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.

Note to our restaurant: Due to unnecessary 5% surcharges, we will no longer be eating here.

I bet they also have suggested tip amounts of 25, 30 and 50 percent at the bottom of the bill.

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.

We have raised prices by 5% to avoid having to update all the menus we will just add it to the bottom line.

Just. Tell. Me. The. Price.

Stop with this…

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?

If I read this on a menu in a situation where I could go elsewhere, I would.

Great way to lose customers.

You gotta raise prices? Raise prices. But nobody likes getting random extras at the end of their bills.

Welcome to New America. Expect to start seeing fees like this literally everywhere you go.

Voting (or not) has consequences.

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.

In most states this is explicitly illegal in food service.

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.

Who pays with cheques?

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.