even remotely close to what you're saying. For my Corolla, Feb 22 I paid $70, Apr 23 I paid $78, and Dec 23 I paid $78... My wife's truck in the same timeframes was $108, $115, and $116...
I'm guessing neither of those vehicles are new. The fees are based on the estimated value of your vehicle. My '22 was several hundred to renew, forget the exact number.
Most people who own electric cars charge at home. You can charge on a 110v outlet.
I've owned an electric car for 3 years and have charged at a charging station less than 5 times.
Super easy to drop in a 220 breaker and run a wire. I don't know about your state laws but in my state as the homeowner I am allowed to do my own electrical work. And my FIL is a master electrician. And I'm a licensed contractor so I'm actually not allowed to do ANY electrical work which makes it all pointless. If you aren't comfortable doing the work just install the wire and call and electrician. Pulling wire is were most of the labor cost comes from. Wiring a breaker and an outlet will take less than an hour for a professional.
That’s because almost any asshole can in fact terminate a wire and half of those assholes can do it mostly right. The reason why pulling the wire costs so much is because it can take a fucking while to do it right and safely without destroying the house. And sometimes you just straight up have to open the walls to do it.
To say nothing of the homeowner getting the right gauge, #, and insulation of this wire, the straps/screws/staples, and connectors, and junction box should they fuck something up and need to splice (also wire nuts).
Cars should be taxed based on weight since that's the #1 determining factor of damage to the road. Semis would pay the most. F150s and Rams pay a little more. Smaller cars would pay less.
The tax was not implemented to improve gas mileage it was to pay for the roads. It just happened to give a competitive advantage to cars that were more fuel efficient when prices got too high.
J.C. Penny famously got a new CEO and said, no more products that are always on "sell." The price is the price now and forever. We aren't going to try to play the sell game anymore. We trust that the consumer is smart enough to understand.
They were wrong.
But that is the prisoner's dilemma - that only works if all stores do that. California by making all stores show true prices will bypass that problem.
Relatively few people will visit stores in multiple states, to be tricked by fake comparisons.
> They were wrong.
They were right, it just takes time to undo the century of customer training the company had done. The board didn't have the stones to see it through, and now JC Penney is still going to go under, whereas if they had stayed the course and gotten a new demographic to start doing business with them, they might have survived. They posted a higher than expected loss for 2 quarters so they decided to doom themselves to slow bleed bankruptcy instead of betting on turning the corner years down the road.
CEOs rarely understand how their company actually works. In retail stores, there's always gonna be some customers who aren't actually there to buy something, they're there to look for sales. They will only buy something because it's on sale.
The same item at the same price but it's just a normal pricetag? Nope. It's gotta be the flashy sale tag.
Won’t help with the merchants themselves perpetuating the myth of state caused increases either, as they passive arrived blame the state to their customers. Happens every single time.
My conservative parents literally thinks everyone in California is getting mugged daily by a homeless person living at a sidewalk encampment. Same with Chicago, New York City- conservative media is a hell of a drug. Yeah I get it that California has its issues like all states. But are all California homeless people home brewed or something? They come from all over, sometimes even shipped there by guess who.
> “Restaurants are vital to the fabric of life in California, and they should be able to cover costs as long as they do so transparently,”
*Exactly*. And that can happen by including ALL charges in one price. Then I can compare prices from various restaurants without wondering if there's going to be another 5%-25% added to the bill in extra charges. This puts *all* restaurants on a level playing field. Exempting restaurants destroys the fundamental functionality of the bill.
Also their claim here that it will make them uncompetitive is absurd because if all the eateries have to make the full price show on their menus at the same time when the law takes effect, then all their prices will be higher on all their menus at the same time. It's not like Restaurant A is going to be able to keep doing the same old hidden fees bullshit while law abiding Restaurant B is forced to show the higher full prices.
These are the same assholes that magically found the money to start offering actual benefits to employees once COVID happened and the labor supply was no longer willing to work exhausting jobs where customers abuse them all day for a variable amount of tips. They said they "couldn't afford" to provide shit like sick days since forever, then all the sudden they could afford it once they had to do so to get workers in the door.
Fuck them. I hope every single restaurant protesting this law goes out of business.
of course the California Restaurant Assoc has already hired lobbyists to craft a revised bill that will allow supplemental fees for eateries as long as they're clearly marked on the menus and bills. These ppl have no shame. Restaurants fail to realize that today's diners don't really mind paying more as long as you're upfront with them. Just look at all the app-based delivery services like doordash/uber eats which have their own inflated menu prices that's more than what you'd pay if you ordered from the restaurant directly & just picked up. Customers know that they're paying a premium & they're fine with it because the prices are disclosed ahead.
Even more relevant, the only reason to not be clear is no one else is. If everyone has to be clear then you don’t suffer from idiots comparing menu prices (where your prices look higher than the pre fee prices others are showing), everyone’s prices rise together and everyone keeps eating at the same places.
It’s the same thing with tips. Require everyone to pay more (and thus charge more in menu price) at the same time and nothing changes.
Why the hell are lobbies even allowed in the US? It's exactly the same as legalized bribery. The word "lobby" even doesn't have a negative connotation in the US. Yes certain lobbies do have negative reputation but they're like specialised e.g. "oil lobby", "pharma lobby" etc.
In Europe you want to avoid being associated with a lobby. If a company is associated with a lobby they run the risk of losing a lot of customers and PR damage. Nobody trusts them anymore and their trade volume tanks pretty significantly.
The idea of a lobby is to allow people to get together and push an agenda towards politicians. So it's a way to get their voices heard collectively rather than individually. There's nothing wrong with that- people should be able to do that. The problem is that corporations can do this AND pay the politicians with actual "campaign funds" and a cushy job right after their political career is done. And the people can offer a small campaign donation at best.
The problem is that regular people can't take time away from their jobs to do this stuff as easily as a company can just pay someone to do it as their whole job.
It's not even just that people *should* be able to do that, if a politician is to actually do the job and represent the interests of their constituents then they *have* to know what they need. And that includes local business and industries, who likely have specialized needs to brief their representatives on. Of course, this becomes a problem when it becomes an avenue to bribe for tax cuts and deregulation, but the concept exists for a reason.
> Why the hell are lobbies even allowed in the US?
Because we have the first amendment right to free assembly and association to redress our grievances with the government. Corporate interests have tainted the concept, but the ability to organize groups to lobby our government in our interests is critical to democracy, but it does need some better guardrails.
There are a lot of areas of business/technology/law that politicians don't really understand or know about. Lobbyists are how stakeholders in those areas explain to the politicians what's important to them
> Why the hell are lobbies even allowed in the US?
Lobbying just means try to convince legislatures to agree with your group.
You don't think workers unions should be able to lobby for workers protections?
You don't think environmental causes should be able to lobby for better environmental laws?
You don't think that Planned Parenthood should be able to lobby for better abortion access?
Cause the act lobbying is a key part of the democratic process?
You can argue about corporations etc participating, but other than that its very important. Unless your saying in Europe there are no citizens groups pushing for something and everyone is fine letting their officials do whatever they want.
Contact your local CA reps to tell them to vote no on SB 1524! https://sf.eater.com/2024/6/6/24173034/sb-1524-california-restaurants-service-fee-ban
Find your local rep here: https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
Restaurants do this crap in my city as well. Having “7% service charge due to inflation/for living wages/for employee healthcare” in tiny text at the bottom of the menu is a deceptive way to raise prices. The food prices on the menu should be set at a place where they can cover these expenses.
I avoid eating takeout/delivery or going to restaurants at this point because between the tipping expectations and the hidden fees it’s another needlessly aggravating experience in today’s world that I don’t want to deal with.
