Restaurants' sneaky fees -- a guide

[Anonymous]

This country will go down fast if people stop going to DC restaurants. Unlike LA, our servers and bartenders are waiting on important work like Hill internships or an open school board seat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Waiters don’t want this! They make more with tips.

Well, I’m definitely enjoying not having to tip anymore. The fees cover it now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Come on people, it's very simple.

Start with 20% on the pre-tax check. Consider subtracting 10% if a 3.5% service fee is automatically included. There's no need to tip on a .5% environmental fee, but feel free to only tip 15% if the suggested gratuity is based on a figure that includes the 10.25% sales tax.

It's only necessary to tip 12% on bottles of wine that cost over $200, but you should provide a full 22% on wine poured by the glass or 24% on non-alcoholic cocktails.

We always deduct the 10 percent DC tax before figuring the tip.

[Anonymous]

this waged tip experiment looks like a complete failure. not sure who isnt worse off now.

[Anonymous]

This is the ridiculous logic that some restaurants use. They’re really good at laying on the guilt trips for a customers. “It’s a win/win!!”.

Whining about the lack of government support for your business is wild.


https://www.wearefoundingfarmers.com/a-message-to-our-guests/

5% WELLNESS CHARGE: We believe hospitality begins with a healthy team and a stable, equitable work environment. To ensure both, a 5% surcharge is added to all dine-in checks that supports free mental health resources for our teams and their families, access to health insurance, paid sick leave, and increased operating costs. It is not a gratuity. Our goal is to be transparent while maintaining the value and standards our guests have come to know and love. We appreciate your support and kindness. If you would prefer, we will remove the charge upon request. To learn more specifics about this charge, please see A Message to Our Guests.

Some of you have asked why we are charging a 5% wellness charge and how the funds are being used.

We believe hospitality begins with a healthy team and a stable, equitable work environment. To ensure both, a 5% surcharge is added to all dine-in checks that supports free mental health resources for our teams and their families, access to health insurance, paid sick leave, and increased operating costs. It is not a gratuity. Our goal is to be transparent while maintaining the value and standards our guests have come to know and love. We appreciate your support and kindness.

All good relationships have communication at their center; we strive to be crystal clear in both our communication and our thinking. We disclose our 5% charge on all our menus (both printed and online), in every reservation confirmation email, and on our websites. There are so many industries that add unclear and sometimes seemingly hidden charges to bills, which we find frustrating and misleading. Just look at your cell phone bill for an egregious example of the difference between the price they advertise and what the customer ends up paying. Our goal is to be transparent and proactive about why we have added this charge.

We have created an FAQ below to answer some of the more specific questions we have received. We appreciate your understanding as we navigate what continues to be a challenging time for us and most full-service restaurants. The vast majority of our guests do not express concern about the charge to us, and when a guest does, we engage in conversation. If a guest would like the fee removed, we’re prompt with removing it from their check. We’re in the making friends business, the business of serving delicious food & drink, and the business of caring for our employees and our communities.

For us, all roads lead back to hospitality, sustainability, and our long-term commitment to American family farmers. To do these things, we need to ensure we stay in business. We promise to maintain our transparency as we continue to take care of our team, the farmers that we buy from, and you, our guests. We sincerely appreciate your support.

Michael Vucurevich & Dan Simons,
Co-Owners

What exactly is this charge used for?

Paid sick leave for employees who are not feeling well.
Mental health support services, including no-cost access to online therapy and unlimited text therapy through TalkSpace, for our employees and their immediate family members.
Ongoing on-site flu clinics in all seven of our restaurants.
Access to affordable health insurance through increased company contributions toward premiums.
Increasing labor costs and new wage-related legislation.
Increased cost of goods due to supply chain issues for our napkins, silverware, plates, aprons, kitchen uniforms, equipment repair, and more. Almost everything we use now costs more than before the pandemic.
Off-setting the loss and debt accrued as a result of the pandemic.
Why do you have this wellness charge?

