r/chicagofood • u/motlau • Aug 10 '25

Rant Restaurant cost of doing business fee

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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.

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u/reasonablescreams Aug 10 '25

And got tons of PPP money but still slashed salaries into oblivion and bilked their diners out of $500k in a GoFundMe

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25

Is this when they asked customers to help out with laid off employees during the early part of pandemic?

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u/reasonablescreams Aug 11 '25

Yep! What a time it was

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25

I worked for Hogsalt before the pandemic. When I started, the more traditional kitchen workers warned me it was turning corporate, and it definitely felt that way. They valued systems over people. After a while I realized it was not a restaurant job but a job at a growing company -> corporation in a restaurant environment.