I’m just waiting for the grocery store to ask me to tip the self checkout and then charge a 5% “worker compassion fee” on top at this point.
I dunno, 7% is less than half of 15% tip ("standard" lol) so it's kind of a steal. You can sooth your guilt of not giving on top of the bill with the knowledge that this amount is 100% going to staff and enough to ensure a living wage. /s
15% standard tip, but the tipping options on the POS terminals (in my experience) start at 18%. But more like 20 or 25%. It’s an arms race at this point. I miss the ‘service included’ that is common in European countries.
If a fee is mandatory then it should always be baked into the price i think. No exceptions. Also those kinds "living wage fees" are deceptive and while they try to sound like tips, they infact aren't and go to the company not to the employees.
> Some restaurant owners said raising menu prices that way without providing the context could hurt their business.
Because hidden fees provide so much context.
“I wish I didn’t have to rely on service charges” says the restaurant owner. Sorry, friend, if you can’t pay a living wage without deceptive pricing then your business should fail.
Everyone needs to keep fighting until the law is fully in effect. State Sen. [Scott Wiener](https://sfist.com/2024/06/06/emergency-bill-looks-to-allow-restaurants-to-continue-charging-extra-fees/) is working very hard with restaurant lobbyists to undermine this effort and ensure that restaurants can continue to charge extra fees. #VoteWienerOut
Most people know how to cook a meal so when people get entrepreneurial, it is one of the first things that people think of.
The slim profits come from the fact that it is a hard business to run properly. Managing costs, managing people, managing product, and doing it well, long term, is much harder than people think.
From working in the political realm, every single time a business owner or higher up wanted to oppose or support a policy, they lamented their “razor thin profit margins.” Either everyone was lying or everyone sucks at business. How much are the folks at the top making per hour? Is that cutting into the profit margin?
There’s no way for me to know if a business owner of a restaurant pays themself $300,000, works 2 hours a week, and then only make $5,000 in profit.
They are in slim profit margins *because* you see one every 30 seconds while driving in any given city. Competition is huge, largely because there are relatively few barriers to entry compared to other businesses.
Seriously. Every other god damn business is a restaurant now. Y’all cannibalized each other by opening too many and now they’re all struggling instead of a select few making good money. Boohoo.
What? I'm sure each restaurant would individually prefer they were the only restaurant but this is a free society so other people can open restaurants..
Yeah, but the point is that economic theory and principles state that people shouldn't be opening restaurants if there is no profit to be made in the industry.
Because it's a narrative that helps garner sympathy and it also allows them to operate by advertising lower prices on the menu and putting the onus on the customer to supplement their employees wages via tips and hidden fees.
Essentially, a restaurant bubble has been created because of these practices and a restaurant market correction is way passed due.
**I hope this spreads to all industries, I work at a hotel and our management has us tell our customers the price before taxes, fees and our $100 security deposit.**
Legit have had people show up in an Uber, **the last one they could afford plus the price of our room only to find out they have to pay an additional 10% + $5 fee + $100 security deposit.**
It’s not even borderline, it *IS predatory.*
I’m about ready to quit because the stress of somehow being responsible for fucking people over has been way too much for awhile now but if I don’t have a job I’ll be homeless and I’m just trying to find another one right now.
>Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market.
how slimy you have to be to be able to utter this sentence in front of a public?
“Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market.”
Fuck that logic, only way they can keep their lights on is if they charge guest hidden fee’s?
>Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market.
Nah, its high time the restaurant market crashes. Over-priced, sub-par nutritionally most of the time; and terrible for you health wise. Food service industry is an industry that *deserves* to fail.
Will small business owners get hurt? Yes.
But they assumed risk when they went into business; the fact is for the *consumer and the worker* the business model is awful.
The restaurant business in the US expects customers to supplement employees wages instead of just paying them fair wages in the first place. You’re exactly right that they deserve to fail.
I agree with you. Other side of tipping is that every waitress or waiter I've ever known prefers the tip format. They get a few big days and then chase that high for years.
The fact that most of the fast food places in this country are charging $10 for a meal because "inflation", yet still are making massive profits is absolutely insane to me. They pay poverty wages, hire a bunch of people who need jobs, then schedule them just below the hours required for them to offer benefits such as insurance which then makes makes them have to live off various government assistance programs effectively making taxpayers responsible for the rest needed to live.
The top two biggest offenders of this are Walmart and McDonalds, yet for some reason the poor people who do the work catch the brunt of the negative comments when they are forced to use welfare, foods stamps, housing assistance. [Why are companies like Walmart, McDonalds, Amazon, Kroger, etc](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html) paying CEO's millions and reporting profits in the millions, and the billions in a several cases while paying workers poverty wages so that the government then has to pick up the slack so that they don't starve and can actually go to a doctor when sick? These companies raise prices and blame it on inflation, and say that the cost of products are causing prices to increase all while saying that if they have to give benefits, or pay higher wages they would have to raise prices again. It's funny though that all during this horrible inflation and them increasing costs to absurd points they [have seemed to have raised their net profit higher and higher. Net mind you, not gross.](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=net-income&axis=single&comp=MCD:WMT:AMZN:KR) Companies like McDonalds raise prices so that a like a Big Mac meal is now over $10 all the while, blaming it on inflation. Yet, since they, along with the largest offenders, are publicly traded companies we are able to see that they are full of shit. When you actually look into it their [operating expenses](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=operating-expenses&axis=single&comp=MCD),[non operating expenses](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=total-non-operating-income-expense&axis=single&comp=MCD), [Cost of goods sold](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=cost-goods-sold&axis=single&comp=MCD) have all dropped since 2009, yet their [earnings per share](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=eps-earnings-per-share-diluted&axis=single&comp=MCD), [operating margin] (https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=operating-margin&axis=single&comp=MCD) (which is a metric that measures how much profit a company makes on each dollar of sales after paying for variable production costs, but before paying interest or taxes.), etc have all grown significantly since 2009. Why can a company with a [net profit margin](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/net_margin.asp) of [33%](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/net_margin.asp) as of the end of 2023 not be required to actually pay employees enough so that they don't have to depend on government assistance to live. Walmart's and Amazon's stats are even worse.
People on government assistance have been vilified for years and looked down as lazy and freeloading, yet [70%](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45) of these people have fulltime jobs. The issue isn't a lazy workforce, it's the fact that our government benefits have increasingly turned form help for citizens to a way to socialize the profits of corporations.
Nothing will change until companies are fined using government assistance as a way to boost their companies profits and using part time employees to get around providing benefits.
The people of this country need to stop looking at the poor as the problem and start looking up at the ones who put them there and does their very best to keep them there.
Restaurants are PISSED. They want to continue to put “we charge a 20% surcharge so our employees can stay alive” in size 7 font on the bottom of the last page of the menu below the story of the restaurant’s founding that no one reads.
This is one of the issues that is prompting people to write emails to their state reps without an interest group or form email being involved…they want this law protected and they want it to apply to restaurants. If it happens across the board, then it shouldn’t impact anything as all restaurants have to change at the same time
Here in Denmark, the full price have to be on the menu. You see a price, that's what you pay, nothing more. It's crazy to me that something that simple, is seen as a big issue for some in the US. Just let people see what they're paying, so they can plan budget accordingly.
Pretty sure this is everywhere in the EU, you can't display the price without all the taxes (usually VAT). Sort of mindblowing that this is even a discussion.
It’s all a game. Restaurants want to advertise lower priced meals so that people don’t choose a different restaurant based on a similar meal appearing cheaper at a different restaurant. And then they make it back in these fake fees You’ve already committed to sitting down at restaurant.
