You’re taking my 18% to pay them living wages, they they don’t need tips.
$11 canoli? $16.25 kids shells?
Screw that place
I’ve seen this at restaurants serving more than a given number of people. Did you attend a dinner with a large group?
I’ve been seeing it more regardless of group size. I went to a restauraunt alone and they had the audacity to charge a service fee and ask for a fucking tip
I wouldve tipped more than the service charge! So I gave nothing instead
That is super frustrating. Especially if the “service charge” isn’t really going to pay the staff a living wage. I’d be curious to hear from someone that works in a restaurant that does this whether or not they are actually being paid better after it has been implemented or if it is just cash grab by the individual restaurant owner/operator. Any takers?
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Ok where is this so we can avoid it?
I would have not paid the 18% fee and let them explain it to the cops when they arrived. I guarantee that’s not posted anywhere that they do that- so…
False advertising.
Basically, they just raised their prices by 18% and blamed it on the greedy, useless employees. I don’t know why businesses bother selflessly “creating jobs” if they are so much trouble. Shouldn’t those be the first things to cut to make their business more efficient under capitalism? Stop doing charity work and run the business yourself.
Basically, they just raised their prices by 18% and blamed it on the greedy, useless employees.
No, it’s worse than that.
Look at how the tips are calculated. They use the base bill of 95.60, not the bill after the service charge has been applied.
If they rolled an 18% increase into their prices, the calculated tip would also rise 18%. But it didn’t.
So in addition to effectively raising their prices and blaming their employees for it, they are also stiffing their employees by low-balling their tip calculations.
Actually, what I’m saying was that there shouldn’t be a need for a tip at all. That 18% service charge is for services rendered outside of the production of the product, meaning the server, cashier, etc. In most countries that’s rolled into the cost of the product, not a separate charge. In the US, that’s paid for through tips instead. What they’re doing is trying to double dip. They want to keep the money that normally would go to paying the service staff a wage without raising advertised prices and also have a separate tip to actually pay them.
This is a classic bait and switch where advertised price is not what you actually pay. Doesn’t matter if they put a little sign to cover their legal obligations, it’s still disingenuous to advertise one price and charge another. Tipping and taxes are common knowledge in the US as being added on after, but a service charge in addition to tipping is not and most people will assume that the service charge is a tip and won’t also tip whereas it doesn’t go directly to the service staff like a tip does. So likely in this place, the service staff just gets their $2.13/hr or whatever the tipped minimum is there, and a few dollars here and there in actual tips but doesn’t get any of that 18% unless tips don’t cover the required hourly $5.12 tip credit.
So they need to choose. Raise your prices for more profit and keep tipping, raise your prices to pay your service staff and do away with tipping, or keep your prices lower and risk tipping not covering the minimum wage tip credit.
Probably better than expecting customers to tip voluntarily
Oh wait, they do that too
I hope their customers are exclusively people who support the the below minimum wage for servers law.
Completely fuck this shit.
Need a tip at the bottom - it’s a LOT of hard work to process those mandatory service charges!
I actually support phasing tips out for service fees, less dodgy and less influenced by cognitive biases from customers toward certain genders or ethnicities of staff.
There’s no need for a service fee, just increase the prices of everything by 18% or whatever. It’s more honest that way instead of listing one price and then springing a hidden fee on people at checkout. Part of why this particular example is so dodgy is they seem to be fishing for a service fee and a tip, which just seems like double dipping on hidden fees.
You could go hog wild and include tax in the prices too. Then the price of an item could be the price of an item instead of the start of a maths quiz.
Wild to me that theres a whole country out there that has so much influence over my life (an entire ocean away) and they don’t know how much their meal will be before the cheque comes. Incredible.
It’s important to require disclosure of the service fee. In my experience usually listed at the bottom of the menu. I know at least in some instances there are crowdsourced master lists of restaurants with hidden fees, and enforcement of disclosure requirements seems to have stepped up.
Roll it into the prices then. Any mandatory fee is a cost of doing business, don’t make it look like your food costs less than it really does. Only taxes should be separate.
It’s a USA thing. Other places often have rules that say the price advertised (on menu, website, in store) is the price the customer pays, all fees and taxes included.
Yeah in Australia restaurants are allowed to have a service fee only if it’s applied on select days (e.g. weekends and public holidays, but not every single day of the week) and they clearly display the conditions of the service fee “at least as prominently as the most prominent price on the menu”. Otherwise, they have to roll in any fees into the main advertised price.
Yeah, but phasing out should probably be some form of cross tapering, not a decently sized service charge and the same size “suggested tip” on top.
Refuse to pay the service charge, offer the amount minus the charge.
This why even today, cash is king. With cash you can just leave the amount and they can take it or leave it.
$18.25 for a kids meal, $6 for lemonade is ridiculous. Don’t walk, run away!
If this was my post, I’d be circling the whole receipt.
What kind of time warp is this though where tipping recs start at 8%. I never see that anymore.
That 8% would actually be 26% given there is an auto 18% added already.
That assumes the 18% goes directly to your server.
Hard to say. A lot of places don’t pass these service charges to the servers. They don’t want you doing that kind of math.
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Straight up fees like that should not be legal, if they even are in that location.
They should instead just add 18% to every menu item since it applies to everything anyways.
As it is right now advertising their cannoli for $11.00 is a straight up lie since it’s really $12.98. They simply don’t because they want to hide the actual cost and make their menu appear to be cheaper so you cant walk out until after you’ve ordered and eaten.
Also if got a bill with an 18% service charge I would definitely not tip, since tips are supposed to adjust for the low wages anyways.
Hey, Restaurant Bill. What did you kill, Restaurant Bill?
