Hidden fees

Great way to lose customers.

You gotta raise prices? Raise prices. But nobody likes getting random extras at the end of their bills.

Just. Tell. Me. The. Price.

Stop with this...

We have raised prices by 5% to avoid having to update all the menus we will just add it to the bottom line.

They still updated the menu with this though lol
It costs way less to print ONE page to a menu than raising prices and making a whole new menu… duh! Makes sense!
People are more price sensitive to different menu items. This allows them to avoid that. Even if you know about the fee.

we have raised prices by 5%. this allows us to avoid raising prices by 5%

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

In most states this is explicitly illegal in food service.

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.

my favorite kind of hidden fees is when a client pushes a revision clause into a contract for research projects (read: fudge the numbers to their vision of the world) but during legal back and forth the per hour rate for revisions emerges and the client totally misses it and then benign 5k small-scale project gets an extra 10k price tag because those "can we present data with slightly different dimensions?" add up real fast and tough shit.

Wok is dead

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 🤦‍♀️

If I read this on a menu in a situation where I could go elsewhere, I would.

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.
  🤣
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.
- Kind of funny they try to spin it as good for customers
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.

Sounds like i need to open a *Everything's $1 ** store and just make sure I get the fine print squared away...

99c and up

Illegal in Germany for a good reason.

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?

That is illegal in my state. I wrote a strongly worded email to a former landlord informing them of this when they tried to pull thos shit and they immediately backed down, presumably because a bunch of other people did the same thing. It is insane how often companies do just blatantly illegal shit in hopes that nobody will notice because the penalty for getting caught is basically just pay back the people who noticed they got scammed and maybe like a $50 fine that was set when $50 was a huge amount of money.
- If the penalty for breaking the law is a flat fine, it isn't a penalty, it's a price.
"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.
- When BussyGyatt says I ANAL, I believe it.
- Yes but, the USA is borderline anarchy nowadays (yes, I am exaggerating a bit here)... rules and laws only matter if they are applied and enforced uniformly and currently, they are not...
- I've Karened out with cash on the table a few times and got away with it.
This is only illegal in some states, but apparently you can get around it by reversing the praying and giving a discount for cash. Which is complete bullshit.
- The discount for cash thing was based around credit card terms of service
  Most credit cards used to require merchants to agree to charge the regular price for credit card transactions. If they found out a merchant was charging customers 2-5% more for credit cards to cover fees, they'd cut off the merchant so they could no longer accept their card. VISA would do it a lot, and no longer being able to accept VISA is a huge blow to any business
  Businesses would use the workaround of a cash discount to avoid angering the credit card companies, but more recently it isn't necessary. I'm not sure if it was a regulatory change or market pressures, but I haven't heard of a merchant getting dropped for that in a while

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/

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 can overhaul your business model to be leaner, but maybe lose some customers.
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.

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.

Just update the prices next to the item on the menu?????
- Before I start this rant I do want to preface that I have stated unequivocally I don't think this was a good solution and it's not what I would do for my business. With that stated...
  Update the prices to what? And by what method? We're talking about a small business. Are you paying a line cook to sit down and sharpie over 500 pages of menus?
  Maybe one of the busboys wants to speculate on orange futures and the hostess has an inside line on poultry yields?
  Aluminum mills don't know what aluminum is going to cost next week and they make the fucking aluminum. I assure you the owners abuela who does the books, does not know how to appropriately price salmon in this market.
  If they're only marking their shit up 5% in this economy they are taking a shellacking.
  And again I don't think this was a good business decision. I just understand how you get there.
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
- I love that you try to run a honest business, it's rare to see nowadays. But:
  Sysco, the bulk supplier of >70% of US restaurants
  Has the US completely given up on this market competition thing? Why is that in every US market, there are 1-3 players with 70-90% market share? I mean based on this, the only thing you need for inflation to spike is for companies like Sysco to raise prices.
- I can see the cart abandonment rate.
  I don't know if this is a common practice but when we order we often fill a cart a few times with a few different combinations and a few different locations just to compare options. I don't know how much info you get but I wouldn't scrutinize that metric too harshly.
- I can see the cart abandonment rate
  for the last several years every time i felt a craving for some food delivered, i've noped right out on the checkout screen with the final price with delivery fee and knowing that doesn't include tip. not fucking worth it, i've got other things to eat
  edit: the last time i did this, the delivery fee was ~$2.00. is $3.50 standard now? lol...no.
- Just so you're aware, doordash/Uber are known for increasing the single item price after you've set them. Say you set a pizza for 12$, they'll charge 15$ just for the item, PLUS all their other fees.
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.
But, the government charged those foreigners so everything will be cheaper now, right? /S
- Must be the trans and gay people!! /s
Part of me just really wants to throw the excel spreadsheet at it to auto adjust but even then you’d still have to input all the changes with the POS. It’s so damn annoying to exist sometimes

Ah damn, they said the quiet part loud.

Note to our restaurant: Due to unnecessary 5% surcharges, we will no longer be eating here.

This has become all too common strong here, so now every time one of the restaurants I used to frequent does this I follow a 4 step process. 1 tell the manager what the next steps will be and they can avoid them by removing the fee, permanently, not just this one time. 2 a detailed 1-star review on any app I can, at least Google Maps and Yelp. 3 me and my family of 4 never returning. 4 a ban from the non-profit I’m involved in that does monthly “family dine out nights” with local business in exchange for a cut of their profits, this represents dozens to more than a hundred families of lost business.

I’m one person, and alone these steps probably mean very little to this business. But if even a quarter of their customers do the same, that policy will change. I’m sure I sound like the male version of a Karen to them, but I don’t make a scene, just vote with my dollar and encourage as many people as I can to do the same, while making sure the business knows exactly why.

So far one of the dozen or so places that did this dropped the policy, so they get my business again, at least they’re a possibility on the rare nights we can afford to eat out anymore.

I think an important thing to remember when doing something like this is to remain calm. If you're excited or angry it can lead to more confrontation, just keep it matter of fact if X then Y & follow through.

Who pays with cheques?

Restaurants often refer to bills as "checks"
- Oh I see
I don't know if you're joking or if it's just a cultural thing, but this was legitimately my first thought too. Many places already add a surcharge for cards, so disincentivizing checks seemed normal to my mind.
Then I realized they meant "check" as in "bill" and they just wanted to hide inflation increases.
The Czechs.
poe’s law won’t leave me alone today
"Check."
As in, "check, please." Germans and French both ask for "the total", but if þe States, at least, you ask for þe check. Your spelling of cheque makes me believe you're not from þe US; how do you ask "l'addition, s'il vous plaît" colloquially?
- In the rest of the English speaking world we ask for the bill.
- En francais quebecois je dit "la facture"

I'm assuming they mean "on all bills" because who pays by check anymore?

I'm just now realizing that I have only ever heard someone refer to a restaurant bill as a "check" when saying "check, please" or "can we get the check"?

I’ll tally it myself and leave cash on the table, no stress

I guess the avoided re printing menus? But that doesn't the same to the customer.

The new note is printed on the menus.

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.
- I didn't imply it was. The fact we're in the middle of it doesn't make the idea bad.
  They can decide to stop doing the work of normalizing prices increases on behalf of their suppliers any time they choose.
What action?