The CulinaryWoman Newsletter, 8/13/23

Fees are spreading in the restaurant world. They won’t disappear soon.

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Just click here, and thanks! Now, onto a topic that’s generating heat in an already hot summer.

Fees Are Spreading. So Is Customers’ Displeasure

When I first ate at Nudo earlier this year, I spotted something eye-catching on the check. The female-owned Vietnamese restaurant in suburban New Orleans listed two totals.

One was for paying in cash, the other was if you used a credit card. The higher total was to cover the fee charged by the processor.

The fee caught other people’s attention, too. The move became a topic on one of the New Orleans Facebook pages that I followed, with displeased diners warning people what to expect.

As it turns out, Nudo actually was on the leading edge of a trend. Restaurants all over the country are adding fees to their bills, covering a variety of reasons. Some state it when you sit down, like Eddie F’s in Saratoga Springs, whose notice I spotted when I sat down.

Others put a note on the door, such as the Black North Inn, where I dined last Sunday on Lake Ontario. But others are opaque, meaning surprises can arrive with the bill.

In Los Angeles and Chicago, diners on Reddit started spreadsheets listing restaurants and charges. There is plenty of grumbling. But it doesn’t look like an end is coming.

A variety of explanations

To be sure, fees in restaurants aren’t new. You might remember being charged for water back during the Great Recession, when energy prices spiked. These days, water is no longer automatically delivered to your table. You often have to request it.

Now, post-pandemic, fees and surcharges are quickly becoming ubiquitous and cover a wide range of expenses, according to the lists on the Google spreadsheets. They include:

1. Credit card fees, usually around 3.5 percent, but sometimes more.

2. Health insurance premiums.

3. Pay equity to employees (versus tipped wages, which I talked about in the newsletter a few weeks ago).

4. To “maintain sanitation.” Seriously.

5. An all-inclusive fee covering “food, beverage, labor, benefits, supplies.”

There is also the growing practice of adding an automatic gratuity to the meal, but also including a tip line. That is resulting in diners unknowingly leaving tips of 50 percent or more. I was one of them. After I’d figured out what happened, I stopped going to that particular restaurant.

It has been a tough few years for restaurants, and many customers sympathize. And of course, fees are now common in travel, entertainment and other consumer facing industries. There’s a difference here, though, says long-time travel industry analyst Henry Harteveldt.

“Many airline fees, such as checked luggage and advanced seat reservations, are optional or have work-arounds and hacks,” he says. For instance, customers can fly enough to earn elite status, or carry an airline’s credit card, on which the fees are waived. “Restaurants don’t waive health fees, etc., for their regulars.”

In fact, a few places are telling customers that they will remove the fees if asked. But others are justifying their actions.

Daisies, a buzzy Chicago restaurant, is adding a 25 percent surcharge, which seems to be the highest spotted thus far. It tells customers, “Here at Daisies, we strive to provide the optimal experience not only for our wonderful guests, but for our dedicated employees. We devote tremendous energy to serving food and beverages comprised of the best ingredients, making as much from scratch as possible and sourcing the balance from ethically responsible purveyors. And we practice what we preach.”

Reprinting the menus

This brings up the obvious question: why not simply raise prices?

Numerous places have done just that. But as we have learned in recent times, fees have become a psychological move on numerous businesses’ part. They trick the customer into believing they are paying less than they actually do.

Fees also give the impression that the situation is temporary, and are meant to deal with a crisis. That presumably preserves goodwill and generates sympathy. After all, who is against providing health insurance?

But as the Reddit posts indicate, some customers aren’t having it, and want other diners to know what is in store. The list for Los Angeles includes more than 200 places and their justifications for the fees.

I’d like to know what you think.

I was thinking about the recent dust up over Tock’s attempt to add a surcharge to orders of $10 or more. Merchants successfully pushed back, with help from unhappy customers, and got Tock to remove the fee.

There’s always the likelihood that consumers will do the same with these various fees. Henry says that the rising cost of dining out has caused him to eat at home more frequently. I am certainly doing the same thing, especially since I have to eat up the fresh fruits and veggies in my CSA box.

The restaurant industry has already been through a multi-year crisis that was not of its own making. Now, it maybe facing one that it played a role in creating.

Zero Alcohol Comes To Tailgating

College football tailgating and alcohol are inextricably linked. Because many stadiums did not allow alcohol, fans got liquored up before they entered the gates, on Bloody Marys, mimosas and of course, beer.

But students at the University of Michigan are planning something different when the season starts next month. Go Blue Mix, an organization promoting alcohol-free events, will hold a sober celebration in conjunction with Michigan’s opener with East Carolina on Sept. 2.

Ann Arbor’s city council approved a street closing that will allow for music, food and other fun. The celebration will run from 2 p.m. to midnight.

It’s been widely reported that this generation of college students is less focused on alcohol than their parents and grandparents. Now, they can party as hearty as they want, minus the hangover.

A Silver Lining To Canada’s Wildfires

Those devastating wildfires in Nova Scotia created orange skies and unhealthy air in many places to the south and west.

But the scorched earth is already beginning to recover. According to the CBC, blueberry plants in areas affected by the fires are already sending up new shoots.

In this case, history is repeating itself. Parts of Nova Scotia were blitzed by wildfires in 1911, only to have blueberry plants quickly return to life.

David Percival, a professor in Dalhousie University's faculty of agriculture, says blueberry plants have a massive root and rhizome system which makes them different from other plants. Rhizomes are underground stems that produce shoots and roots of new plants. 

Perceval told the CBC that fire causes a release of nutrients into the soil and the rhizomes quickly draw on those nutrients.

As a result, “blueberries can fill into an area quite quickly after a burn event has occurred," he said. The professor notes that Indigenous communities have long used fire as a pruning method for blueberries.

You Can Make Black and Whites At Home

New Yorkers and others have always loved black and white cookies - soft disks of sponge cake that are frosted half with chocolate and half with vanilla.

But they’ve generally been considered a cookie that comes from a bakery. However, author Shannon Sarna makes them herself, and shared her recipe in The Nosher.

You can watch Shannon’s technique in this video. And now I want a black and white.

Keeping Up With CulinaryWoman

I’m excited to be putting fall book events on my calendar. If you’d like me to speak to about Satisfaction Guaranteed, small business or the restaurant industry in general, please reach out.

Email: culinarywoman (@) gmail.com

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Tomorrow, I will be sharing some tips from my Toronto trip in Red Beans & Advice. Enjoy these gorgeous butter tarts in the photo. You can get my tips by becoming a paid subscriber. Just click this button.

Otherwise, see you next week.