Our original business model has been upended by the pandemic and its continuing aftershocks. We call it a wellness charge, because it is exactly that for our business and our employees. The only way for us to survive, and then thrive, is to increase our costs for our guests. Without changing and evolving our business model quickly, we’d be done for. This evolution and adaptation currently includes our 5% wellness charge, which helps us cover many new and different parts of our operations to ensure we stay in business and continue to employ and support our team members.

Our restaurants, as well as most full-service restaurants, were crushed by the pandemic and continue to face ripples and shockwaves in the aftermath. There have been times since March 2020, in all seven of our restaurant locations, where we’ve struggled to pay our debts and rent (even though several of our landlords have been helpful). We are still dealing with cash losses in some of our restaurants and have incurred debts that need to be paid. In all our restaurants, we face new and additional costs and supply chain difficulties due to the pandemic’s effects. The government’s support through programs such as PPP has ended, and no additional support is in sight. Throughout this time, we have paid our employees, supported free online therapy, provided paid sick leave, hosted free vaccine clinics for team members and their families, as well as donated food continuously to those in need, and maintained our commitments to buy family-farmed products.

Why not just raise the menu prices by 5%?

This question is logical, as is our answer. We want to maintain value for our guests while restructuring and evolving our business model in this new day. As menu item prices cross certain thresholds (ie, 19 to 21 or 29 to 30), guest buying behavior is affected, meaning that people may not select their first choice, but instead select an item priced well below – this trade, which can be from $31 down to $24 or $25, results in lower total sales, even though menu prices are higher. These decisions also affect ordering an appetizer, a second beverage, or dessert at the end of the meal. This means that in order to net the same revenue for the business through a price increase, we’d need to raise prices substantially (in the 15% to 20% range) more than 5% – costing diners more – which is why we see the 5% charge as win/win, as opposed to the even larger menu price increase which is lose/lose.

[Anonymous]

This post is timely. I went out to dinner the other night in DC and the bill was quite pricey. Party of 7. I glanced at bill when I paid, it had 20% service charge and a line for tip but given the hub bub of the dinner going on, I quickly assume the 20% WAS the tip and did not actually tip more. Was I wrong? Now I feel terrible that I maybe did not tip the wait staff. I totally assumed the 20% service charge was tip and the extra line for tip was if I wanted to leave extra or a mistake.

[Anonymous]

Union pub has 22% gratuity for parties of five or more. Not 18, not 20 but 22!

[Anonymous]

DH and I used to eat out in DC 2x a month on our date nights. We eat at easier places in VA more often with our family. We don't understand all the tips/fees/service charges. It's confusing and we felt like idiots every time we go out because we just didn't understand the bill. Are we still supposed to tip? What does the service charge mean? We had thought that when this passed that there would be no more tipping in DC. We also saw prices rise so we figured that they were raising prices to cover higher salaries, but then it seemed that we were supposed to pay higher prices + service fee+ still tip 20%?

The main reason we stopped eating in DC is because of the parking situation. It got too hard to find a spot and then we're worried about carjackings.

[Anonymous]

We stopped eating out for these reasons. Those places have gone nuts! Everyone wants a tip, even at fast food places where I stand in line and carry it back to my table. I'm looking at you Shakeshack, Chipotle. I don't tip. But of course there's danger of staff spitting in your drink. It's totally not worth all the annoyances. We like the food bars at the Wegmans or Whole Foods. No fuss, no muss, you pay.. no hidden charges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t studied the fees controversy in depth but it always seemed to me that restaurants were using it as the scapegoat for raising prices by adding fees. The tipped wage increase should have just been added to the cost of doing business but owners would rather add fees in random ways that result in more revenue under the guise of “but you voted for this!”

When you ask people in the restaurant industry about this, they'll say they can't just raise prices to cover the costs because then people won't come to eat/drink there because it will be too expensive. This is pretty explicitly an admission that the fees are *intentionally* misleading, to bring people in with artificially low prices and then hit them with extra fees on the backend when they can't do anything about it. But people in the restaurant industry in DC think this is a persuasive argument.

