The spreadsheet also misguidedly includes automatic gratuities for larger party sizes at some L.A. The new-school Italian eatery later spoke out via Instagram on July 6 to clarify its 4% healthcare surcharge after being targeted online, and pointed out the fact that the restaurant voluntarily offers health coverage to employees despite having fewer than a dozen full-time staff members currently, only employers with over 50 full-time employees are required to provide health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.įor those more familiar with the restaurant industry, many of these service fees have been implemented to combat inequities between back-of-house workers, including dishwashers and line cooks and front-of-house staff, separate from smaller fees purported, at least on paper, to offset the cost of providing health insurance. Reddit has called out restaurants from time to time, including Silver Lake’s Alimento, for smaller fees or so-called “hidden” fees. Photograph: Courtesy Erica Gould Jon & Vinny's Both Jon & Vinny’s and Son of a Gun fall under the umbrella of Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s Joint Venture Restaurant Group, whose former servers filed a class-action lawsuit for allegedly denying them their tips. Interpreted generously, this latter policy would imply diners should be paying, once you factor in tip, somewhere between 33 and 40% above the actual bill-an absurdly high amount by the standards of traditional U.S. Photograph: Courtesy Sugarfish Sushi from Sugarfish, which has always had a service charge and no-tipping policy.Īmong the places charging mandatory service fees, the spreadsheet lumps together no-tipping service fee models like Sugarfish and affiliated restaurants, which include Kazunori and HiHo Cheeseburger, and places like Jon & Vinny’s and Son of a Gun, which charge a service fee that does not replace a tip. Now, whether big or small, many of these extra fees are now available for all to see, free of context. (As of August 10, this entry has now been corrected.) While usually printed on the bottom of menus and generally available on restaurant websites, these additional fees sometimes catch L.A. One example: As of August 9, the entry for Melrose Umbrella Co listed a 40% service charge, which reflects an error on one customer’s check on the cocktail bar’s typical 20% service charge for larger parties, which the restaurant later removed. It’s also worth noting that the public Google Sheet is far from accurate. The very existence of the publicly available list indicates that, at least according to one corner of the internet, tipping and service fees in L.A. While the “/r/LosAngeles Restaurant Surcharge Offenders List” does provide some additional price transparency for diners, the use of the word “offenders” clearly indicates these L.A.-based Reddit users would prefer these charges were eliminated, perhaps to be replaced by higher prices on the menu or, less plausibly, major restructuring of the independent restaurant business model. As first reported by KTLA, each entry includes the name of the restaurant, percent charge, neighborhood and other details, including unverified employee comments on the matter. Blame the rise of touchscreen tip prompts and the 20-percent-or-more tipping culture from lockdown: Semi-anonymous Redditors have crowdsourced a list of Los Angeles restaurants tacking on surcharges, from 3% for health insurance or “kitchen love” to 20% service fees.
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