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It’s simple, if a restaurant adds something to the bill I did not agree to beforehand I’ll never eat there again.
If a restaurant adds something to the bill I didn’t agree to beforehand, I’m not paying.
That would be consequent, but usually it’s not worth the trouble.
I’d rather leave with 20 quid less than wasting 30 min of my time.
Oh. It wouldn’t take me nearly 30 minutes. It would be less than 5 total minutes.
How about just leaving the correct amount of cash on the table and walking away without saying a word.
So your time must be worth 40/hour or more to make it not worth the trouble?
Not OP but my nerves are definitely worth more than 20 bucks.
Mine too. I have the nerve to tell them to fuck off with their bullshit.
It’s a risk reward analysis and not strictly a 1:1 hour pay relation. No one guarantees you any positive outcome here.
Best case I get the fee removed after a short conversation.
Worst case, I have to engage in a long drawn argument still having to pay full afterwards.
Or anything in between, such as still having to pay full, but they’ll make this clearer in their menu.
best case was a simple mistake and I just have to ask politely. This can be considered very unlikely in this case because the recipient has a dedicated section for the fee, indicating that they’re not going to make any change to the bill. So the risk reward is highly leaning towards the worst case as the expected outcome.
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Surprise surprise, People attempt illegal things all the time
My time is worth way more than 40/h when I’m out with friends trying to have a good time. I’m never going to the restaurant again and that’s it.
They should have it listed somewhere in large print and/or verbally inform people so patrons are aware ahead of time
Went out to a pizza place the other night. Thought it was a brewery (one of my favorite local brews, actually), and had been there before and enjoyed flights from them…only to find out the place was a joint between the brewmaster and the restaurateur. Brewmaster took his share, his recipes, and dipped a couple days prior.
Anyways while the food was pretty good, I mostly went for the beer and that’s a big part of why I won’t go back (they only had a couple cans from the brewery left and nothing on tap, only some other regional breweries).
But the other part is that my wife put a tip down on the slip for our party of four (us and two kids) and asked me to doublecheck her math. I thought it seemed high and it turned out they already put a tip on the bill. For a party of four. Never saw that before.
Yea they better have this charge displayed very well on the menu
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It’s cuz they’re too chicken shit to actually raise the menu price. So they can blame the government or the workers instead of taking responsibility for paying their staff shit wages forever
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“no one wants to work anymore” says restaurant owner who won’t pay a living wage even after jacking up service fees.
Yeah if I hear a word about my decision to include the service fees in the tip, that’s the last time the restaurant will see my business.
Paying for servers based off of the price of the food just doesn’t make sense to me. If I order a super expensive caviar and super expensive bottle of wine the staff would be paid more than another server with large party that only orders inexpensive drinks. The second server would be paid less for doing more work.
I think they should just be paid a decent wage for doing their job well despite what the customer decided to order.
On a side note if the server has to do something like prepare a salad table side or flambé a dessert they should get a bonus for doing that.
I worked as a server at olive garden many years ago. They famously had their soup, salad, and breadsticks deal for like $6 something. People would run us ragged getting more of each thing. And we’d be lucky to get a $1 or 2 because the price was so low, but it was vastly more work than regular food.
I think they should just be paid a decent wage for doing their job well despite what the customer decided to order
Where I live, there’s no separate minimum wage for tipped positions. It’s the same as the regular minimum wage. Even so, it’s still customary to tip, but just for some jobs. It’s never made sense to me that it’s customary to tip a Doordash driver but not a casual FedEx or UPS employee when the latter likely has more work to do and stricter deadlines to do it.
not a casual FedEx or UPS employee
Do you want corporate efforts to reduce delivery driver wages and processes to demand you pay their wages through delivery tips? Because I am sure are ready to go on this endeavor as soon as you want.
As far as I know, some of the casual/seasonal drivers (extra delivery drivers for holiday deliveries) don’t get paid much more than minimum wage. I’m not talking about the unionized employees.
My overall point was that there’s many jobs that get paid minimum wage, so why are only some of them tipped? It would be more consistent to either be all tipped, or not tipped.
It’s not going to the server, not unless the city has a minimum wage, or something. But any thing over that is 100% going to managment’s coffers.
ALL cities in all states have a minimum wage for all workers. By federal law
Yes. But some cities (or states, even,) specify another-higher minimum.
Since you want to be pedantic… most cities don’t have a minimum wage established; deferring instead to federal or state law.
