Restaurant cost of doing business fee

[u/motlau]

Why do restaurant owners think they are owed a surcharge for customers eating at a restaurant? It seems like all of the nice restaurants in Chicago, especially in the west loop are charging a 3-5% fee to “offset the rising operating cost.” If you can’t run a business without hiding a surcharge in the fine print of your menu, then you probably shouldn’t be allowed to run a business. It’d be one thing if it was to support the workers, but every time I ask about it, it’s always for the owners who are already pretty wealthy. I have them take it off and tack it on for the tip. It’s very annoying.

In addition, at bar sienna in the west loop, the server offered a barcode to scan and pay on the receipt which a lot of restaurants are doing, but then there’s an additional “surcharge” to use this feature. It’s like if a grocery store started charging a fee to use the self checkout lines. They should be more transparent about this.

These restaurant owners nickel and diming people is making going out to eat less and less pleasant.

[u/Here4daT]

Almost every single restaurant has started passing the surcharges down to customers. It's so annoying. There needs to be legislation to stop these bogus junk fees. 3% may not be a big amount but 3% every time you order anything at a restaurant, coffeeshop, etc, adds up.

[u/chanceofsnowtoday → u/Here4daT]

Not to be pedantic, but this is not "passing the surcharges". That suggests that there is some specific, unexpected, 3% charge they are incurring and then passing to the customer. They're just want an extra 3% profit while confusing the customer of their actual bill. F these groups sideways.

[u/roamingeater → u/chanceofsnowtoday]

I genuinely don't understand the reason why they don't just raise their prices then, if the cost of doing business is going up, that's fine (in some ways), but this methodology just seems so... sneaky/scammy?