Need this nationwide. I hate having fees added on to the price of what I’m ordering.
Only fees that are entirely optional — like leaving a tip for staff — can be left out of the posted price.
Wrong move. They should have outlawed tipping too. No more hiring for shit wages and leaving adequate compensation up to chance. Bump up the menu price and pay your staff an enticing salary.
Agreed. I hate tipping. Some tippers will hate for tipping to go away because they can use their charisma to make a lot of money. More power to them but tipping is just a way for these businesses to keep their labor low. Many other countries don’t have tipping and can still have restaurants. For some reason the US needs tipping to be able to have restaurants.
Some tippers will hate for tipping to go away because they can use their charisma to make a lot of money
The funny thing is even if restaurants are forced to pay a living wage and not have tips as a subsidy, these servers would actually still be able to do that. Maybe not AS much as before, but between that and an actual living wage is bet they still would come out ahead lol
A lot (not all) of workers in the service industry like tipping, actually. They get cash a lot of the time, which they like, and can under report on their taxes. Most people opposed to banning tipping, in my experience, are actually the people receiving the tips.
And yet many of those people are also the first to complain about having inconsistent paychecks. Funny how that works
Something tells me these same workers wouldn’t like tipping so much if people didn’t feel obligated to tip under threat of food tampering (real or imagined) or other threat/shame tactics.
I mean, I don’t think they’re necessarily the same people, that’s why I said not all.
The real perk of getting tips in cash is not having to visit an ATM to buy drugs from each other
I can tell you’ve worked at restaurants.
Not me but I’ve lived with a chef for over a decade lol
I do wonder how much that’s changed over time. As more of us use only electronic payments or credit cards, that has to reduce the opportunity for tax fraud (same with panhandlers - I literally don’t carry any cash I could give you, so now what?)
A restaurant in my area recently put up signs saying they pay their staff a living wage, raised prices, and forbaid tips. More like this, please.
Meanwhile, most places in London pay at least the minimum wage (not lower for waitstaff, but not necessarily living wage) and tack on an optional 12-20% service charge, and don’t give it to staff.
You have to determine if the service charge goes to staff, awkwardly refuse the service charge, and (optionally) tip your waitstaff in cash (and if you do, ask they split it with back of house)
The times we’ve done it seems to make the staff happy. Still a shit thing to do.
A few places in Seattle experimented with different ways to go tipping when the city raised the minimum wage across the board without making an exception for tipped wages. A few forbade tipping a few had a standardized tip percentage. A few had a surcharge added on. Many made it clear how they did it. Shitheads like Tom Douglas did not make it clear and added a 4% charge on the bill noting that it was a living wage fee. I don’t go to the ones who were shady about it. Largely it has all returned to standard typing. There are a few coffee shops like Seattle Coffee Works and an ice cream shop (Mollie Moon’s) that do not allow tips.
I still hate Tom Douglas for that shit.
Add to that the fact that he was one of the big proponents against paying tipped workers a minimum wage.
They won’t make nearly as much as they did with tipping. I expect either tipping to come back to that place or the servers to leave for somewhere better.
Or they could, you know, just pay the servers a fair wage.
Yeah, maybe they’ll make $50/he. And maybe cops will fly.
Raising wages is what business do when they don’t want their employees to quit. It’s not some mythical thing that never happens.
Agreed, but let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good here.
Agreed, but overall a good move to address separate and much simpler issue of predatory pricing (for the customer)
Heading to mother’s day lunch right now, set menu for $89 per person. Except it’s a 10% surcharge on Sundays, the only day that mother’s day is, so that price isnt really true at all.
This in Aus which I’d normally argue has better common-sense policies such as requiring sales tax in the menu price
I’m not a California resident but once on a visit I ate at a place. Paid the bill. No tip. Left. The shopkeeper chased me on the street to catch up and ask why I didn’t tip, and wasn’t the food good, etc. Embarrassed, I was with a friend who is a resident… I told her yes it was fine. “Then why no tip?!” Internally: Because it’s a tip? I didnt get some kind of exceptional service there. If anything they left us alone really. So what was I tipping for exactly? why not just charge a different price, etc. Externally: “Oh I’m sorry. I didn’t know”
Yeah, but you know how the system works, so you intentionally stiffed someone out of their income. Regardless of if the system is correct or just it exists and you don’t get to just opt out without being a gigantic asshole.
