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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.
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.
we have raised prices by 5%. this allows us to avoid raising prices by 5%
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.
What 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.
Sounds like i need to open a *Everything’s $1 ** store and just make sure I get the fine print squared away…
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.
But, the government charged those foreigners so everything will be cheaper now, right? /S
As a restaurant owner, I disagree. It’s shitty of them to charge a hidden fee like this
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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
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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
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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 $3.50 for delivery. I know I’d get more marking up the menu 20-30% and offering “free” delivery. I can see the cart abandonment rate. I hate the dishonest business model though
I love that you try to run a honest business, it’s rare to see nowadays. But:
Sysco, the bulk supplier of >70% of US restaurants
Has the US completely given up on this market competition thing? Why is that in every US market, there are 1-3 players with 70-90% market share? I mean based on this, the only thing you need for inflation to spike is for companies like Sysco to raise prices.
I can see the cart abandonment rate.
I don’t know if this is a common practice but when we order we often fill a cart a few times with a few different combinations and a few different locations just to compare options. I don’t know how much info you get but I wouldn’t scrutinize that metric too harshly.
If that is common practice it would seem to indicate that “cart abandonment rate” is actually a very important metric, since users often abandon carts and so a restaurant needs something about the menu/presentation that makes people abandon them less and “wins” a larger share of the market of users on the platform.
Just so you’re aware, doordash/Uber are known for increasing the single item price after you’ve set them. Say you set a pizza for 12$, they’ll charge 15$ just for the item, PLUS all their other fees.
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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
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.
When BussyGyatt says I ANAL, I believe it.
Illegal in Germany for a good reason.
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.
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
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.
If you are upholding tipping culture you are literally part of the reason as to why they need tips.
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.
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.
Ah damn, they said the quiet part loud.
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”?
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.
Or the tab.
Or if you’re a boomer dad, “what’s the damage?”
En francais quebecois je dit “la facture”