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What percentage tip results in negative money?
It’s a tip pool. So for instance I serve a meal to a couple. The meal is $50. They tip 10%. That split means I pay (for instance) the bartender out of the $5 tip $2.50. If I get another table that orders drinks and tips nothing I end up splitting nothing. But if I work with 4 other back of house people and they each get an equal percentage of that $5 then I get a dollar. But then that dollar is taxed because tips are taxed. If the company has a policy for shares tips pooling I could legitimately make $100 in tips and not receive $100 in tips. Technically that would be receiving negative tips because what is earned vs what is paid out is so drastically different.
In addition I’ve experienced back of house workers (cooks) getting paid out of the tip pool but the brunt of tax on the tips is not paid by them. This is absolutely tax fraud. But I’d also argue that tip pools are a form of wage theft and companies that engage in one are way more likely to engage in the other.
That isn’t negative tips. The lowest you can make in tips is $0. Even when tip pooling, the lowest you can make is $0, which requires no tips what so ever to have been given. There is no 100% tax rate, and you are at no point ever paying into the tip pool out of your own pocket.
I understand what you’re saying. But for a person who is now down from $5 to $2.50 to a $100 that is then taxed you’re effectively making less money than you earned. That’s why you can have negative net even while making take home pay.
But think about what might happen if the bill is paid incorrectly in cash. The company will absolutely take cash tips to compensate in the event that you or someone else messed up when counting the cash or giving change or whatever. With tip pools it’s unlikely. But it has happened.
Wait, you’re taxed on money you didn’t earn?
Apparently Federal Law sort invalidates the legality of a tip pool altogether because the tip only counts as a tip if the person who tips determines who the tip is given to and how much and it’s non compulsory. But a lot of places ignore that as well.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/state-laws-tipped-employees.html
It’s technically tax fraud, but yes. You could be. Back of house staff can include managers, cooks and dish washers, and even the hostess. Those people aren’t paid the $2.75 to $3.75 that the wait staff are paid. They’re considered hourly employees and they fall under different pay requirements under the law. A business that doesn’t augment the amount of pay for wait staff not making the federal minimum wage ($7.25) an hour in tips, that business is committing wage theft. To then be paying non-wait staff out of the wait staff tips is illegal as part of the wage theft. But since the company is already committing wage theft there’s no reason not to commit tax fraud to cover up the wage theft.
I don’t think you know how numbers work. Why would they be paying coworkers out of a tip that never existed?
18% service charge and then still ask for tips? Fuck all of this, this is a scam and refuse to pay this shit.
Based on the bottom of the receipt i would have said to the server something like “great, it says right here no need to tip”
What a lovely way to ensure that your customers will never return.
How about just raising prices since it is a cost of running the business.
Exactly, it’s a linear extra cost so just bump all the prices that much.
But if you tell the customer how much things cost they won’t buy as much.
It’s just layer upon layer of dishonesty. The only time businesses get honest is when the government forces them to.
In a vacuum that would be fine. But in the current culture that likely wouldn’t overcome the tipping standard/culture and may just drive customers away thinking the prices are too high. Unless you have a huge blatant no tipping sign all over the place.
This isn’t too indigestible as it stands provided the wait staff understand they are likely to only get a tip for excellent service.
But to do this on top of an 11 dollar cannoli. That’s a bit different too. I hope it was like a dozen cannolis.
LOL
This is probably a hotel or resort. $4 cookie and $6 oj are the giveaways .
$11 cannoli etc.
Why have a service fee at all then?
Just raise the prices and use the extra income to pay the employees better if that’s really your intention.
People won’t get upset about the tip on top of it if you don’t already have a “service charge” sectioned off in the receipt.
It’s so that they can deceitfully advertise prices which are lower than the real price.
I believe this is totally illegal in the EU (because they’re obligated to list prices and all charges, fully, upfront and that even includes taxes) but I guess that in the US there are States were it’s either not illegal or has never been challenge in court.
I had a service charge like that added in Rome once. It is most likely illegal, but Rome is a pretty lawless place as it is where everybody tries to scam you all the time, so I didn’t bother spending time arguing it and getting all worked up about a couple of euros during my holiday, just avoided the place thereafter. I know that’s probably what they’re counting on …
Oh yeah, I live in Portugal and here too foreign tourists are natural targets for scammy shit. It’s not too much but there are certainly bad actors who will take advantage of people who don’t speak the local language and don’t know their rights.