Ok… Thanks for your input I guess, but as a European, the practice of tipping isn’t ingrained in my culture as it may be in yours. Frankly, I find it bizarre and from the outside I also see many in your own culture find it bizarre also. If not downright predatory of businesses on customers.
Why not? If the waitron is counting on an “optional” tip and doesn’t get it, maybe they have more incentive to insist on fair pay or move along. … that’s what I say to myself , anyway, as I’m leaving the tip
If I go to McDonald’s and they serve me food. I don’t tip them. the same thing happened at that smaller restaurant. If all they did is walk the food to my table and that’s it, then why am I tipping some percent extra for them to walk the plates 3 meters (~15 feet)?
You don’t need to ban tipping. Several countries don’t have a tipping culture and that’s because the waiters are paid adequately for their work. Tipping is seen as a bonus after exceptionally good service.
The US should raise the minimum wage for restaurant workers and not make it the customer’s responsibility to make sure the waiter can pay their rent.Tipping culture has metastasized in the US. It won’t go away on its own.
Do it like in Europe. Prices are all inclusive, any kind of tip is just a thank you for outstanding service, and not a necessity so the waitress won’t starve.
It is a sales business with service, like buying clothes. Can you imagine having to tip the salesperson in a boutique?
It really depends on the country. France and Belgium, as you wrote. Germany, they expect a tip and look at you angry if you don’t. Italy, they add a service charge at the end that is nowhete advertised. Turkey, they invent a random price at the end, complaints only taken if you’re local. (I’m slightly exaggerating)
In Germany it’s typical to do so just to make the change easier, you might catch an angry glance by making them make small change.
Italy will list a coperto or servizio on the menu.
It’s common place in London to include a 12.5% service charge on the bill now. But it’s not mandatory. You can literally just be like “please remove the service charge”.
It’s kind of interesting because as an American it’s like I get to witness the invention of service charges in real time. If you hear employee complaints or warnings from people online they’ll say “the restaurant puts it into a common pool and only pays the employees a small portion of it” or “if you want to tip the staff, remove the charge and leave them cash” or “the business isn’t legally required to share any of the service charge with the employee”.
It’s like you get to see the UK go through all the bad phases of tipping culture before we get to the version we have in the US while everyone knows the winning move is to just not start down the tipping path in the first place.
Maybe I’m being overly cautious but the way the economies of the UK and Canada are incrementally becoming privatized, especially healthcare, is particularly disturbing. The populace must riot before it’s too late
I agree. I don’t know if we really need to go as far as rioting to say “stop putting ergvie charge on my bill, and please stop defending the NHS”, but yeah it is definitely concerning the way everything has gone since I moved here a dozen years ago.
Most restaurants where I live have a 20% service fee that is unknown until you get the check. I simply don’t go out to eat anymore. Half the restaurants have closed and the other half are mostly empty. Servers even sued for rights to the 20% but restaurant owners stepped in and took it. The 1% are insidious with their creep into your pockets to take every dime, then your inheritance, then into debt.
Healthcare is worth rioting
I was just in a smaller city in Germany and flew back to the US after that. I look German and speak German. When paying with card, Germany felt exactly like the US. At every restaurant, the tip request automatically came up within the thing used to process your card, just like in the US.
Italy, they add a service charge at the end that is nowhete advertised.
It’s called the Pane & Coperto (or just Coperto Fee) and typically amounts to a cover charge to enter, regardless of what you order.
Honestly not the worst way to run a restaurant, given that every table costs some baseline amount of labor and resources to tend.
It should just be included in the price. Not hidden as well as they can. It is just used scam tourists by lowering base price but increasing coperto
In Belgium and in France tips are expected but they are a bonus, not to have a living wage though.
Same in colombia. The price advertised is the price you pay. No need to calculate the tax in your head in the grocery store, just add everything and you’re golden.
We need European pricing where the price is the price. I would go as far as making asking for a tip illegal too. Have restaurants put on their menu that prices include the tip. Raise minimum wage for restaurant workers.
