Restaurant service fees

May have posted this already…. Son got married this fall. Ex and I were responsible for ‘rehearsal dinner’. When picking out the menu in the contract it was clearly stated there would be a 20% service fee added, and an additional 2% charge if you pay by credit card. So we’d pay cash, and knew the $5k was really $6k. I asked the very nice ‘event manager’ if the service fee included the tip for the bartender/server. She said it does not. I asked her then what people ‘usually’ tip. She said most don’t! Our party was 4 hours. We gave the bartender and server $100 each. They seemed really happy, but of course they could have just been polite.

As far as the concept, as long as it is very clear there is a fee BEFORE I make my food/drink order, I’d be ok with it. If it’s hidden in fine print somewhere, I’d ask for the manager to remove it. I would not 100% for sure remove it from my restaurant rotation. If I really liked food/service/atmosphere I’d decide if the extra cost made a difference.

Quote: Mission146

I wouldn't get the margaritas even if I was on the sauce .....

Is it just me and my midwestern livin' but does $ 14 for a Margarita seem pricey ?

Also, what does BAR DOUBLE mean ?

And finally, yes, it does seem somewhat deceptive to have a random fee added to the check.

Quote: lilredrooster

Quote: Mission146

Good gosh!

That at least makes me feel less guilty for making what I do writing.

where can I read your articles___________?____________thanks


.
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In the articles section of this site. I also have some on LCB. I have written most, or perhaps all, of the U.S. State casino pages for RealMoneyAction.com and I have several pages on WoO.

Thank you for asking!

Also, one recent article that's in the pipeline (complete on my end) has to do with collectibles investing and whether or not that qualifies as gambling in a certain way. It focuses on Magic the Gathering, specifically (due to recent events in that game that should generate strong traffic) and features an excellent and very detailed (it's me, so you know shizz is going to be detailed) interview with the owner of a games and comics shop.

I'd highly recommend reading that one when it is published and I will make a thread promoting it. I tend not to have a high opinion of myself, and my own writing, but I will say it is one of the best articles I have ever written about anything.

Quote: JohnnyQ

Quote: Mission146

I wouldn't get the margaritas even if I was on the sauce .....

Is it just me and my midwestern livin' but does $ 14 for a Margarita seem pricey ?

Also, what does BAR DOUBLE mean ?

And finally, yes, it does seem somewhat deceptive to have a random fee added to the check.
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If it's just you, then it's just us. I think that's high for a Long Island. It's high for anything short of a triple, imo.

BAR DOUBLE just means they put two shots of the good stuff in the margaritas.

Quote: JohnnyQ

Also, what does BAR DOUBLE mean ?
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The woman I ate with can never order anything straight off a menu, especially drinks. There is always something special she wants added and/or removed. I would imagine that was a fee or some special request she had, but I don't recall what it was.

Axelwolf may be of more help with your question.

Quote: SOOPOO

May have posted this already…. Son got married this fall. Ex and I were responsible for ‘rehearsal dinner’. When picking out the menu in the contract it was clearly stated there would be a 20% service fee added, and an additional 2% charge if you pay by credit card. So we’d pay cash, and knew the $5k was really $6k. I asked the very nice ‘event manager’ if the service fee included the tip for the bartender/server. She said it does not. I asked her then what people ‘usually’ tip. She said most don’t! Our party was 4 hours. We gave the bartender and server $100 each. They seemed really happy, but of course they could have just been polite.

As far as the concept, as long as it is very clear there is a fee BEFORE I make my food/drink order, I’d be ok with it. If it’s hidden in fine print somewhere, I’d ask for the manager to remove it. I would not 100% for sure remove it from my restaurant rotation. If I really liked food/service/atmosphere I’d decide if the extra cost made a difference.
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Anytime I would attend a wedding, or some other event with an open bar, I would typically just fall back to my bar tipping schedule when it came to the bartender. That schedule would be $1 tip for per drink of any kind. Also, I was never the one paying for the wedding, or event, so this $1/drink would be of very little concern to me.

I never thought about tipping the food server at these things, so now I feel kind of bad about not doing so. I'll have to remember to do that in the future, although, I try to avoid weddings and other events unless I have absolutely no real choice but to attend for social/familial obligation reasons.