I have no clue why tax isn’t included in all of the prices. I’m half Japanese and lived in Japan when I was younger and never had to think about the tax and when we moved to the states it was weird seeing price tags that meant nothing because it was always not the amount you were paying. Felt wrong and scummy.
>“The system itself, as we know, is clearly broken,” Vanda Asapahu, who owns Ayara Thai in Los Angeles, told The New York Times last month. “I wish I did not have to depend on service charges to give my team a living wage.”
Transparent horseshit, Vanda. There is nothing to stop you charging the prices you need to pay your team, in a single stated price. You just want to deceive customers by hiding additional charges.
A smarter entrepreneur would launch a marketing campaign around this.
"My Restaurant will not keep you guessing! Enjoy your meal knowing exactly what it will cost!"
"At My Restaurant, you *know* if you can afford dessert!"
"Forgot your calculator? No problem, My Restaurant tells you the cost straight up!"
"At My Restaurant, you'll be surprised at the great quality of food, not the total cost!"
Saw this at Urban Plates in Irvine yesterday - a 3% additional charge for employee health". No clue as to whether the employees see it like that may tips or what.
Since when did the price of doing business become fees and add-ons?
Food delivery apps were specifically exempted, but it's not *as* bad as it sounds because apps like DoorDash already display the food at its final price.
The surprise the delivery apps hit you with right before check out are their own BS pure-profit fees. I'm not sure why delivery was specifically exempted from this law.
>“I wish I did not have to depend on service charges to give my team a living wage.”
This sentence makes zero sense, if you are already charging whatever amount but calling it a "service fee" then customers are already paying it so just bake it into the prices. If people don't want to pay the price then guess what, you no longer have a viable business model and have to pivot or close, that's how business works.
I went to Iceland a while back, and any listed price was exactly the price you paid: tax was included and tips were not customary. It made budgeting my trip so much more convenient, especially as a foriegner. I definitely think this should be required in the US as well. Saying something is $10, but it's actually $10.70 because of sales tax, and to $12.84 for a service fee, and then you're expected to tip to $14.75.
> and any listed price was exactly the price you paid: tax was included
EU rolls like that as well. Not only the price tag has to have the final price with tax, but also if owner makes a mistake and displays lower price than what he intended to sell at, that is the price you'll be paying.
A few restaurants will close, and blame Gavin Newsome for it. Right wing media will go crazy with cherry picked headlines for the next six months, just like the $20 dollar minimum wage law.
Good. This law is just commonsense. The practice of businesses hiding mandatory fees or restaurants adding random fees has gotten out of control the last few years. The price listed should be the price you pay.
If all restaurants had to follow the new law then wouldn’t it still be an even field? Unless some restaurants don’t tack on fees and just price it in already.
Seems like the shitty places want a carve out, fuck them.
“lawmakers are trying to carve out an exception for restaurant owners, who say simply raising prices without context”
Why exactly would they have to ‘raise’ their prices?? It’s a disclosure rule, thus they only need to now tell what you what you’re actually paying.
Last year El Torrito got me good with their “cost of doing business fee in CA” I ordered a $15 burrito that was damn near $20 after taxes and fees. I looked at the menu and in fine print it said there was a fee added in.
Fuck these assholes. Pizza Hut is the same way
Right after I visited california and was mad at these stupid resort fees out of nowhere (and the ridiculuous deposits on top of it, freezing essentially 700 dollars).
That shit should be illegal. Just fucking take the money upfront.
The alternative is what most restaurant customers are doing these days: subtracting the fee from the tip. A 10% service charge before a 20% tip? You get 10%. 20% service charge before a 20% tip? You get 0. Servers should be 100% behind this move.
Every fee except provincial and federal sales taxes is the law where I am. You know exactly what it costs to get the car out of the dealership's lot and I think it might be the most obvious one when these laws hit a new jurisdiction.
This is why even though some people can afford to eat out choose not to, and instead make stuff at home. If a restaurant charged me all these fees, I'd simply take those fees out of the tip I'd leave.
"Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market." "Many restaurants charge such fees these days. A menu may list a price of, say, $25 for a plate of penne puttanesca, but then the house adds a 5 percent fee to fund the employees’ health insurance plan. Another may charge $25 for pad Thai, and then a mandatory 20 percent service fee on top of that." So deception. You're openly admitting to deceiving customers to make more money.
> Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted "Please allow us to keep lying to our customers." Haha. Fuck you.
"but if we can't trick our customers into giving us more money then we can't stay in business" So what you're saying is that you only want the benefits of being a business owner in a capitalist system with none of the downsides. Gets fucked. I have nothing against capitalism as an economic system, but it has to cut both ways. If you can't afford to stay in business then your business model doesn't work and you don't deserve to be a business in the first place. Adapt or die, bitch.
It's the same thing with minimum wage. If you can't afford to pay your workers enough to live, then your business also isn't making enough money to survive. The rest of society shouldn't have to pay for your employees' food stamps because you won't pay them. (That's not to say that food stamps are a bad idea, but people shouldn't have to be living on food stamps while employed)
> people shouldn't have to be living on food stamps while employed Because at that point, it's a government subsidized business. And what's really crazy is that companies like Walmart, McDonalds, and Amazon who have wealthy CEOs pay their employees so little that they need food stamps: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html So company profits, pays the CEO and then American taxes cover the food stamps for the employees
>I have nothing against capitalism as an economic system, but it has to cut both ways. If you can't afford to stay in business then your business model doesn't work and you don't deserve to be a business in the first place. Adapt or die, bitch. I have plenty against capitalism, and one of the big ones is that capitalists *always* try to pull this shit. Every damn time. Privatize the profit, socialize the risks, and as long as that is a profitable strategy the market will continue to be dominated by those slimeballs.
Yeah that’s where I’m at too. Maybe there’s TOO MANY restaurants and we don’t need every single one of them. It’s honestly every persons first thought when they want to open a business - “I know! I’ll open a restuarant!” And they have no experience with it, which means they need to hire people who do it for them. Which come with higher costs obviously. They also don’t have any trusted suppliers yet which means they’re paying higher prices for food than someone who’s been in the industry for 20 years. Also rent costs are through the roof which once again makes prices higher for new places. All of this adds up to high costs and dissatisfied customers. Which leads to mediocre word of mouth and another closure. But since the building has been remodeled for food cooking and service - nobody wants to remodel it AGAIN for retail or whatever so someone else who’s never owned one before opens up ANOTHER mediocre place which will inevitably fail. Same with cops. We straight up don’t need as many as most places hire. Remember when 30000 NY police all took the same day off for a funeral service in NJ and said ‘haha idiots watxh how much crime happens with nobody around to stop it.’ And nothing major happened. Crime didn’t skyrocket. Murders didn’t go up. Everything was basically the same. Police don’t stop crimes, they respond to them after 90% of the time. We don’t need such hugely staffed forces even for big cities. Some jobs and professions just are not needed in such large numbers. And that’s why so many restaurants are closing.
Wild, right? Like I've worked food service and food handling and the last thing I'd open is a restaurant... such a pain in the ass. Health dept, critics/ reviews, supply chain for good ingredients, thin margin, months to years to turn a profit, nightmarish staffing, not to mention the customers. Nah. Doggie daycare, gym, coin laundromat, all better, with lower start up cost.
My uncle ran a coin laundromat in the 90s. He learned how to repair the machines and would rotate out broken/wonky ones with working ones while he fixed them. That man lived a life of peace and job security that I fear I will never know.
[удалено]
Some restaurants make really great food though, so it's too bad the industry as a whole is unsustainable.
If you're going to open a restaurant, it better be one that is bringing a new cuisine to the neighborhood. No neighborhood needs their fifth taco shop, especially if your prices are already higher than the other four shops in the neighborhood.