And not just for restaurants, everything, from airline tickets to concert tickets, etc.
I think clear signage and message on the bill indicating “tipping is optional, service charges is included in the menu price” should suffice.
Making tipping illegal goes too far, but I am okay with implementing it for couple decades, in order to correct a bad habit.
OP said “asking for a tip”. If I want to tip a particularly good server experience, everyone should be free to do so. But asking for it, and it comes to mind those places that explicitly stipulate that 10% is minimum mandatory tipping, should be illegal. That’s a hidden fee, not a tip.
People can’t let go of tipping. A few restaurants near me tried it and ended up closing.
Tipping isn’t just a part of culture but it also breaks up the spend for the consumer. You commit to a $15 burger now, then the $3 of tip later. Integrating the tips with the cost makes it seem like everything is more expensive and also makes it not optional for how much you give.
Which is why it needs to be a law all restaurants must follow, instead of a few trying.
…That’s why people don’t like the service fees, etc. It’s difficult to know, as a consumer, how much you’re actually being asked to spend. If you’re rich, haha who cares? Everybody else has to do this thing called “budgeting.”
Agreed. Though I was at the UPS store and they had a tip jar.
I was like: who the heck tips at the UPS store?
UPS: “We noticed you didn’t tip. Would be a shame if your package didn’t… Make it.”
Weave backed ourselves into a corner for tipping. Restaurants may be convinced to pay a livable wage. But they’re never going to pay the servers what they can actually make in tips.
I was about 5 years into IT, My girlfriend was waiting tables at Ruby Tuesday. Most days she made more than I did. And depending on how bad they ‘adjusted’ their tax claims …
That said, some days she did basically pay to work there.
I suspect if you ask the vast majority of wait staff if they would like to be paid and livable wage or continue a tip-based system they want to stay tip based.
I think that’s very dependent on age. When I was in my early twenties, an inconsistent gig with the potential for high tips was very appealing. When I got into my late twenties/early thirties I moved over to events and catering because they offered a high hourly wage with predictable(ish) hours. If the restaurants pay well enough they’ll be able to find people.
The real problem will be vacation towns. There are some places where most of the restaurants and bars close in the off-season. The staff will work their asses off through the spring and summer, then use their tips to live the rest of the year. For some of these towns, even if the restaurant staff wanted to pick up a job in the off-season, they’d need to drive two hours just to find a part-time gig at Target. I really want tipping to end, but I’m not sure what would happen to these places. The seasonal restaurants could pay more, but I’m not sure they could offer enough to subsidize their staff for half the year.
How’s that any different? You’d get fewer takers for a seasonal job, so shouldn’t pay go up? Just like they now get disproportionate tips, shouldn’t they get a disproportionate living wage?
I’m not sure it will scale properly. Tipping might outpace sales in towns like that, and I’m not really sure what the economics are in maintaining seasonal restaurant. And if there are fewer takers for seasonal jobs, the employers could pay more theoretically, but in the restaurant industry, fewer servers means slower service. Slower service means fewer sales, fewer sales means less profit, and less profit means lower pay. I think places like this would require a UBI program to maintain how they currently operate without tips.
Good for her, but arguably it’s not supposed to be a high paying job. A living wage, sure, but higher than a job that you presumably studied for and required relatively uncommon knowledge seems wrong.
So I guess the answer is no, we wouldn’t expect restaurants to work out how much people get paid in tips and match it, it would be a liveable wage and if the current workers don’t like it they would leave.
I don’t know that your girlfriend getting bankrolled is common across the industry either, tips rely on high traffic and customers with big pockets. Most wait staff don’t brag about how rich they are.
It’s also really hard work. Waiting tables at a busy restaurant was by far the most mentally exhausting job I’ve ever had.
But they’re never going to pay the servers what they can actually make in tips
Im not sure I believe that. I mean, I’ve also known people who said the same things, so clearly there are people who really make out. However I suspect this is highly variable and there are even more just scraping by. I’m sure it greatly depend on the restaurant and the clientele, as well as the actual effort, and I’m sure it highly depends on looks. That 18yr old hottie at the local hot spot may rake it in, but the elderly matron at the local diner works just as hard but with less opportunity
Everyone talks about tips being a reward for good service but tips are almost never proportional to service
Yeah, tipping is pretty messed up. In a lot of states, wait staff are exempt from the minimum wage because they’re expected to treat tips (which are notoriously unreliable) as part of their salary.