However I suspect it’s a lot worse when some kinds of scams are actually legal.
Oh yes, the “coperto” or cover charge. Restaurants that are worth going to will tell you upfront about whether they charge you that and how much. Tourist traps will just put a small sign somewhere on the premises that informs you of their ass-pull fee.
I went to a small café in Venice and had a cup of coffee for 4€. They charged me a fixed 14€ coperto.
Coperto is perfectly legal and the norm everywhere. It would be clearly mentioned on the menu, typically at the bottom of every page and it is around a couple bucks per person. It’s for the bread and bread sticks you get on the table, water and electricity to wash cutlery and plates you use, and to pay for serving stuff and rent. Why not included in the price of that pizza you might ask? Because I might order that pizza to take away and not use all of the above.
Some touristy places take advantage of it, doesn’t make sense for a coffee in Venice (though I’m not surprised). A couple of bucks that op was charged at a restaurant in Rome on the other hand, 100% expected everywhere in Italy.
Source, am from there.
So that shit is actually legal in Italy?
In that case I was totaly wrong on my belief on it not being legal in the EU.
I just read about coperto here, and I don’t think that was it. I’m pretty sure it said “Servizio” on the bill, and it was a percentage on top of the price of what we ordered.
In my country (in the EU) usually if a service charge is added on top of the order, it’s because that particular place doesn’t accept tips.
That would be illegal in the EU country where I live (Belgium). Here the rule is that the advertised price must always include any mandatory charges, like VAT and service charges, so that advertised price = price the consumer would have to pay.
Source: https://economie.fgov.be/nl/themas/verkoop/prijsbeleid/prijsaanduiding
Translation:
Price indication
Companies offering goods or services must indicate the price in writing in a legible, visible and unambiguous manner.
The price is the total price to be paid by the consumer, including VAT and all other taxes or services that the consumer is obliged to pay extra. These prices are stated at least in euros.
That would be illegal in the EU country where I live (Belgium).
Further evidence that America isn’t a legal country.
I the s legal most places in the US, some big cities like New York City have outlawed it.
Look at how the tips were calculated. They were based on a bill of $95.65, the price of the meal before the service fee.
This service fee allowed them to increase the price of the meal by 18% without increasing the calculated tip by 18%.
They are stiffing their employees.
Edit: A $100 check would have an expected, 15% tip of $15. A $118 check would have an expected 15% tip of $17.70. What they are doing lets them calculate a 15%, $15 tip on a $118 bill. They are “stealing” $2.70 worth of tips on every $100 worth of sales.
Alternative option: the service fee is the tip because there’s no way I’m paying more than what’s on that bill.
That just fucks over the waitstaff without harming the business at all.
Best option is to walk out as soon as you see notice of a service fee. It should be printed on the menu or a sign posted on entry.
Just raise the prices
They’re already selling lemonade for $6. The sky is clearly the limit.
If the service charge is so they can pay the employees better, I guess they don’t need a tip on top of that unless they went above and beyond their basic duties. Like what a tip should be for
The entire service fee thing is fraud at this point. Undercutting wages and skimming profits for owners off the backs of their employees.
I know it’s been happening forever but this shit has been escalating exponentially.
It’s to make you mad at their employees
It’s failing. I’m just mad at the employer.
Because you’re not a moron.
This is for Fox News watching Grannies to look at and go “Them libruls are making my food expensice because dey don’t wanna git no jerbs”
Possibly illegal, depending on your local laws.
If it is legal, contact your congressman (local, state, national) because it sure as hell needs to be illegal.
So you carefully included every possible level of US government, but still forgot about the entire rest of the world.
First, many places have a local, state, and national government. Particularly the ones that use dollars and expect an additional tip, as shown on the receipt.
Stop trying to be offended at everything.
My country, which has dollars and expects tips, doesn’t. And this read like it was addressing unexpected fees at restaurants in general.
Stop pretending Americans don’t do this constantly. Everyone who’s not American is very familiar with it, and honestly it’s understandable with how big and self-contained that country is. I might not even have commented if it wasn’t for the remarkable thoroughness short of that detail.
I presume you’re in Canada. Aside from calling them provinces, and possibly having a different name for your legislative representatives, are you saying you DON’T have a local, state, and national government where my advice would be relevant?
No, you’re advice was great. I just found the phrasing weird enough to point out. Sorry if it came across as angry.