Tacos are never bad. But god I’m tired of looking for the best taco spots in different cities I go to and each rec is always birria tacos. My blind uncle can put the ingredients in a slow cooker and make something similar so I’d wish these places would stop being lazy and do some real work. Give me a good asada, a good al pastor that’s not premarinated from the butcher, or a good carnitas taco and that’ll be legit
A single restaurant is not unsustainable. The mass of restaurants and economy based around eating at restaurants being a regular thing for convenience is unsustainable. Imagine if restaurants where the exception, not the rule. Then higher prices wouldn't be so unpalletable because it's an exception, not the standard way of eating as it is for so many people. A treat, not an expectation.
A good day with 0 issues in a restaurant is still a long day with a lot of work.
> Police don’t stop crimes, they respond to them after 90% of the time. But it probably should be noted that this is *very much not* the same as saying they respond to 90% of crimes. On the contrary, in fact, and often in many places they'll want to avoid taking a report of a crime so their statistics will look better.
> Maybe there’s TOO MANY restaurants and we don’t need every single one of them. I see so many of what I call zombie restaurants. The business exists and has employees but there doesn't seem to be any direction or proper management. The employees continue to show up and do what they can with the products they're provided with but there's nobody trying to drive the business to thrive and be successful. Or maybe they had been successful enough that the owner doesn't care anymore. There's a bbq joint near my work and a good portion of the place is the bar. Their taps were down for several months and they didn't bring any new canned beers to fill in for it, even tho there was space in their can fridge. They are frequently out of several beers on their tap list, not sure if it's the distributor or that they can't afford them. They have a Happy Hour menu but don't have a copy of the menu. If you know it exists and ask them, they can read it to you from the POS terminal. I've never seen it more than 1/4 full.
Money laundering?
[удалено]
You’re ignoring a LOT of studies that have been conducted since then. The [Newark Foot Patrol Experiement](https://www.policinginstitute.org/publication/the-newark-foot-patrol-experiment/), the [Minneapolis Hot Spots Experiment](https://crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/58#3-0), the [Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment](https://www.jratcliffe.net/phila-foot-patrol-experiment) to name a few. Some found similar results, other the complete opposite. Nothing has been “proven”.
More people need to learn to challenge their own bias by doing the simple thing, anytime you go to state something and you're actually going to source a study, go back to Google and look for studies with the OPPOSITE of what you believe, and then follow the money behind the study and determine if the people behind it are acting in good faith.
In Europe I rarely see police out and about in my city except Friday and Saturday nights near bars/clubs, being that it has a decent size university and a large American military population nearby. Young adults overseas with alcohol = trouble *sometimes*. But during the day, pretty much never in Germany. Maybe around specific landmarks or city center, but that's pretty much it. Pretty much no crime here too from my experience.
Right? It is an admission of the deception!
Thankfully they bought a state legislator (u/scott_wiener). Apparently ~~hidden~~ disguised fees are the only way to [support underpaid restaurant workers](https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1d9nnc2/senator_scott_wieners_bill_will_allow_restaurants/l7fu855/). https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/contact Edit: His office can be reached at (415) 557-1300 or [email protected]
>In response to the restaurant owners’ complaints, State Senator Bill Dodd, Democrat of Napa and a coauthor of the new law, returned to the Legislature last week with a new bill that would exempt restaurants, bars and other food service providers from the requirements. >Under the new bill, known as S.B. 1524, restaurants would be allowed to charge a mandatory gratuity or any other surcharge or fee, as long as it is displayed “clearly and conspicuously” on the menu. The bill’s supporters are hoping to get it through the Legislature by the end of the month, when the new law takes effect. >“Restaurants are vital to the fabric of life in California, and they should be able to cover costs as long as they do so transparently,” said State Senator Scott Wiener, Democrat of San Francisco and a coauthor of the new bill. “S.B. 1524 clarifies portions of the law that pose a serious threat to restaurants. The bill strikes the right balance between supporting restaurants and delivering transparency for consumers, and I’m proud to support it.” Dear Bill Dodd and Scott Wiener, how little of a donation did it take for you to create this? All “food providers” would be on the same playing field. No need to create a special exemption. Edit: Bill Dodd. https://sd03.senate.ca.gov/ Scott Wiener. https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/
This need to be higher up. Initially, it was for everything and now the restaurants are trying to get exempt. They don't want to bake it into the price on the menu because with the availability to use yelp and the like, it looks cheaper until you get to the store and then get a fee added on with some line about , "the rising cost of food and labor". Just raise your prices and stop grifting under the guise of we can't afford it. If you're a good restaurant and high in demand, people will pay your prices. And stop pretending that extra percentage in fees is going to your employees. Ask anyone that works at one of these place, and they will tell you they never see a dime of it.
[удалено]
> So at best you get one transaction and then never see a dime from a customer again. When you add in the number of people you tell about this deceptive business, it probably comes up to a net loss for the company.
> And stop pretending that extra percentage in fees is going to your employees Even if they are going to the employees, so the fuck what? When I go to a restaurant I *already* assume a lot of the money is going to the cooks, wait staff, and dishwashers; with some other going to rent and ingredients. That's the same when I go to any business that has a non-trivial number of employees. When I buy a piece of hand-made wood furniture (which has a significant labor cost) they aren't going to randomly tack on a 5% extra for "living cost" because they need the pay the carpenter.
I don't personally believe mandatory and gratuity belong next to each other. It is either a mandatory part of the bill or an optional gratuity. If it is mandatory, it needs to be included in the price listed. If it is a gratuity, then it is optional.
"...and they should be able to cover costs as long as they do so transparently". Whats more transparent than pricing their food at a level that they can cover all of their costs?
Don't forget u/scott_wiener 's [response](https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1d9nnc2/senator_scott_wieners_bill_will_allow_restaurants/l7fu855/): > I understand the desire to force restaurants to incorporate everything into the bottom line price. While there are certainly advantages to that approach, a downside is that the restaurants can simply pocket that extra money, with no benefit to workers. By requiring that restaurants be transparent about what they’re doing with these fees — and then actually follow through — SB 1524 makes it more likely workers will actually benefit. Ouch. If you're in San Francisco (or the parts of Daly City and whatever that are part of his district) then yes, contact him. Otherwise I'm pretty sure the bill got fobbed off to the lower house. If you're in California, find your assembly member and contact *them*. If you've got time after that, then call u/scott_wiener and tell him what a ridiculous liar he is. https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ Edit: His office can be reached at (415) 557-1300 or [email protected]
Always the most galling thing about government corruption is how much cheaper it is than you'd think to buy a legislator at every level.
Why would health insurance be treated differently from any other business expense?
This is common in San Francisco. There was a local law passed that requires businesses to fund their employee's health care, so in response a lot of restaurants tacked on these charges because they didn't want to raise prices and wanted to make it seem like this was a tax / to blame the city. And yes, we all hate it.
Has anyone figured out if 100% of those funds are used to cover employer premiums?
Ofcourse they arent haha
There is no way it does. Health insurance cost is based on number of employees, not percentage of revenue sales. It is literally just restaurant owners bitter about the city requiring businesses with 20+ employees to provide health insurance coverage, or pay into city’s own insurance program.
It's sad that there are adults stupid enough not to see right through this.
So they can hide it and when they get caught they can act like it's for a good cause
If your business model literally cannot work without deceiving your customers, then your business needs to end.
This, and also if your business model literally cannot work without passing the cost of paying your employees to the goodwill (or not) of the customers, who have been definitively shown to in general give higher tips to white people and more attractive, younger women while often giving lower tips to minorities, less attractive women, and men. Clearly, the actual cost of providing the food and service is significantly more than the prices customers see. This wouldn't be tolerated by consumers in like a retail store (imagine you go to buy a TV, and there is a 20% gratuity or 7% "service fee" added at checkout). But, we've all been conditioned to think it's normal at restaurants when it absolutely is a ridiculous practice. I ate out Thursday. The menu cost of the food was $17, which after 12.5% of local and state taxes and 20% automatic gratuity on the subtotal means it's $22.50 or so. The price on the fucking menu should just be $22.50.