Generally, as here in CO, there is still a minimum wage for staff that are regularly tipped, it’s just lower. I believe it’s also (again, as here) generally required that any time the tipping doesn’t make up the difference, companies are required to make it up instead.
That being said, it’s basically a way to advertise much lower prices than they actually charge. Roles that often get tipped tend to make pretty good money, and companies would basically never want to pay that much for those roles (especially when they are used to paying even less than minimum wage).
The restaurant owner arguments are all super weak as usual.
“Menu prices will rise!”
No shit, but everyone was already paying the prices but now you can’t just surprise patrons with the increase.
“There will be pullback. People will lose jobs and hours!”
Doubtful but even if true, that means that they knew they were lying to customers and clawing extra charges that they wouldn’t know about already.
“‘They’ are thinking restaurants will absorb the costs”
Not exactly but they will have to compete with pricing as it should be.
They’re just trying to get away with playing the same game Telcos have gotten away with for far too many decades.
“Menu prices will rise!”
nothing a bunch of
two-bit con artistsMBAs hate more than an informedmarkcustomer.The actual good businesses run by good people will not suffer by this. only those that relied on duping their customers.
That’s what pisses me off, if the consumer knows what they’ll actually have to pay they won’t buy.
They are arguing that they should be able to lie to the consumer and trick them. They think the consumer shouldn’t be informed to make a decision on what is right for them. And once again, they are putting the business before the customer.
Isn’t this literally bait and switch?
No.
“Bait and switch” is the advertising of a product without the bona fide intention to sell it, for the purpose of establishing contact with a prospective customer in order to induce or “switch” him to purchase another product.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Bait-Switch.pdf
From the same source, further down
The existence of bait and switch schemes may also be evidenced by the following factors: whether in fact there were a significant number of sales of the advertised product at the advertised price;
Adding on hidden taxes and fees is debatably not providing the advertised price. Maybe? I don’t know.
What are the service charges that are being put on after the fact? From this I’m assuming it’s separate from the customary tip and any sales tax.
Many restaurants have started adding a “service charge” that is not a tip in addition to menu prices. It’s super fucking shady. There is rarely an signage indicating the charge, relying of the hostesses to inform you. It isn’t always clear on the itemized bill they hand you, since it’s grouped down with the tax. It’s not the standard gratuity added for large groups. There is a restaurant near me that suddenly started adding this kind of charge. They did not notify me when I sat down and I didn’t see any indication of it on the itemized bill and only noticed when calculating the tip, after they’d run my card. I made a huge stink about it because it’s a fucking scam and they did discount my bill, but they refused to remove the service charge. I liked their food, but that was the last time I visited and I stopped recommending them.
I think what really kicked this off is that restaurants started putting surcharges on bills by directly passes specific legal requirement costs directly to the customers without increasing their menu prices. For example, now that servers get some health benefits in SF, they’ll have a surcharge that says something like “SF Mandate” or “SF Health Surcharge”.
This would also cover stuff like to go order surcharges where some places are charging more for takeout sort of like Doordash or Grubhub do, except of course, you’re picking it up yourself.
I do wonder how/if places with some more traditional surcharges are going to comply now. For example pizza places charging delivery fees.
Places will still be able to get away with “X% gratuity added to bill for Y seats (though I’ve seen some places do it for any number of people, including 1)” because that’s optional, even if they put it on your bill because you’ve always been able to make them remove it.
It is like on most people’s cell phone bills in the US. You’ll see stuff like “FCC surcharge” which is the company passing their FCC regulatory fees directly to the customer without changing their advertised prices for a plan, E911 fees for 911 services, various taxes levied on the company but not the consumer are also passed to the customer.
The purpose is to have restaurants take these fees/taxes/whatever and make them build those costs of doing business directly into their advertised pricing on their menus. Companies don’t like this because they can advertise cheaper prices and psychologically the customer doesn’t usually think or even know about the extra surcharges, companies can set those surprise charges to whatever they want (they aren’t regulated) and they do not have to really compete with those prices wherever they advertise (menus, flyers, etc.) thus driving them down for the consumer.