I only worked catering at a couple of events in my entire life, but it was usually some flat amount that you were paid and you'd be doing pretty well, relatively speaking, even if you didn't get any tips. With that, I think they probably were legitimately happy with the C-Notes you laid on them.

If I went into a place and saw that there was some kind of added fee for non groups, then I would not eat there anyway. If you want 5%, then add 5% to your menu costs. I look at some, "Service charge," again, for non-groups, as being no better than a Resort Fee.

I'd ask to speak to the manager and refuse to pay it if it wasn't upfront in the printed menu.
I had a similar issue several years ago, and the credit card person told me to contest the entire bill, not just the surcharge. A few weeks later, the CCC adjusted my bill and took off the meal. I don't know if the place got paid, but if they did, it wasn't by me. I'm pretty sure that's when I was still an American Express member, and that company used to provide outstanding service.

Service charge is BS. They'll justify it by saying it's to pay the waitstaff a higher base wage, or to cover medical insurance for the staff or some such foolishness. Better in my mind to just increase prices 5% instead, That way there are no surprises. I would've tipped my usual amount 20% rounded up or down to the nearest whole dollar on the price of food and booze AND the tax, but subtracted the service charge from the tip and tell the manager why. As for tipping on the tax, tipping on the tax usually only adds a few cents to the tip anyway.

Quote: billryan

I'd ask to speak to the manager and refuse to pay it if it wasn't upfront in the printed menu.
I had a similar issue several years ago, and the credit card person told me to contest the entire bill, not just the surcharge. A few weeks later, the CCC adjusted my bill and took off the meal. I don't know if the place got paid, but if they did, it wasn't by me. I'm pretty sure that's when I was still an American Express member, and that company used to provide outstanding service.
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That's just a chargeback and the business, if they lose (or do not contest) does effectively lose that money. What happens is that the credit card company (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Amex) will subtract the amount of your chargeback from your merchant account, which typically goes through the payment processor. I guess it's actually the payment processor that technically does it, but that's semantics.

American Express actually operates its own payment processor, so not only are processing fees on their transactions charged (any credit card does this) but they are also not paying a payment processing company a cut of that as they manage their own. Despite this, American Express gets the highest average processing fee percentage from merchants, even though they don't actually have a separate payment processing company to pay.

I suspect it is because of that American Express is really loose with crediting customers chargebacks and subtracting them from the card balance. This is usually a temporary thing until the dispute is decided, but I have heard that American Express sometimes lets it go (if you're the customer) even if AMex decides that the business was not in the wrong. They can afford to eat a few given their ridiculous processing fees.

Filing a dispute as to the entire amount was fraudulent, but it doesn't matter. You got the food and you ate the food, so the restaurant was defrauded by you at the advice of Amex if the restaurant did not end up getting paid anything. That's not a judgment when I say, "Fraudulent," because I don't care. I'm just calling it what it is. Filing a dispute to the extent of the fee would have NOT been fraudulent, imo, if you weren't made aware of the fee in advance.

It's also possible that the restaurant simply chose not to respond to the chargeback request, which may be why it took it off so quickly and was permanent. It depends on the processing company (I think?) but all I know is that when I managed the hotel you would receive a fax and would have x amount of time to respond. There's a certain irony in a company like Amex defrauding the business of the entire check as a result of the fact that you disagreed with a ridiculous fee.

Of course, I fought every single chargeback request we got, because they were all fraudulent. Either the person did not try to resolve it with the hotel directly or the franchisor, which is immediately fraudulent, or they agreed to some sort of resolution and then tried to get a chargeback anyway. What would often happen is they would get loyalty points or a free night credit, which itself gets charged to the hotel by the franchisor, would agree to whatever resolution, then still try to do a chargeback anyway.

On other occasions, they would not accept the proposed resolution and would attempt a chargeback, but I always fought and I almost never lost.

Whether or not the Amex customers thought they had won because Amex went ahead and just didn't put it back on their balance, I have no idea. As long as the hotel keeps its money, I had no reason to care. Also, I'm not to speak directly with the customer at that point, anyway.

A few times we had it where the hotel would win, now suddenly, the guest actually wants to try to come to a resolution with us. I'd usually directly tell them to F themselves and hang up on them when that happened.

Quote: JohnnyQ

Is it just me and my midwestern livin' but does $ 14 for a Margarita seem pricey ?
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As far as I know, $3 jargaritas are no longer the norm anywhere.