Have a friend who got a job at a generic restaurant who legitimately talks shit about customers who order PICKUP and don’t tip. Because “somebodies taking the time to prepare your food, so you need to tip” Like no. Not my fault A) Your underpaid B) The business model relies on me paying $8 for chips and queso + another $1.20 tip??????
Nobody is putting a gun to the restaurant owners head and *forcing* him to accept take-out orders. It could be a dine-in only restaurant if it wants to be. If it's not worth it to sell it at that price without a tip, then don't do it. Just serve people in the actual restaurant and forget about take-out altogether
They can talk shit all they want. At the end of the day, that's all they can do. I still won't tip 🤭
Oh man, there's this ecommerce site called Mercari (think eBay but simpler) that recently switched from charging seller fees to charging buyer fees and it's terrible for the reasons you mentioned. You go to buy something for 30 bucks and even on stuff with 6 or 7 dollars shipping you end up paying like 45 out the door. Of course, the whole thing is really a case of greed--they made the typical seller fees into buyer fees because they wanted to add a whole new fee they charge sellers to actually get their money out of the platform and they knew nobody was going to be willing to pay regular seller fees plus an additional fee to cash out on top of it. Predictably, the site kind of sucks now and I find myself getting better deals on things by just YOLOing shitty offers to people on eBay. The worst part about the Mercari changes is probably that the new fees aren't even consistent--they vary by type of item, time of day, however many returns they see for items in the same category, etc. and nobody outside of Mercari actually knows how they're calculated. For shits and giggles I just checked out r/Mercari and even a couple months after these fee changes you still see people that are completely flabbergasted at how much the price changes between their cart and the checkout page. I just saw one where the item price was $128 with $6.99 shipping but the price after all the fees is $159.67.
Magicians everywhere forced out of business
Ok, fair point.
They know what they did
Or...Maybe your business model isn't working because your customers are pissed off that you've been deceiving them
Fox "faux" news had their talking heads against the hidden fees already saying "so I guess business owners can't charge late fees etc.." like, no, that's not what this is about at all. Right wingers are so pro business that they didn't give two shits if Ticketmaster charges ten different fees that are *more* than your actual concert ticket.
Stop throwing shade at software companies. Else they will alter that EULA further.
exactly, somewhat similar to a small biz that can't pay their employees a decent wage.
>Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market. "Criminals argue that laws are against their best interest"
If you're struggling and need to scam then you should just fuck off
I'm impressed Americans in general seem pretty trained to be okay not knowing *exactly* how much something will cost them at a point in time where they're effectively committing to the purchase. From tickets, to sales tax not being included in the price, to small-print fees on fees for food; how do you people budget if all the prices come with hidden markup you'll find out at a point where you can't back out without a fuss? > So deception. You're openly admitting to deceiving customers to make more money. This entire practice is "cultural" at this point, given how normalized it is to get surprise-fees at checkout.
Health care is the worst example. Moment you walk into a hospital you start wracking up a bill with no way to know how much it will cost. The doctors don't know, and the hospital front desk often doesn't know either!!! Theyll tell you talk to the billing department and also it "depends on your insurance". It's insane.
Which is what's letting suppliers and landlords get away with gouging. Financial tricks to get customers to spend more are fucking everything up, same with real estate and cars. As long as people can meet their minimums keep changing loan terms and you can squeeze more money out. For restaurants, you surprise people with a higher bill and at the end of person's pay period they are running on credit cards so you don't get blamed. The customer gets screwed, the restaurant scrapes by, the landlord kills it and Sysco stock goes up a few points. None of this sustainable
Damn my Thai place charges $15 for Pad Thai and I eat dinner and have leftovers for lunch the next day.
Italian/European cuisine always charges a huge premium over "equivalent" Asian cuisines even if the cost of ingredients is basically the same.
It's why I hate going out to eat Italian. Shrimp scampi on linguine? I'll do it myself. I don't want to $25 for a regular plate of pasta noodles.
Black Dynamite moment right here.
But Black Dynamite, I pass fee's onto the community!
I threw that bill before I entered the room!
it's so frustrating. I was at the movies last year, there was a random fee like 10% on top of everything else. why not just make everything 10% more expensive
😂 out of all the industries that shouldn't be giving customers yet another reason not to pay for them, movie theaters are at the top. Like, what kind of balls does it take to charge additional fees for your dying business? Just want to make the death a little faster?
I've just stopped going to restaurants entirely. And this open admission of deception isn't helping any. I feel bad for the employees but I suspect they'll become competition that isn't fueled by pure dishonesty.
Unbelievable. They've been gaslighting people for so long they've started actually believing what they're doing is legitimate. There's no way any reasonable person can say something like that with a straight face
Had a resturant add a 25% fee at the time of payment. Called American Express to initiate a chargeback. Worked. Now thankfully they are out of business.
>Some restaurant owners said raising menu prices that way without providing the context could hurt their business. UM then provide context and take ownership of the law, like right wingers do after voting against them "you hate hidden fees, we hate hidden fees, the prices on our menu are the price you pay, no more wallet shock embarrassment" "no context".. lol thats another way to spell opportunity.
If you have to deceive people in order to use them it should not be allowed to be in business.
Restaurants deserve no exception. All fees should be baked into the price on the menu except for sales tax.
> except for sales tax Why should this get an exemption? This isn't even a "make us pay less" thing. It's literally simply telling someone the full cost for the service that they're offering. The *only* reason to allow this sort of thing is to deceive people that they'll pay a lower price, then give them a higher cost after they've committed to paying for the service. Sales tax is a *little* iffy because of the vast numbers of varying jurisdictions, but a brick-and-mortar establishment (that exists at a defined address and is subject to a single juristdiction) like a restaurant should be capable of properly notifying customers what the sales tax on their purchases will be prior to ordering.
Why not include the tax?
Tipping/fees are wild in the US, even compared to Canada. When I visited my wife in San Diego restaurants were all like $25 minimum plus they all add fees plus it's rude to not tip 20%?? 15% is a generous tip to me, 20% is wild Which is crazy because it also has places that are cheaper than anything in Canada, all the taco shops were like $2-$3 per taco, but I got fish and chips at a place in LA Jolla and it was like US$50, or like $70CAD,for the fish, a single beer and fees/tip. Crazy lol
I was asked to tip a website this week. *sigh*
I’ve always believed they should just charge everything up on their menu with 10% and just not say that. Factor that into the sticker price onto each individual item on the menu. Don’t tell me,” oh there’s this extra shit you’re gonna pub for on top of this meal.” Factor it in and don’t say anything. Just do it.
> and then a mandatory 20 percent service fee on top of that." which, i suspect isnt going to the staff as anything other than minimum wage
A lot of dumb people are gonna see higher prices and claim california made the costs higher just in that state.
Chevron is doing that in their attempts to get the gasoline tax repealed and a per mile tax put into place. Its kind of silly since the gas tax was originally to get car manufactures to improve on fuel efficiency. If they were really worried about electric cars also paying a tax then that could be arranged that there would be a tax on the charging stations instead of trying to require a tracking device get put into every car.
WA state adds the lost gas tax cost into the yearly registration. It made my electric car registration like $875 with something like $200 in the gas tax fees
Why is your regular car registration like $675??? It's less than $200 for a car over here in Michigan.
Zero state income tax in WA. It's a great tradeoff if you're high income, not so much if you're not.