And the whole thing obscures the larger issue, which is that if you can't figure out how to offer your product/service at a price people are willing to pay, then your business model is fundamentally bankrupt. Now this isn't entirely the fault of bars and restaurants -- as is the case with many cost issues in DC, a lot of the blame lies with landlords who overcharge on rent because they are inadequately disincentivized to leave storefronts empty (they can use them to declare a business loss and write down taxes, and DC doesn't not sufficiently penalize landlords who don't make real efforts to find tenants for commercial spaces). But it's still annoying when we have so many restaurants and bars charging these fees specifically to trick customers into dining there, thinking it costs less than it does, but then complain that this is the only possible way for them to stay afloat as a business. Then your business is bad! No one made you open a restaurant.

Agree with this! If your business model includes paying your workers $2/hour, then it’s a broken model.

Tell us you have never been, nor been close to a waiter or bartender, in your life. Know it alls that know nothing and want to “save” the world destroy the people they try to help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Waiters don’t want this! They make more with tips.

Well, I’m definitely enjoying not having to tip anymore. The fees cover it now.

If you voted for this, you should rot. You have stolen from the working people and moved it to management. Morons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is the ridiculous logic that some restaurants use. They’re really good at laying on the guilt trips for a customers. “It’s a win/win!!”.

Whining about the lack of government support for your business is wild.


https://www.wearefoundingfarmers.com/a-message-to-our-guests/

5% WELLNESS CHARGE: We believe hospitality begins with a healthy team and a stable, equitable work environment. To ensure both, a 5% surcharge is added to all dine-in checks that supports free mental health resources for our teams and their families, access to health insurance, paid sick leave, and increased operating costs. It is not a gratuity. Our goal is to be transparent while maintaining the value and standards our guests have come to know and love. We appreciate your support and kindness. If you would prefer, we will remove the charge upon request. To learn more specifics about this charge, please see A Message to Our Guests.

Some of you have asked why we are charging a 5% wellness charge and how the funds are being used.

We believe hospitality begins with a healthy team and a stable, equitable work environment. To ensure both, a 5% surcharge is added to all dine-in checks that supports free mental health resources for our teams and their families, access to health insurance, paid sick leave, and increased operating costs. It is not a gratuity. Our goal is to be transparent while maintaining the value and standards our guests have come to know and love. We appreciate your support and kindness.

All good relationships have communication at their center; we strive to be crystal clear in both our communication and our thinking. We disclose our 5% charge on all our menus (both printed and online), in every reservation confirmation email, and on our websites. There are so many industries that add unclear and sometimes seemingly hidden charges to bills, which we find frustrating and misleading. Just look at your cell phone bill for an egregious example of the difference between the price they advertise and what the customer ends up paying. Our goal is to be transparent and proactive about why we have added this charge.

We have created an FAQ below to answer some of the more specific questions we have received. We appreciate your understanding as we navigate what continues to be a challenging time for us and most full-service restaurants. The vast majority of our guests do not express concern about the charge to us, and when a guest does, we engage in conversation. If a guest would like the fee removed, we’re prompt with removing it from their check. We’re in the making friends business, the business of serving delicious food & drink, and the business of caring for our employees and our communities.

For us, all roads lead back to hospitality, sustainability, and our long-term commitment to American family farmers. To do these things, we need to ensure we stay in business. We promise to maintain our transparency as we continue to take care of our team, the farmers that we buy from, and you, our guests. We sincerely appreciate your support.

Michael Vucurevich & Dan Simons,
Co-Owners

What exactly is this charge used for?

Paid sick leave for employees who are not feeling well.
Mental health support services, including no-cost access to online therapy and unlimited text therapy through TalkSpace, for our employees and their immediate family members.
Ongoing on-site flu clinics in all seven of our restaurants.
Access to affordable health insurance through increased company contributions toward premiums.
Increasing labor costs and new wage-related legislation.
Increased cost of goods due to supply chain issues for our napkins, silverware, plates, aprons, kitchen uniforms, equipment repair, and more. Almost everything we use now costs more than before the pandemic.
Off-setting the loss and debt accrued as a result of the pandemic.
Why do you have this wellness charge?

