I once went to a restaurant that charged a 5% fee for paying by credit card. They only accepted credit cards.
I think it's illegal, but how could I enforce this?
"Legal tender for all debts public and private" is a guarantee backed by the treasury. if you owe the restaurant a debt, they are legally obligated to accept cash tender. Note that you have to actually owe them, you can't demand they accept cash tender up front, they have the right to refuse the terms of sale. if you can successfully argue their card only policy was not successfully communicated, then you have a case. I ANAL.
I've Karened out with cash on the table a few times and got away with it.
yeah im with the boomers on this one. paper menus too, fuck your qr code.
If I read this on a menu in a situation where I could go elsewhere, I would.
there's a shitty restaurant near me that does this.
they call it the 'honest to goodness fee' and state the fee is to ensure they can bring us the lowest possible prices, by charging 3% on the whole bill... when I saw it on the menu after sitting down, I left.
I don't participate in bait/switch pricing since it's illegal
That's insane to me. It's literally just a sales tactic so they can look cheaper on their menu but you still pay the increased prices. I would have left also.
It’s not a “sales tactic” it’s just fraud.
It can be both.
Kind of funny they try to spin it as good for customers
I might say this could be a temporary way around having to pay to get all your menus reprinted, but these doofuses appear to have printed it directly on the menu. So yeah, they can get fucked with an egg beater.
Is there an upcharge for said fucking.
So yeah, they can get fucked with an egg beater.
🤣
It means you don't have to tip.
If you're not going to tip, then don't eat there. You giving the tip to the owner isn't going to change anything.
Where I live, if the prices need to be higher to stay in business and give your staff a good wage, the prices just get raised. We don't tip except for rounding when it's cash. So I don't think adding an extra cost is weird, but it should be in the prices, and American tipping culture should go back into the hole it came from.
The person you're punishing has the least control over the situation, even if the punishment is small. Screwing over workers only makes it more American.
He’s not American. People in Europe get a somewhat liveable wage that doesn’t rely on tips.
They did make that pretty clear! If they weren't going to tip or their tip doesn't matter, then holding out doesn't matter either. If their tip was going to matter, then they've screwed over the employee and not the employer at all.
Sounds like i need to open a *Everything's $1 ** store and just make sure I get the fine print squared away...
Illegal in Germany for a good reason.
Not to make excuses for this, because it's not fair to customer, and it's bait and switch pricing IMO... but I understand how you could get there. Sorry this is long winded.
Based on the "thank you for your support", and their clearly not having a legal department, my guess is this is a small business. Prices have swung so wildly in the US in 2025 it's basically unmanageable without a dedicated team.
For example in August of 2024 the price for a lb of coffee according the US Bureau of Labor Statistics was $6.31. In August of 2025 it was $8.87. That's a 40% increase in one calendar year. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000717311
Eggs were $3.20 a dozen in Aug. of '24, but by March of '25 they were $6.22 that's a 94% increase in 7 months. Then they crashed back down to 3.58 (a 42.44% decrease) by August. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111
Now for the sake of a practical example, here's a pretty typical menu for a family diner in New Jersey. It's 11 pages. Maybe 20 items per page. Each item may have 5 to 10 ingredients.
https://www.pomptonqueendiner.com/menu_main/
It's a shit sandwich. I don't think this was a good solution, but I don't think a lot of small businesses (or consumers) have good solutions these days. McDonalds has a procurement team, and can lock in terms with their vendors a year in advance. They can update prices on digital menu boards on the fly. They can handle these things pretty easily. Your local greasy spoon may not.
I'd personally weigh whether I think this place and the people who run it are maliciously trying to exploit me or just find a way to get by selling cheese burgers and eggs in this economy.
As a restaurant owner, I disagree. It's shitty of them to charge a hidden fee like this
It's really easy to update prices. Sysco, the bulk supplier of >70% of US restaurants, provides a very easy tool that can update your prices automatically based on increased wholesale price. US Foods has a similar tool
The biggest pain in the ass there is printing new menus. If you're doing 1 page, the whole thing really isn't any worse. Dealing with shitty printers is the real nuisance. Maybe if it were a sticky note on the menu or something, I could understand it. If they're re-printing the menu, it's bullshit
It's shitty to those of us that are honest. Customers will see another pizza place selling larges for $15.49, and my prices at $16 and go with the other one because it's cheaper, despite the fact that after the 5% mine is cheaper. Seriously, I've had customers tell me that type of thing
I don't want to do the hidden fees, because I hate them personally, but I know I'm giving up some sales not tacking on some bullshit charge
Related rant: For DSP delivery, like Doordash, I charge regular menu price, but charge $3.50 for delivery. I know I'd get more marking up the menu 20-30% and offering "free" delivery. I can see the cart abandonment rate. I hate the dishonest business model though
You don't have to recalulate the prices per week and there is no indication that they are doing that with the fees which they appear to have changed once with a nice round number.
You are making excuses for what is obviously a deceptive tactic. Blow smoke elsewhere
That's actually a thing I addressed. You don't have to agree with me but reading the thing before whining about it would have been cool.