Yeah, I got a promotion and shortly after, my wife and I decided to move back to California to be near family and the state income taxes took all the extra income I gained from that promotion lol
I had bought my first new car after owning beaters. Previously, my registration was like $80 for a 90s Integra lol
Washington already has bonkers registration fees. Even a gas vehicle is going to cost upwards of $500 a year just for tags. And of course the rich walk to work wankers who can afford two million dollar condos don't pay and and spend their life whining about how bad cars are. Meanwhile it's the poor who are forced to commute hours a day that pay the price. It's always the poor that get hurt, never the billionaires.
Rich people don't register their cars in king/pierce/sno countries. Rich people hardly pay taxes.
What??? My WA registration fees aren't even remotely close to what you're saying. For my Corolla, Feb 22 I paid $70, Apr 23 I paid $78, and Dec 23 I paid $78... My wife's truck in the same timeframes was $108, $115, and $116...
I'm guessing neither of those vehicles are new. The fees are based on the estimated value of your vehicle. My '22 was several hundred to renew, forget the exact number.
I'm in Washington and when I renew every year its only 70 bucks.
Most people who own electric cars charge at home. You can charge on a 110v outlet. I've owned an electric car for 3 years and have charged at a charging station less than 5 times.
We have so many charging station at work, a lot of people also just use those and don’t pay for it at all.
Super easy to drop in a 220 breaker and run a wire. I don't know about your state laws but in my state as the homeowner I am allowed to do my own electrical work. And my FIL is a master electrician. And I'm a licensed contractor so I'm actually not allowed to do ANY electrical work which makes it all pointless. If you aren't comfortable doing the work just install the wire and call and electrician. Pulling wire is were most of the labor cost comes from. Wiring a breaker and an outlet will take less than an hour for a professional.
That’s because almost any asshole can in fact terminate a wire and half of those assholes can do it mostly right. The reason why pulling the wire costs so much is because it can take a fucking while to do it right and safely without destroying the house. And sometimes you just straight up have to open the walls to do it. To say nothing of the homeowner getting the right gauge, #, and insulation of this wire, the straps/screws/staples, and connectors, and junction box should they fuck something up and need to splice (also wire nuts).
Cars should be taxed based on weight since that's the #1 determining factor of damage to the road. Semis would pay the most. F150s and Rams pay a little more. Smaller cars would pay less.
In California it is based on weight and value.
The tax was not implemented to improve gas mileage it was to pay for the roads. It just happened to give a competitive advantage to cars that were more fuel efficient when prices got too high.
You’re right and I hate it.
I mean, they already are claiming that about the minimum wage.
It’s disgusting that so many people are either ignorant of actual costs or just want to blame Newsom for increasing costs
J.C. Penny famously got a new CEO and said, no more products that are always on "sell." The price is the price now and forever. We aren't going to try to play the sell game anymore. We trust that the consumer is smart enough to understand. They were wrong.
My dad died having never really convinced my mom that she wasn't in fact saving multiple hundreds of dollars every time she shopped at Kohl's.
But that is the prisoner's dilemma - that only works if all stores do that. California by making all stores show true prices will bypass that problem. Relatively few people will visit stores in multiple states, to be tricked by fake comparisons.
Be prepared for the cries of inflation to get even stronger as the real prices (that are being paid anyway) are put directly in these people's faces.
> no more products that are always on “sell” The word you’re looking for is “sale”.
> They were wrong. They were right, it just takes time to undo the century of customer training the company had done. The board didn't have the stones to see it through, and now JC Penney is still going to go under, whereas if they had stayed the course and gotten a new demographic to start doing business with them, they might have survived. They posted a higher than expected loss for 2 quarters so they decided to doom themselves to slow bleed bankruptcy instead of betting on turning the corner years down the road.
CEOs rarely understand how their company actually works. In retail stores, there's always gonna be some customers who aren't actually there to buy something, they're there to look for sales. They will only buy something because it's on sale. The same item at the same price but it's just a normal pricetag? Nope. It's gotta be the flashy sale tag.
The thing is, that's trained/learned behavior. Stick with the new system long enough, and that will no longer be the case.
Won’t help with the merchants themselves perpetuating the myth of state caused increases either, as they passive arrived blame the state to their customers. Happens every single time.
some businesses might just raise prices and blame california regardless
My conservative parents literally thinks everyone in California is getting mugged daily by a homeless person living at a sidewalk encampment. Same with Chicago, New York City- conservative media is a hell of a drug. Yeah I get it that California has its issues like all states. But are all California homeless people home brewed or something? They come from all over, sometimes even shipped there by guess who.
> “Restaurants are vital to the fabric of life in California, and they should be able to cover costs as long as they do so transparently,” *Exactly*. And that can happen by including ALL charges in one price. Then I can compare prices from various restaurants without wondering if there's going to be another 5%-25% added to the bill in extra charges. This puts *all* restaurants on a level playing field. Exempting restaurants destroys the fundamental functionality of the bill.
Also their claim here that it will make them uncompetitive is absurd because if all the eateries have to make the full price show on their menus at the same time when the law takes effect, then all their prices will be higher on all their menus at the same time. It's not like Restaurant A is going to be able to keep doing the same old hidden fees bullshit while law abiding Restaurant B is forced to show the higher full prices. These are the same assholes that magically found the money to start offering actual benefits to employees once COVID happened and the labor supply was no longer willing to work exhausting jobs where customers abuse them all day for a variable amount of tips. They said they "couldn't afford" to provide shit like sick days since forever, then all the sudden they could afford it once they had to do so to get workers in the door. Fuck them. I hope every single restaurant protesting this law goes out of business.
of course the California Restaurant Assoc has already hired lobbyists to craft a revised bill that will allow supplemental fees for eateries as long as they're clearly marked on the menus and bills. These ppl have no shame. Restaurants fail to realize that today's diners don't really mind paying more as long as you're upfront with them. Just look at all the app-based delivery services like doordash/uber eats which have their own inflated menu prices that's more than what you'd pay if you ordered from the restaurant directly & just picked up. Customers know that they're paying a premium & they're fine with it because the prices are disclosed ahead.
Even more relevant, the only reason to not be clear is no one else is. If everyone has to be clear then you don’t suffer from idiots comparing menu prices (where your prices look higher than the pre fee prices others are showing), everyone’s prices rise together and everyone keeps eating at the same places. It’s the same thing with tips. Require everyone to pay more (and thus charge more in menu price) at the same time and nothing changes.
Why the hell are lobbies even allowed in the US? It's exactly the same as legalized bribery. The word "lobby" even doesn't have a negative connotation in the US. Yes certain lobbies do have negative reputation but they're like specialised e.g. "oil lobby", "pharma lobby" etc. In Europe you want to avoid being associated with a lobby. If a company is associated with a lobby they run the risk of losing a lot of customers and PR damage. Nobody trusts them anymore and their trade volume tanks pretty significantly.
The idea of a lobby is to allow people to get together and push an agenda towards politicians. So it's a way to get their voices heard collectively rather than individually. There's nothing wrong with that- people should be able to do that. The problem is that corporations can do this AND pay the politicians with actual "campaign funds" and a cushy job right after their political career is done. And the people can offer a small campaign donation at best.
The problem is that regular people can't take time away from their jobs to do this stuff as easily as a company can just pay someone to do it as their whole job.
It's not even just that people *should* be able to do that, if a politician is to actually do the job and represent the interests of their constituents then they *have* to know what they need. And that includes local business and industries, who likely have specialized needs to brief their representatives on. Of course, this becomes a problem when it becomes an avenue to bribe for tax cuts and deregulation, but the concept exists for a reason.