Our original business model has been upended by the pandemic and its continuing aftershocks. We call it a wellness charge, because it is exactly that for our business and our employees. The only way for us to survive, and then thrive, is to increase our costs for our guests. Without changing and evolving our business model quickly, we’d be done for. This evolution and adaptation currently includes our 5% wellness charge, which helps us cover many new and different parts of our operations to ensure we stay in business and continue to employ and support our team members.

Our restaurants, as well as most full-service restaurants, were crushed by the pandemic and continue to face ripples and shockwaves in the aftermath. There have been times since March 2020, in all seven of our restaurant locations, where we’ve struggled to pay our debts and rent (even though several of our landlords have been helpful). We are still dealing with cash losses in some of our restaurants and have incurred debts that need to be paid. In all our restaurants, we face new and additional costs and supply chain difficulties due to the pandemic’s effects. The government’s support through programs such as PPP has ended, and no additional support is in sight. Throughout this time, we have paid our employees, supported free online therapy, provided paid sick leave, hosted free vaccine clinics for team members and their families, as well as donated food continuously to those in need, and maintained our commitments to buy family-farmed products.

Why not just raise the menu prices by 5%?

This question is logical, as is our answer. We want to maintain value for our guests while restructuring and evolving our business model in this new day. As menu item prices cross certain thresholds (ie, 19 to 21 or 29 to 30), guest buying behavior is affected, meaning that people may not select their first choice, but instead select an item priced well below – this trade, which can be from $31 down to $24 or $25, results in lower total sales, even though menu prices are higher. These decisions also affect ordering an appetizer, a second beverage, or dessert at the end of the meal. This means that in order to net the same revenue for the business through a price increase, we’d need to raise prices substantially (in the 15% to 20% range) more than 5% – costing diners more – which is why we see the 5% charge as win/win, as opposed to the even larger menu price increase which is lose/lose.

You really think they are giving it to the staff. The pandemic has been long over and they got lots of government money. I refuse to eat there on principal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t studied the fees controversy in depth but it always seemed to me that restaurants were using it as the scapegoat for raising prices by adding fees. The tipped wage increase should have just been added to the cost of doing business but owners would rather add fees in random ways that result in more revenue under the guise of “but you voted for this!”

When you ask people in the restaurant industry about this, they'll say they can't just raise prices to cover the costs because then people won't come to eat/drink there because it will be too expensive. This is pretty explicitly an admission that the fees are *intentionally* misleading, to bring people in with artificially low prices and then hit them with extra fees on the backend when they can't do anything about it. But people in the restaurant industry in DC think this is a persuasive argument.

And the whole thing obscures the larger issue, which is that if you can't figure out how to offer your product/service at a price people are willing to pay, then your business model is fundamentally bankrupt. Now this isn't entirely the fault of bars and restaurants -- as is the case with many cost issues in DC, a lot of the blame lies with landlords who overcharge on rent because they are inadequately disincentivized to leave storefronts empty (they can use them to declare a business loss and write down taxes, and DC doesn't not sufficiently penalize landlords who don't make real efforts to find tenants for commercial spaces). But it's still annoying when we have so many restaurants and bars charging these fees specifically to trick customers into dining there, thinking it costs less than it does, but then complain that this is the only possible way for them to stay afloat as a business. Then your business is bad! No one made you open a restaurant.

Agree with this! If your business model includes paying your workers $2/hour, then it’s a broken model.

Tell us you have never been, nor been close to a waiter or bartender, in your life. Know it alls that know nothing and want to “save” the world destroy the people they try to help.

I have waited tables and I voted to eliminate the tipped wage. I think it's better for consumers. I don't want to be in charge of compensation for service workers. I want restaurants to figure out how much to pay their staff, bake it into their prices, and then I will pay them. If I get exceptional service on top of that, I'm happy to leave a tip for that. But I don't want to be in the position of making up the difference between the tipped wage and whatever the waiter "should" be making (and I don't want to be in the position of deciding what a waiter "should" be making -- I'm trying to enjoy a relaxing dinner out).