The rest of the world doesn’t exist, it’s just a scam made up by the passport cartel to fleece you of your money every few years.
Can confirm, I’m just standing in a blank white space. It’s weird I get wifi.
Do a search for the Tianamen Square massacre. You’ll at least know if you’re Chinese white space or non Chinese white space
Oh no, it’s turning black. Chairman forgive me!
Basically, they just raised their prices by 18% and blamed it on the greedy, useless employees. I don’t know why businesses bother selflessly “creating jobs” if they are so much trouble. Shouldn’t those be the first things to cut to make their business more efficient under capitalism? Stop doing charity work and run the business yourself.
Probably better than expecting customers to tip voluntarily
Oh wait, they do that too
I hope their customers are exclusively people who support the the below minimum wage for servers law.
Basically, they just raised their prices by 18% and blamed it on the greedy, useless employees.
No, it’s worse than that.
Look at how the tips are calculated. They use the base bill of 95.60, not the bill after the service charge has been applied.
If they rolled an 18% increase into their prices, the calculated tip would also rise 18%. But it didn’t.
So in addition to effectively raising their prices and blaming their employees for it, they are also stiffing their employees by low-balling their tip calculations.
Actually, what I’m saying was that there shouldn’t be a need for a tip at all. That 18% service charge is for services rendered outside of the production of the product, meaning the server, cashier, etc. In most countries that’s rolled into the cost of the product, not a separate charge. In the US, that’s paid for through tips instead. What they’re doing is trying to double dip. They want to keep the money that normally would go to paying the service staff a wage without raising advertised prices and also have a separate tip to actually pay them.
This is a classic bait and switch where advertised price is not what you actually pay. Doesn’t matter if they put a little sign to cover their legal obligations, it’s still disingenuous to advertise one price and charge another. Tipping and taxes are common knowledge in the US as being added on after, but a service charge in addition to tipping is not and most people will assume that the service charge is a tip and won’t also tip whereas it doesn’t go directly to the service staff like a tip does. So likely in this place, the service staff just gets their $2.13/hr or whatever the tipped minimum is there, and a few dollars here and there in actual tips but doesn’t get any of that 18% unless tips don’t cover the required hourly $5.12 tip credit.
So they need to choose. Raise your prices for more profit and keep tipping, raise your prices to pay your service staff and do away with tipping, or keep your prices lower and risk tipping not covering the minimum wage tip credit.
I would simply not go to that restaurant anymore and very plainly let them know why. This is greed and I will not reward it.
Much like when I place a to go order and go pick up the order and the POS (point of sale not piece of shit if you’re wondering) system pops up that tip screen. You didn’t do anything worthy of a tip so I will not be tipping you. Now if for example when I get there they apply some discount I wasn’t aware of that makes my bill cheaper, I’ll tip for that. Throw in some extra cheese sauce, tip. Anything above and beyond, tip. Just ring me up and hand me my food, yeah no tip.
It’s this (the service charge) or they raise prices across the menu. Some people prefer this, some people prefer the added cost baked in.
Personally I think the service charge is a little deceptive because you are hit with an unexpected expense at the end of your meal. Even if they’re very up front about the charge most people won’t be automatically calculating the 18% extra on whatever they’re spending, they’re just going to look at the price on the menu.
Some people prefer this
Citation needed.
I think those people own restaurants
They have raise prices across the menu, by 18% to be more specific.
Segregating the price increase as “service fee” is only so that they can deceitfully advertise their prices a lower than they really are, a form of Consumer Fraud (I believe this one is a form of Bait & Switch)
Not quite. A $100 meal would have a routine 15%, $15 tip. Increase the price 18%, and a $118 meal would have an expected 15%, $17.70 tip.
Look at the tip calculations on this receipt: they are based on the price of the meal before the service fee. If this restaurant sold a $118 meal, it’s expected 15% tip would be $15, not $17.70.
They are stealing $2.70 from staff on every $100 check.
Look at the calculated tips. They are based on $95.60, the price of the meal before the 18% service charge.
If they raise their prices by 18%, they would have to raise their tip calculation by 18%.
They are stiffing their employees.
You realize that giving you 5% off so you will tip 15% is still greed though right? The greed is always there, it’s just your perception of how it’s delivered. We expect a little foreplay with our greed.
I didn’t say I was giving them 15%. I give 18% for full service. But a buck or two for something like this.