> Why the hell are lobbies even allowed in the US? Because we have the first amendment right to free assembly and association to redress our grievances with the government. Corporate interests have tainted the concept, but the ability to organize groups to lobby our government in our interests is critical to democracy, but it does need some better guardrails.
There are a lot of areas of business/technology/law that politicians don't really understand or know about. Lobbyists are how stakeholders in those areas explain to the politicians what's important to them
> Why the hell are lobbies even allowed in the US? Lobbying just means try to convince legislatures to agree with your group. You don't think workers unions should be able to lobby for workers protections? You don't think environmental causes should be able to lobby for better environmental laws? You don't think that Planned Parenthood should be able to lobby for better abortion access?
Cause the act lobbying is a key part of the democratic process? You can argue about corporations etc participating, but other than that its very important. Unless your saying in Europe there are no citizens groups pushing for something and everyone is fine letting their officials do whatever they want.
Contact your local CA reps to tell them to vote no on SB 1524! https://sf.eater.com/2024/6/6/24173034/sb-1524-california-restaurants-service-fee-ban Find your local rep here: https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
We've got this in MN too, it's already working. I noticed on the Airbnb app there's a toggle at the top to "show all costs" when searching
AirBnB mentioned this in their earnings call. They said that once they made full fees visible large number of hosts just removed cleaning fees.
Ugh I hate what airbnb has done to the rental world
Restaurants do this crap in my city as well. Having “7% service charge due to inflation/for living wages/for employee healthcare” in tiny text at the bottom of the menu is a deceptive way to raise prices. The food prices on the menu should be set at a place where they can cover these expenses. I avoid eating takeout/delivery or going to restaurants at this point because between the tipping expectations and the hidden fees it’s another needlessly aggravating experience in today’s world that I don’t want to deal with. I’m just waiting for the grocery store to ask me to tip the self checkout and then charge a 5% “worker compassion fee” on top at this point.
I dunno, 7% is less than half of 15% tip ("standard" lol) so it's kind of a steal. You can sooth your guilt of not giving on top of the bill with the knowledge that this amount is 100% going to staff and enough to ensure a living wage. /s
15% standard tip, but the tipping options on the POS terminals (in my experience) start at 18%. But more like 20 or 25%. It’s an arms race at this point. I miss the ‘service included’ that is common in European countries.
And then people defend raising the percentages because of "inflation." Then you have to explain to a blank stare how percentages work.
If a fee is mandatory then it should always be baked into the price i think. No exceptions. Also those kinds "living wage fees" are deceptive and while they try to sound like tips, they infact aren't and go to the company not to the employees.
> Some restaurant owners said raising menu prices that way without providing the context could hurt their business. Because hidden fees provide so much context.
To be fair, they're not wrong. It is intentionally designed to hurt their business if they're in the business of deceptive pricing.
“I wish I didn’t have to rely on service charges” says the restaurant owner. Sorry, friend, if you can’t pay a living wage without deceptive pricing then your business should fail.
It honestly doesn't matter *what* wage they are paying, living or not. Deceptive pricing should simply not be allowed, ever, under any circumstance
Everyone needs to keep fighting until the law is fully in effect. State Sen. [Scott Wiener](https://sfist.com/2024/06/06/emergency-bill-looks-to-allow-restaurants-to-continue-charging-extra-fees/) is working very hard with restaurant lobbyists to undermine this effort and ensure that restaurants can continue to charge extra fees. #VoteWienerOut
kind of a lame hashtag. try #WienerIsAWeenie
You mean u/scott_wiener?
Yup. That’s the flip-flopping sellout.
I dont get why restaurants are always in some slim profit margins and still you see a restaurant every 30 second while driving in any given city.
Most people know how to cook a meal so when people get entrepreneurial, it is one of the first things that people think of. The slim profits come from the fact that it is a hard business to run properly. Managing costs, managing people, managing product, and doing it well, long term, is much harder than people think.
From working in the political realm, every single time a business owner or higher up wanted to oppose or support a policy, they lamented their “razor thin profit margins.” Either everyone was lying or everyone sucks at business. How much are the folks at the top making per hour? Is that cutting into the profit margin? There’s no way for me to know if a business owner of a restaurant pays themself $300,000, works 2 hours a week, and then only make $5,000 in profit.
As someone who spent fifteen years serving / bartending I know why: most of the business owners don’t know what they’re doing.
They are in slim profit margins *because* you see one every 30 seconds while driving in any given city. Competition is huge, largely because there are relatively few barriers to entry compared to other businesses.
Seriously. Every other god damn business is a restaurant now. Y’all cannibalized each other by opening too many and now they’re all struggling instead of a select few making good money. Boohoo.
What? I'm sure each restaurant would individually prefer they were the only restaurant but this is a free society so other people can open restaurants..
Yeah, but the point is that economic theory and principles state that people shouldn't be opening restaurants if there is no profit to be made in the industry.
Because it's a narrative that helps garner sympathy and it also allows them to operate by advertising lower prices on the menu and putting the onus on the customer to supplement their employees wages via tips and hidden fees. Essentially, a restaurant bubble has been created because of these practices and a restaurant market correction is way passed due.
Because it's an easy business to get into, but it's not easy to make a profit in the long run.
**I hope this spreads to all industries, I work at a hotel and our management has us tell our customers the price before taxes, fees and our $100 security deposit.** Legit have had people show up in an Uber, **the last one they could afford plus the price of our room only to find out they have to pay an additional 10% + $5 fee + $100 security deposit.** It’s not even borderline, it *IS predatory.* I’m about ready to quit because the stress of somehow being responsible for fucking people over has been way too much for awhile now but if I don’t have a job I’ll be homeless and I’m just trying to find another one right now.
>Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market. how slimy you have to be to be able to utter this sentence in front of a public?
As a European it reads like satire.
As an American we can't even recognize satire anymore
But the only way they can survive is to deceive their customers.... /s
“Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market.” Fuck that logic, only way they can keep their lights on is if they charge guest hidden fee’s?
"If customers knew how much it costs they wouldn't buy it!!" for real though how does that logic make since.
I don't get the logic how being transparent would hurt the business, since the competition would have to do the exact same thing.
>Restaurant owners have argued that they should be exempted, because they are already struggling to survive in a challenging market. Nah, its high time the restaurant market crashes. Over-priced, sub-par nutritionally most of the time; and terrible for you health wise. Food service industry is an industry that *deserves* to fail. Will small business owners get hurt? Yes. But they assumed risk when they went into business; the fact is for the *consumer and the worker* the business model is awful.
The restaurant business in the US expects customers to supplement employees wages instead of just paying them fair wages in the first place. You’re exactly right that they deserve to fail.
I agree with you. Other side of tipping is that every waitress or waiter I've ever known prefers the tip format. They get a few big days and then chase that high for years.