I have no interest in "saving" service workers. I just want to know how much it will cost me to go out to dinner, and I don't want to have to think very hard when I pay the check (nor do I want the check to be a weird surprise).

[Anonymous]

Why not just raise the menu prices by 5%?

This question is logical, as is our answer. We want to maintain value for our guests while restructuring and evolving our business model in this new day. As menu item prices cross certain thresholds (ie, 19 to 21 or 29 to 30), guest buying behavior is affected, meaning that people may not select their first choice, but instead select an item priced well below – this trade, which can be from $31 down to $24 or $25, results in lower total sales, even though menu prices are higher. These decisions also affect ordering an appetizer, a second beverage, or dessert at the end of the meal. This means that in order to net the same revenue for the business through a price increase, we’d need to raise prices substantially (in the 15% to 20% range) more than 5% – costing diners more – which is why we see the 5% charge as win/win, as opposed to the even larger menu price increase which is lose/lose.

Imagine crafting this answer to this very obvious question and feeling like "yup, that covers it -- makes total sense!"

Literally their argument is that if they raise menu prices to cover these costs, fewer people will want to dine at their restaurant because it costs too much. So instead they give you artificially low menu prices and then surprise you with a service fee on the back end, thus tricking you into paying the amount you would have opted out of if it had been baked into the menu price.

It's a win/win! You get to pay 5% more than you wanted to pay for your meal, and we get to pretend our price point is lower while actually charging you more money! No losers here! AFter all, consumers have infinity money and this is just a game!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t studied the fees controversy in depth but it always seemed to me that restaurants were using it as the scapegoat for raising prices by adding fees. The tipped wage increase should have just been added to the cost of doing business but owners would rather add fees in random ways that result in more revenue under the guise of “but you voted for this!”

When you ask people in the restaurant industry about this, they'll say they can't just raise prices to cover the costs because then people won't come to eat/drink there because it will be too expensive. This is pretty explicitly an admission that the fees are *intentionally* misleading, to bring people in with artificially low prices and then hit them with extra fees on the backend when they can't do anything about it. But people in the restaurant industry in DC think this is a persuasive argument.

And the whole thing obscures the larger issue, which is that if you can't figure out how to offer your product/service at a price people are willing to pay, then your business model is fundamentally bankrupt. Now this isn't entirely the fault of bars and restaurants -- as is the case with many cost issues in DC, a lot of the blame lies with landlords who overcharge on rent because they are inadequately disincentivized to leave storefronts empty (they can use them to declare a business loss and write down taxes, and DC doesn't not sufficiently penalize landlords who don't make real efforts to find tenants for commercial spaces). But it's still annoying when we have so many restaurants and bars charging these fees specifically to trick customers into dining there, thinking it costs less than it does, but then complain that this is the only possible way for them to stay afloat as a business. Then your business is bad! No one made you open a restaurant.

Agree with this! If your business model includes paying your workers $2/hour, then it’s a broken model.

Tell us you have never been, nor been close to a waiter or bartender, in your life. Know it alls that know nothing and want to “save” the world destroy the people they try to help.

I have waited tables and I voted to eliminate the tipped wage. I think it's better for consumers. I don't want to be in charge of compensation for service workers. I want restaurants to figure out how much to pay their staff, bake it into their prices, and then I will pay them. If I get exceptional service on top of that, I'm happy to leave a tip for that. But I don't want to be in the position of making up the difference between the tipped wage and whatever the waiter "should" be making (and I don't want to be in the position of deciding what a waiter "should" be making -- I'm trying to enjoy a relaxing dinner out).

I have no interest in "saving" service workers. I just want to know how much it will cost me to go out to dinner, and I don't want to have to think very hard when I pay the check (nor do I want the check to be a weird surprise).

You used to know. Now you don’t. And the service workers are being screwed. Happy now?