Oh boy, the unlawfulness of USA. This would be clearly illegal in EU, as misleading pricing.
Even if stated there’s an 18% extra fee, I’m pretty sure it would be illegal to state prices exclusively without it.
I would simply refuse to pay that fee if it was here, and report them to authorities.[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
In America, the restaurant would have to post this on the menu. Thus we have fine-print on our menus. God bless the USA.
It’s nice to hear the EU doesn’t let that crap slide.
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Scummy businesses sure exist but you would never see this in Amsterdam or Paris. I’m pretty sure there are laws that whatever price is shown is the final price.
You’re probably right. But judging from other comments in sounded like a small note on the front cover of a menu saying ‘there will be a flat rate surcharge’ would not be adequate.
Obviously, this is a horrible way for me to collect legal advice, but would a fine-print note on a menu fly? (interpret ‘fly’ however, I’m clearly naïve here.)
Where is this common? I know you often see it in scummy tourist traps, but besides that I’ve not seen something like it.
Where is this common?
I believe you most often see this in scummy tourist traps.
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I don’t return to restaurants that pull this bullshit. Raise your menu prices to provide a living wage or take a hit to your profits.
I’m kinda confused, isn’t that what they did? Although you are probably saying you’d be less pissed if the prices for all the individual items were increased 18% so you knew the actual prices at the start?
Ya this. The extra 18% should be baked into the menu pricing so that at least the cost is known up front. This is kind of like sneaking it in.
As a european, not knowing and legit asking: isnt that the thing all over the usa? I mean, you pick up something at the store, go to the counter and then SUPRISE, tax is added on top of the price. Like, that also feels like sneaking in extra costs?
Basically. People just get used to the nebulous mental calculations of how much tax one can expect. It encourages a culture of routine overspending and should be illegal.
People expect to budget roughly tax and tip, they are basically mad because this is not a cultural norm and they got stung by surprise.
A sales tax is expected in most states and is generally fairly similar within each state and almost never come to more than 10%. That also pays for services that most people use.
This extra charge at this restaurant is not common nor is it expected. They also set it at 18% which is a standard tip rate but specifically say it is not a tip. They claim it is to provide decent wages but considering they still allow tips (some places do this but do not allow tipping on top) , that pretty obviously is not true. This is just a bullshit tactic to have prices seem lower than the menu price.
Sale tax is everywhere. And still, if its a static amount per state, why not include it on the sticker price so you know exactly how much you will be paying?
Inventory and sticker work is done by computers, they know the price …
Believe it or not, some states do not allow that to be included on the sticker price since the sticker is there to note the price of the item. The sales tax is a tax on the transaction. You could probably note both but that might confuse dumb people.
I really wish we just switched to a VAT.
Thanks for the info! Ye, i think vat would be better too
Yes, we have sales tax too. It’s just stupid that it isn’t included in the sticker price
Sales tax is fairly rare outside of the US. Most countries have a value added tax instead. The end result is largely the same but a VAT has fewer incentives to skirt it.
Yes, prices on each item should increase. This is just a sneaky way of avoiding doing that. A bunch of dick head restaurant owners tried doing shit like this when my city passed a law making $15/hr the minimum wage with no exemptions for tipped workers. Restaurant owners like Tom Douglas had to raise prices but didn’t want to so they tacked on an extra fee and claimed it was a living wage fee but you were still expected to tip just as much. If I was certain that money was actually going to workers, I might be okay with it but there is nothing forcing them to give it to workers. Also, it is straight up admitting that you were paying starvation wages before.
People expected tons of restaurants to close after the minimum wage went up. None really closed and prices are fairly similar to most large cities. Some place did love to a no tip model with higher prices but generally it has been the same where you to 18-20% on the cost of the bill.
So, restaurants might do this to avoid the cost of printing new menus with new prices.
Much easier and cheaper to just put signs at the table or print inserts, especially if you think prices will go up again soon.
But this honestly just looks like they’re trying to screw you.
Or, you know maybe the owner could live without a 5th cottage possibly?? naaaaaaa
That would be the ‘take a hit to profits.’ Yeah, I don’t expect that either. What’s annoying is that it is always the very profitable douche bag restaurants that do this. Most restaurants struggle to make ends meat.
That’s literally what they did and you just posted this comment flipping shit because they had the audacity to tell you it was going to the workers.
even in countries that actually pay their staff right, there’s no way those base prices don’t cover the cost of food, staff and overheads.
then they have the gall to charge a “service charge” to pay the staff.