The fact that most of the fast food places in this country are charging $10 for a meal because "inflation", yet still are making massive profits is absolutely insane to me. They pay poverty wages, hire a bunch of people who need jobs, then schedule them just below the hours required for them to offer benefits such as insurance which then makes makes them have to live off various government assistance programs effectively making taxpayers responsible for the rest needed to live. The top two biggest offenders of this are Walmart and McDonalds, yet for some reason the poor people who do the work catch the brunt of the negative comments when they are forced to use welfare, foods stamps, housing assistance. [Why are companies like Walmart, McDonalds, Amazon, Kroger, etc](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html) paying CEO's millions and reporting profits in the millions, and the billions in a several cases while paying workers poverty wages so that the government then has to pick up the slack so that they don't starve and can actually go to a doctor when sick? These companies raise prices and blame it on inflation, and say that the cost of products are causing prices to increase all while saying that if they have to give benefits, or pay higher wages they would have to raise prices again. It's funny though that all during this horrible inflation and them increasing costs to absurd points they [have seemed to have raised their net profit higher and higher. Net mind you, not gross.](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=net-income&axis=single&comp=MCD:WMT:AMZN:KR) Companies like McDonalds raise prices so that a like a Big Mac meal is now over $10 all the while, blaming it on inflation. Yet, since they, along with the largest offenders, are publicly traded companies we are able to see that they are full of shit. When you actually look into it their [operating expenses](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=operating-expenses&axis=single&comp=MCD),[non operating expenses](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=total-non-operating-income-expense&axis=single&comp=MCD), [Cost of goods sold](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=cost-goods-sold&axis=single&comp=MCD) have all dropped since 2009, yet their [earnings per share](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=eps-earnings-per-share-diluted&axis=single&comp=MCD), [operating margin] (https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=operating-margin&axis=single&comp=MCD) (which is a metric that measures how much profit a company makes on each dollar of sales after paying for variable production costs, but before paying interest or taxes.), etc have all grown significantly since 2009. Why can a company with a [net profit margin](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/net_margin.asp) of [33%](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/net_margin.asp) as of the end of 2023 not be required to actually pay employees enough so that they don't have to depend on government assistance to live. Walmart's and Amazon's stats are even worse. People on government assistance have been vilified for years and looked down as lazy and freeloading, yet [70%](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45) of these people have fulltime jobs. The issue isn't a lazy workforce, it's the fact that our government benefits have increasingly turned form help for citizens to a way to socialize the profits of corporations. Nothing will change until companies are fined using government assistance as a way to boost their companies profits and using part time employees to get around providing benefits. The people of this country need to stop looking at the poor as the problem and start looking up at the ones who put them there and does their very best to keep them there.
Restaurants are PISSED. They want to continue to put “we charge a 20% surcharge so our employees can stay alive” in size 7 font on the bottom of the last page of the menu below the story of the restaurant’s founding that no one reads. This is one of the issues that is prompting people to write emails to their state reps without an interest group or form email being involved…they want this law protected and they want it to apply to restaurants. If it happens across the board, then it shouldn’t impact anything as all restaurants have to change at the same time
If you can’t set your actual prices on a menu because of fear from losing customers maybe you should rethink your business model.
Here in Denmark, the full price have to be on the menu. You see a price, that's what you pay, nothing more. It's crazy to me that something that simple, is seen as a big issue for some in the US. Just let people see what they're paying, so they can plan budget accordingly.
Pretty sure this is everywhere in the EU, you can't display the price without all the taxes (usually VAT). Sort of mindblowing that this is even a discussion.
It’s all a game. Restaurants want to advertise lower priced meals so that people don’t choose a different restaurant based on a similar meal appearing cheaper at a different restaurant. And then they make it back in these fake fees You’ve already committed to sitting down at restaurant.
I have no clue why tax isn’t included in all of the prices. I’m half Japanese and lived in Japan when I was younger and never had to think about the tax and when we moved to the states it was weird seeing price tags that meant nothing because it was always not the amount you were paying. Felt wrong and scummy.
>“The system itself, as we know, is clearly broken,” Vanda Asapahu, who owns Ayara Thai in Los Angeles, told The New York Times last month. “I wish I did not have to depend on service charges to give my team a living wage.” Transparent horseshit, Vanda. There is nothing to stop you charging the prices you need to pay your team, in a single stated price. You just want to deceive customers by hiding additional charges.
A smarter entrepreneur would launch a marketing campaign around this. "My Restaurant will not keep you guessing! Enjoy your meal knowing exactly what it will cost!" "At My Restaurant, you *know* if you can afford dessert!" "Forgot your calculator? No problem, My Restaurant tells you the cost straight up!" "At My Restaurant, you'll be surprised at the great quality of food, not the total cost!"
Saw this at Urban Plates in Irvine yesterday - a 3% additional charge for employee health". No clue as to whether the employees see it like that may tips or what. Since when did the price of doing business become fees and add-ons?
Based California, hopefully this catches on
If I'm reading this right this would also apply to food delivery apps. That would be a pretty monumental change for that industry, and a welcome one.
Food delivery apps were specifically exempted, but it's not *as* bad as it sounds because apps like DoorDash already display the food at its final price. The surprise the delivery apps hit you with right before check out are their own BS pure-profit fees. I'm not sure why delivery was specifically exempted from this law.
>“I wish I did not have to depend on service charges to give my team a living wage.” This sentence makes zero sense, if you are already charging whatever amount but calling it a "service fee" then customers are already paying it so just bake it into the prices. If people don't want to pay the price then guess what, you no longer have a viable business model and have to pivot or close, that's how business works.
I went to Iceland a while back, and any listed price was exactly the price you paid: tax was included and tips were not customary. It made budgeting my trip so much more convenient, especially as a foriegner. I definitely think this should be required in the US as well. Saying something is $10, but it's actually $10.70 because of sales tax, and to $12.84 for a service fee, and then you're expected to tip to $14.75.
Living in Finland, I find this to be the only way that makes sense. The price listed should be... the price.
> and any listed price was exactly the price you paid: tax was included EU rolls like that as well. Not only the price tag has to have the final price with tax, but also if owner makes a mistake and displays lower price than what he intended to sell at, that is the price you'll be paying.
A few restaurants will close, and blame Gavin Newsome for it. Right wing media will go crazy with cherry picked headlines for the next six months, just like the $20 dollar minimum wage law.
Meanwhile Panda Express, In-N-Out, and other local diners are already paying more than that.
Good. This law is just commonsense. The practice of businesses hiding mandatory fees or restaurants adding random fees has gotten out of control the last few years. The price listed should be the price you pay.
Wait till you see a hospital bill…..
Gotta be careful with laws like this, they are know in California to cause strokes in Republicans.
So does this mean wireless carriers have to advertise prices after their 10% bs fees ?
Now the rest of the nation has to wait another decade because California is a decade ahead of the US when it comes to progressivism
If all restaurants had to follow the new law then wouldn’t it still be an even field? Unless some restaurants don’t tack on fees and just price it in already. Seems like the shitty places want a carve out, fuck them.
This law should be national.
“lawmakers are trying to carve out an exception for restaurant owners, who say simply raising prices without context” Why exactly would they have to ‘raise’ their prices?? It’s a disclosure rule, thus they only need to now tell what you what you’re actually paying.
If only we could have this everywhere, it would be amazing.
Last year El Torrito got me good with their “cost of doing business fee in CA” I ordered a $15 burrito that was damn near $20 after taxes and fees. I looked at the menu and in fine print it said there was a fee added in. Fuck these assholes. Pizza Hut is the same way
Good. Now do the same for health care.
It's a shame that California has to lead the way for the most basic shit all of the time
The real question is how the F is this legal to begin with with?, oh yeah, corruption, that is it.
This will kill a lot of crappy restaurants
Right after I visited california and was mad at these stupid resort fees out of nowhere (and the ridiculuous deposits on top of it, freezing essentially 700 dollars). That shit should be illegal. Just fucking take the money upfront.
The alternative is what most restaurant customers are doing these days: subtracting the fee from the tip. A 10% service charge before a 20% tip? You get 10%. 20% service charge before a 20% tip? You get 0. Servers should be 100% behind this move.
Every fee except provincial and federal sales taxes is the law where I am. You know exactly what it costs to get the car out of the dealership's lot and I think it might be the most obvious one when these laws hit a new jurisdiction.
Great example of democracy checking capitalism. We need more of it.
This is why even though some people can afford to eat out choose not to, and instead make stuff at home. If a restaurant charged me all these fees, I'd simply take those fees out of the tip I'd leave.
If all restaurants are operating under the same law, the notion that this makes restaurants uncompetitive is nonsense.