I read it I believe its transparently excusing obviously manipulative behaviour. I didn't not read you nor misunderstand I disagree now stop your whining
But I did address the nice round number thing. Very directly. I also absolutely did not make an excuse for it and I call it out as a bad business practice.
So I think you're just full of shit. Read the fucking thing or don't, but don't try to moral high road me with a straw man.
Let's go through it
...I understand how you could get there.,,,
Yes stealing
Prices have swung so wildly in the US in 2025 it’s basically unmanageable without a dedicated team.
Like a calculator and a spreadsheet?
You can either try to recalculate all of that every week or two based on tariffs, inflation, bird flu, etc… then reprint and spiral bind 50 to 100, 11-page menus (technically 6 laminated front and back).
You don't actually do this. Nobody does this. What a sandwich costs isn't exact cost + a certain number of pennies its what people in the area are willing to pay for a sandwich. Cost is a floor and what planet earth does in case of uncertainty is build in a cushion. It is what everyone is obviously doing.
Or you can try to guestimate a number you think you and your customers can live with and distribute your gains and losses across the whole menu and reprint one page with a fee (hopefully) once.
Everyone is guestimating all the time in small business and they do so by setting the actual price to a higher figure. If you want to do so across the board you do so by literally making that the new menu price. The entire reason not to is to gain additional business because your business looks cheaper on its face by dishonestly marking it a separate fee. There is no justification other than dishonesty for making it a separate fee and it should be illegal.
I’d personally weigh whether I think this place and the people who run it are maliciously trying to exploit me
Increasing the price whilst printing a lie on the menu board is always maliciously exploiting you. This is like you asking if keeping the box the same size and putting at first 10 20 and ultimately 33% less shit in the box was maliciously exploiting you.. Are you that fuckin dense?
You are making excuses < ME
But I did address the nice round number thing. Very directly. I also absolutely did not make an excuse for it
Literally you are sitting here explaining why they somehow need to exploit you
Examine the argument.. Turn it sideways... Shove it where the sun doesn't shine. You ARE obviously making excuses. There is no complexity to it.
I didn't say they need to exploit their customers. I said the exact opposite. In fact I agree with you that it should be illegal. I I don't think you could be compelled in court to pay that fee if you refused it. I've never stated anything to the contrary of that. You're still doing the straw man thing.
I get that you are the moral arbiter of all things and you know that when a business owner charges a $0.10 fee on a $2 egg it's an evil get rich quick scheme to rob their community because they're greedy bad people.
But over here in reality sometimes trade and craft businesses are run by people who are better at their trade and craft than they are at business. Sometimes, a resource intensive problem in the hands of that kind of person can result in a completely well-intentioned but terrible solution. That's not an excuse for it, it's just a thing that sometimes happens entirely without malice.
I'm going to bow out of this conversation here. You go on living your life with your worldview I'll stick with mine. Good luck out there.
Note to our restaurant: Due to unnecessary 5% surcharges, we will no longer be eating here.
They were just too lazy to update the prices for each item on the menu. A note at the bottom and called it a day
we have raised prices by 5%. this allows us to avoid raising prices by 5%
We have raised prices by 5% to avoid having to update all the menus we will just add it to the bottom line.
Who pays with cheques?
Restaurants often refer to bills as "checks"
Just. Tell. Me. The. Price.
Stop with this...
Welcome to New America. Expect to start seeing fees like this literally everywhere you go.
Voting (or not) has consequences.
I bet they also have suggested tip amounts of 25, 30 and 50 percent at the bottom of the bill.
The deli at my local grocery store sets out pre-sliced meats so we can avoid waiting. They started flipping the packages over to hide the price recently due to the price increase.
Not everything is a conspiracy. The presliced lunch meat trays are labeled with what is in them, they're meant to be shown product forward, not scale label first.
Very smart guy. I wonder why they used to display them other side up, and only changed it when they raised the prices? Hmm 🤦♀️
Honestly, unless there person doing it is the owner it is probably because the employee is sick of hearing about it because they can't do anything.
A district manager noticed they were being displayed backwards. The deli manager went to a training class and fixed something they were doing wrong. A new deli manager transferred from another store and trained her new people to do the job correctly. A new deli backup went to train in a different location and learned something they were doing wrong. A different assistant manager was put in charge of deli and corrected the behavior. They were hosting a district meeting and when all the district leadership came to help prep the store, they were retrained.
These are all real life scenarios that happen in real grocery stores. I'm pretty confident that the shitty scale label was never meant to be facing forward, regardless of the price. If they are "hiding" the price, then why are they not hiding the 50 price tags in the service case over at the deli counter where they sliced it in the first place?
As someone who has worked in a few service-oriented jobs, I support unfairly charging check users more. 😈
Do they mean checks as in cheques, or do they mean check as in when you ask for the check, e.g. every single bill is 5% more?
They mean the bill for the meal.
I actually kind of appreciate this.
This is like separating out the tax from the total in the US. If the price is the price, you just get used to it.
If you see the increased prices as a surcharge, broken out, the suppliers don't get away with their price increases. You have to see it looking you in the face every time. Maybe it'll motivate people to action.
Inflation isn't something that just started happening last Thursday.