One step closer to the fucking common sense of the rest of the world where the price you see for something is the price you actually pay. Nobody cares about a number that’s mathematically related to the price they have to pay, just tell me.
I’d really love it if they did like some countries and added the sales tax(es) to the sticker price in stores too
There are a lot of things I wished they did similar to other countries such as VAT. Hiding all these fees seems deceptive from both the business and the govt sneaking in their taxes.
Fees are predatory on people who are swayed by lower advertised cost. Basically, they are extorting the way many people’s brains work. It’s just another way to keep the not rich from ever catching up. Not just in dollars, but time. If you try to price compare, you have to sink a ton of time into uncovering all the fees. The rich just don’t have to worry about that. So it ends up as a time tax.
It’s called a Bait and Switch and is a form of Fraud.
It’s just that in the US, the grey area between Fraud and “Sharp business practice” is legally way broader than the rest of the Developed World.
Kudos to California to have forces some clarification on at least this one form of misrepresentation/false-advertising/fraud.
I agree that these fees are bad and I hate them, but couldn’t you make the opposite argument that they serve as a (money) tax on the rich? Poor people will take the time to shop around for the best deal, whereas rich people will simply pay whatever for the product they want. Therefore hidden fees disproportionately are paid by the rich.
Genuinely poor people rarelly have the time to shop around.
It is bad if you think a person’s value of their own time isn’t reduced to market dynamics. Yes the rich pay a cost/tax for the convenience, but that is because their time is valued more by the market. Poor people are compensated less for their time and that seems to make it “okay” to ask poor people to spend more time to deal with less honest business practices. If you think their free time is as “valuable” as anyone else’s then this is offensive.
No, it’s always taking advantage of the ignorant or the hurried, regardless whether they can afford it. I shouldn’t require extra steps to avoid being ripped off
Great, now do tipping next.
Article is about California, where tipped employees must be paid minimum wage same as everyone else
“If it’s in the core price of the menu, there will be a pullback” in patrons’ spending, she told NPR shortly before the attorney general released the guidelines. "There are some people, I think, that are hoping that the restaurants will just absorb that cost, because we’ve seen people say, ‘Oh, it’s too expensive with the service charge.’ "
If you add bullshit charges that are not added into the price on the menu, I don’t return ever. So you may lose a couple patrons initially but they’ll be back once they understand that is the general price. You will also get me back since there is no more possibility of bullshit charges.
unless it’s previously posted clearly to see before I order, I’d just walk out and not pay, because that is otherwise called “fraud.”
They do post it but it is in small print on a random ass part of the menu. Not technically fraud but absolutely bullshit.
We should all take the attitude that if a fee is hidden in any way, including fine print, it is absolutely fraud. There should be no tolerance for businesses trying to trick their customers.
Minnesota is currently working on a similar law to stop surcharges and just have a final price.
Isn’t it fun how “the price should just be the price” makes you a filthy commie in 2024?
it’s always a struggle between freedom TO vs freedom FROM
Honestly i never see any resistance to these kinds of steps forward
I do, but I also live in Bible Belt eagle fuckin rural America. Most of the people in my “city” live for every bad idea you can muster -
Like how practically half of this city exists explicitly on the far side of the city line, so they can dodge taxes while using the city’s infrastructure to get around (and then bitch about the state of the city’s infrastructure cause of course they do.)
I realize when I go out for a special event, like I did Friday night to see Harry Connick, Jr. play with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall that I wasn’t going to quibble about costs.
However, after the non-optional 18% “gratuity”, they also had an additional “server” tip field. Ha, GFY, bitches!
At that point just increase the price of menu items and pay people what their worth instead of lying about the final bill
Sorry, that’s just for the developed world.
What are you, French or something?
If only Americans rioted like the French.
My new favorite is a hotel tax I just saw today which conveniently isn’t included in the room rate.
Unfortunately, govt is the cause of that, not the solution. Taxes are always separate since they vary by location and are defined by the local govt. but yes it’s also a problem when that local govt wants to join in on fleecing the tourists, and it’s by convention not part of the price
Yeah, but tax can always be figured into the presented price of things if businesses are required to do so.