THEN they have the gall to imply you still need to tip
fuck that to hell
That’s not implying anything that’s just listing the amount that any given percentage would be if you want to tip the waiter specifically, you might notice that all the percentages are below what’s seen as the base for a good tip, save the 15% which is just at it depending on where you’re eating at.
The service charge is for the pool for all the staff while the tip on this one is actually a good service reward since they adjusted price to facilitate a better wage, like they literally said at the bottom of the stub.
absolute crazy bullshit. don’t stand for that. restaurant price here what you see is what you pay. no stupid surcharges and no stupid tipping. fuck all that
Literally you’re being amgy that they told you money was going to the workers
spoiler: it’s not
join the first world and just pay them properly without all your fancy extra charges
Are restaurants just poorly managed, or is there another reason why they can’t pay their employees a living wage when their markup is like 400-1000%?
Restaurants have notoriously thin margins. I’m not defending this bill, and there are definitely awful practices out there, but it ain’t easy. Even a $34 dollar steak only kind of covers all the ancillary costs that make it happen.
The biggest issue with the crunch we have going on is that food (prepared or otherwise) should be way more expensive, and that shouldn’t be an issue because most people should be making way more money. All of those should/shouldn’ts got way out of whack over the course of decades, and the circus only continued because people found crappy ways to keep it going.
It’s a lot of industries. Construction is a great example. The developers make money. The material vendors make money. The builders make money. The sub contractors who actually put the parts together get haggled on invoices and take the lower amount because they have payroll to make and equipment loans to pay. Loans that are happily given out because the equipment can be easily repossessed.
It’s a very good thing everything is correcting, but it’s going to be an ugly process as workers get their due and pass the burden on to the small business owners.
Restaurants have notoriously thin margins.
Help me understand.
Assuming restaurants have the same overhead as any other business: rent, staff, insurance, maybe equipment (manufacturing, etc.), what else?
They don’t have expenses like vehicles, tariffs on imported goods, the cost to fly staff out for conferences, tech costs, and so on.
The only difference is the product they bring in, and the product they put out.
As a consumer, who doesn’t get the benefit of industry discounts or high-volume prices, making food is really inexpensive.
When I see a restaurant, for example, selling pasta with marinara sauce for $15-20 a plate, I’m curious to know why they have to beg to cover costs. You can make the same dish for a family of four for under $3, and save $100 you’d spend getting the same dish at a restaurant.
So, again, if the cost of ingredients allows for such a significant markup, well beyond what most other businesses are able to get away with, why are restaurants having to charge “service fees” on top of tips?
It’s the behind the scenes that cause a lot of the markup. There might be only two or three food service providers in your area. Food Service Company A has the same prices as Food Service Company B and C. There is no real competition to force prices down for restaurants.
If you are a franchise restaurant, you have to pay franchise fees, buy your all products from the franchise, work within the certain parameters, etc. There is no real way to find ways to drive down prices since your prices are set by the franchise through the prices of the product, corporate oversight, etc.
Great points!
So I’m stretching it a bit because at the end of the day this really does apply to more than restaurants, but the other commenter had it right.
Things like rent, insurance, etc go into the cost for well above the plate. So the ingredients are one thing, but you have to make up the cost of rent, paying the staff when there’s low customer volume, all the insane amount of costs that go into running a business. That server has to make up for the cost of printing menus and delivering them by mail.
None of this is the servers fault, who should get a fair wage, but it all adds up in a way that makes it hard for the owner. In fact, the person who sold them the grills, refrigerators, and all the other equipment, knows exactly and empirically how hard it is and sets their prices accordingly.
And it’s not like that company’s delivery drivers, techs, and fabrication workers also don’t deserve a wage. Or the Tyson folks that are plucking the chicken delivered.
The issue is, at the end of the day, those companies probably should be less profitable. But instead of accepting that, we put all of the companies that make all the stuff that run that restaurant into bigger companies that are now part of mutual funds, and they sell it out knowing they can grab it back if it goes under.
So you might be able to get away with making a few plates and some money, but trying turning it into something that will let you pay your rent and put your kids into a school. “Bob’s Burgers” is pretty true to life.
