Restaurant surcharge stirs up controversy: 'Business owner should be embarrassed'

An extra fee added to a check at a restaurant left one diner shocked and fired up people on the internet, too.

A Georgia man shared a photo of his receipt to Instagram Threads, asking, "WTF is a living wage fee?" following dinner in mid-June.

On the bill was a $13 Reuben sandwich, a $12 burger, two sides of fries for $4 each and an 18% "living wage fee" that tacked on an additional $5.94 — bringing his total, with $1.81 in tax, to $40.75.

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Below the total was a disclaimer from the unnamed restaurant saying, "Living wage fee of 18% added to each dine-in check. This fee goes directly to staff payroll and provides a living wage to our team."

The notice also said that any tips given would be pooled and distributed among the "entire team."

The post received over 500 comments and was shared across the internet, including on Reddit. People debated the levy and brought up similarly controversial policies, such as "kitchen appreciation" fees and health and safety surcharges during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the original poster for comment.

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"The business owner should be embarrassed to even have that on the bill," one person on Reddit said. "If they can't pay the staff, don't do business. Your business skills are clearly not good to not be able to pay the workers sufficiently."

One woman on Threads said, "It means the business owner is too cheap to pay his employees adequately, so he's making you pay it." 

"It means I'm never eating at that restaurant again," added another man.

Salar Sheik, a restaurant consultant based in Los Angeles, understood the frustration and said it's important to consider the guest's perspective as well as the profitability goal of restaurants.

"Guests should feel they're receiving value," Sheik told Fox News Digital. "Underpricing menu items and then adding a service charge or percentage on top can leave them feeling misled or cheated."

It's also not a long-term solution, he said.

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"A better approach is to reassess your menu pricing and cost of goods to ensure your staff can earn a living wage," Sheik said. "Unfortunately, many restaurants avoid that hard work and use these fees as a shortcut."

Many servers also weighed in with thoughts on the system. 

One former server said, "The living wage and pooled tips would've boiled my blood."

"I had no trouble earning $200-$300 in tips per shift by providing excellent customer service, meaning I was already earning WELL ABOVE a living wage just by doing my job," the person commented on Reddit.

Others argued the customers would be covering the cost of payroll either way and said it didn't matter to them whether food prices were raised or a surcharge was added.

"I don't care where the money goes," one Redditor wrote. 

"To pay the staff, to pay the electric bill, to pay rent – none of that is my business," the person added. "I'm a customer, not a restaurant manager."

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One woman on Threads said the surcharge was actually more transparent than if the restaurant simply raised food prices.

"Y'all been asking for no tipping, this is what it looks like," she added, referring to a recent push to eliminate tips and raise the minimum hourly wage for restaurant workers.

In some states, tipped workers make as little as $2.13 an hour.

"The customer always pays the wages," another Instagram user said. "Either in tips, service fee, or in increased food prices. At least this way you know you don't have to tip extra."

Many said they wouldn't tip at all if they saw the living wage charge on their bill.

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Others noted the fee must be made clear before customers sit down to eat — which the restaurant did, according to another comment on the original Threads post.

A woman shared what she said was the establishment's menu.

It read: "100% of living wage fees are used for payroll. Rather than just increasing prices to pay staff more, this increase is guaranteed to go fully toward the staff and provides a wage to all employees that they can rely on for a steady income."

It continued, "We value each employee as part of our team and genuinely believe this newly implemented system is the future of our industry's survival, or at least ours."