That’s pretty much the point of this type of legislation. Of course you need legislators who, y’know, vote to legislate in this way.
Yeah. It would be really convenient to calculate if the hotels just stood around in one spot for years so the taxes didn’t change every time someone got a room, but with them constantly on the move who could predict anything?
This has been the case forever. Itemizing receipts for hotels is always a pain and at least my company’s expense tool has buttons for more than 7 different tax fields each night. It’s like filling out a whole spreadsheet it the nightly rate varies.
Only fees that are entirely optional — like leaving a tip for staff — can be left out of the posted price.
How do you say you’ve never worked as a server without saying you’ve never worked as a server?
Edit: I think there’s a misunderstanding. I’m commenting on describing tips as “entirely optional.” If you can’t afford to tip, don’t eat at a restaurant. Servers are paid below minimum wage because they receive tips.
Second edit: My bad. NY has a tip allowance, and that’s where I waited. I didn’t know it varied so greatly from state to state. California does, in fact, pay their servers $16 per hour minimum.
https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/minimum-wage-tipped-employees-by-state/
Restaurants should be forced to pay their workers a living wage, which is how it works in developed countries. And paying below minimum wage should be illegal.
it’s such a fucking joke that they’re allowed to pay like $2/hr because they’ll make it up in tips. just because customers are nice doesn’t mean the employer should get off the hook like that. even the joke federal minimum wage is fuck all, that’s like 1-2 sides at a decent restaurant
Agreed. Each state differs on tip allowance. In NY, minimum wage is $15 per hour with a $5 tip allowance. That means employers can pay $10 per hour, expecting servers to make at least $5 per hour in tips. If it’s a slow morning of “coffee only paper readers,” it’s easy to come up short of minimum wage for some hours.
Yeah, and that’s a problem. Tip allowance shouldn’t be a thing. They should be paid a higher base wage. Yes, a lot of servers would dislike that because they make a lot of money in tips, and they often don’t report those tips when it comes to tax time. But that doesn’t mean that the system wouldn’t be improved by eliminating tipping and increasing wages, like they do in the rest of the world.
Work a Sunday brunch shift and watch the raft of churchies leave nothing but condescending notes, if anything.
Awful. Almost as gross as those fake half bills with scripture on the back.
Holy shit. They give god 10% of their income. This server is “asking” for 18% of the price of their bill. They’re not even remotely the same thing.
I’m generally against tipping, but still do it. I’m way against illogical comparisons like this though.
It’s called tithing. It’s described as giving 10% of your income or possessions to god in the Old Testament.
I’m aware of tithing. I’m saying that 10% of your income in a tithe is not even remotely the same thing as 18% tip for a single purchase. It’s more comparable to a sales tax than a tithe. One is percentage of a total income, the other is a percentage of a purchase.
Holy snark aside… 18% preprinted on the bill? That brunch better included a BJ then. And yes, I’m European.
Parties of 8 or more often have gratuity on the bill like this. It’s rare to see it otherwise, unless there’s a particular reason (like they know these people never tip).
i thought you weren’t meant to use the lord’s name in vain
The name of the Christian god is Yahweh or Jehovah.
Rude comment aside, at least that restaurant would have accurate pricing in cali now.
It gets worse than that.
Some of them leave these on the table. Carefully concealing the deception, of course.
That’s not even the only type they have available to them:
Servers are paid below minimum wage because they receive tips.
Not true everywhere. For instance Washington requires servers be paid the full minimum wage of $16.28/hr before tips.
I honestly thought all states used a tip allowance. Thanks for the info! You prompted me to look up some more about it. Turns out it varies wildly from state to state. Most states pay Federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 per hour if they don’t make tips, or $2.13 per hour if they do.
https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/minimum-wage-tipped-employees-by-state/
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I’m usually mindful about that. In all fairness, this is a post about California.
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On the tipping subject… it is just another way the well off designed long ago, to reinforce that the working class worked for them. Originally it was the business owner that they were targeting, to make sure they stayed dependent on the good graces of the elite. After all, back then most businesses were mom and pop shops. Now it is just out of controll, and used to increase profit margins as well as extract more cash from people who have trouble realizing the full cost.