This is how to tell someone you haven’t checked grocery prices lately without actually telling them you haven’t checked grocery prices lately. A box of mediocre pasta alone is going to cost you $1.75. A jar of Preggo will run you another 2.50. So 4.25 for an I hate life spaghetti and marinara meal.
The sauce they make probably doesn’t come out of a jar of reconstituted tomato paste and dried seasonings either.
If you buy decent ingredients you are looking at $3 for the pasta and $9 for the sauce. Or $12 for an “ok for a home cook” spaghetti meal with no protein.
Restaurant serving sizes (for better or worse) are usually 2x+ larger than you would serve at home. Rent isn’t free for the restaurant either. Or labor. Or utilities. Or equipment. Etc. General rule of thumb is that a restaurant needs to charge 3x raw food costs to cover expenses.
So your I hate life pasta would need to be priced at $6.50 and your ok for home but not something I would be happy with getting at a restaurant pasta would need to be priced at $18.
This is how to tell someone you haven’t checked grocery prices lately without actually telling them you haven’t checked grocery prices lately.
I’m going to assume you don’t cook at home.
No restaurant worth eating at buys packaged pasta, or packaged bread/buns, or canned sauce.
Flour is cheap, like really cheap. If a restaurant is buying real ingredients, then they are spending pennies and charging tens of dollars.
Restaurant serving sizes (for better or worse) are usually 2x+ larger than you would serve at home.
I highly disagree. I’ve never left a restaurant “full”, even after spending enough to buy a months worth of real food ingredients.
Rent isn’t free for the restaurant either. Or labor. Or utilities. Or equipment. Etc. General rule of thumb is that a restaurant needs to charge 3x raw food costs to cover expenses.
This I agree with. Is rent, labor, equipment at a restaurant significantly more than other places of work? Paying min wage doesn’t exactly eat through your margins.
That whooshing sound, in case you were curious, was the point sailing right over your head.
I worked at a pizza shop way back ages ago (early 2000’s), but I think the formula is generally the same. Food costs they would shoot for 33%, labor ended up being around 33%, the rest was overhead for the facility (rent, AC, etc) and profit.
I think that’s actually a pretty fair amount of profit in that. But that was almost 20 years ago. I feel like the formula is likely similar though.
So way late, but no that’s shifted a lot. This is anecdotal but does speak to a lot of industries: my understanding is that pizza shops now live or die by cheese prices.
Labor, while fluctuating, doesn’t move a ton month to month. Dairy can.
That’s like I said anecdotal, but broadly, real-estate, equipment purchase/finacince has all been so hyper optimized it squeezes the business owners out.
It doesn’t matter the market. PIZZAOVEN-XL will sell it to you, let you leverage payments against your home equity, grab it back and resell it. They can deal with the cash flow issue. They are “assembled in America”. They don’t care if you go out of business. They’ll do it again for the same person that moves into the same space trying to do the. Exact. Same. Thing.
And I’m not trying to draw a blanket statement across all industries. I’m just saying the wheels that make every industry move are smarter and literally longer lived than anyone starting out, and there’s a reason “John deer” and “John deer finance” are seperate companies.
Cheap sub contractors need so much constant control to make sure things are delivered on spec that it is almost like it costs more than to hire the more expensive company with a reputation for solid work
Saw exactly this when I was doing commissioning for a large municipality. No matter how tight the specs were, some of these knuckleheads would do it their own way and get mad when we forced them to do it right.
Some of them would just claim bankruptcy if the mistake was big enough.
Pro-tip, friends: don’t pick the lowest cost of construction bids, I guaran-fucking-tee it’ll cost you more than you saved. And, anyone who says they “meet code” is really saying they do the bare minimum required.
Completely fuck this shit.
$16.25 for a kids size pasta dish?
I feel like I have seen multiple receipts from this same place, likely posted by the same person, because I remember noting $16 Kids Shells on some other thread months ago.
Seems odd. They should really stop going.
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The $5.00 glass of lemonade is ridiculous. Water and a small scoop of powdered flavoring/sweetener costs them about a quarter.
Straight up fees like that should not be legal, if they even are in that location.
They should instead just add 18% to every menu item since it applies to everything anyways.
As it is right now advertising their cannoli for $11.00 is a straight up lie since it’s really $12.98. They simply don’t because they want to hide the actual cost and make their menu appear to be cheaper so you cant walk out until after you’ve ordered and eaten.
Also if got a bill with an 18% service charge I would definitely not tip, since tips are supposed to adjust for the low wages anyways.
