re: Restaurants charging an administrative fee

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Restaurants that are scummy like this lose business and I don't understand the rationale to it. Like someone else mentioned, just add 5 cents to every menu item and no one would bat an eye. Makes no sense

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Promise you that owner makes social media posts about how important it is to support small businesses.

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Starting to see that as well. Also a “kitchen wellness fee.” These things get deducted from my tip.

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Turkey and the Wolf in New Orleans has something similar. It's like 10-15% extra added on to the total for staff bonuses. They have a couple signs telling you it's on there/

If you're automatically adding that on why am I still expected to tip? That place is awesome but those fees as so dumb.

I will pay it if I get charged it. However, that will be taken from the tip. And I won't come back.

If you need more income, raise your menu prices. I imagine a lot of restaurants don't want the extra cost of creating new menus. So a quick way around that is to simply add a processing fee.

In my opinion, that is extremely dishonest if it isn't told beforehand. They will only catch me once with that.

Act 751 (Senate Bill 254), which took effect on August 1, 2026

Dual Pricing isn't a charge for debit cards, it's a cash discount. Business cannot charge processing fees for debit cards. BUT, if they charge a processing fee it must be posted to the customer BEFORE they pay, not on the receipt.

Right. No surcharging. I work part time in my wife's payment processing company. See image above. What the state made illegal was a surcharge which was already not allowed by visa and MasterCard. The state is going to be overwhelmed with complaints from businesses doing things correctly. This has happened in other states also. The state was trying to piggy back on Visa and MC rules to make money. Dual pricing plans still allowed but the business needs to have both prices.

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I imagine a lot of restaurants don't want the extra cost of creating new menus.

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Too bad. It’s a cost of doing business. Increase price by 5% instead of 4% to cover printing.

This always bugs the shite out of me. I own a business and if you need to raise prices, just raise the prices. I flipping hate seeing million little fees added to itemized invoices.

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This likely violates the new debit card laws. In order to charge fees on debit cards there needs to be a notice on the receipt or somewhere of a cash price and a card price. If they remove the statement about payment processing they would probably be ok though.

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The restaurant isn't violating the debit card law because they are not charging a fee for using debit cards. They are adding a 4% fee to all bills regardless of the payment.



What they may be doing is adding 4% to all bills because they can no longer pass a 4% credit/debit card fee from the card company onto the customer. Assuming they were doing that to begin with.

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Supply and demand will always win in our society.

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It's why transparent pricing models make the most sense for consumers.

For some reason, the public accepts these surcharges, dual pricing structures, admin fees with small businesses way more than they do fees and surcharges with ticket sales, hotel stays, airlines, short term rentals, etc.

Operating expenses should be built into up front pricing models and the sole reason business don't is because they want to appear cheaper than they really are. They know if they advertise what the purchases will really cost they will lose business. The mico charges aren't new they have just become more accpeted.

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Valet Trash Fee - 40

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Never heard of this until the kid went out of state to a university and got an apartment.


I can see the apartment side of this though. It probably helps keep roaches and vermin down because it is basically a door to door trash pickup for the lazy, stoned-out, and gamer kids who would let that shite hang out in their apartment instead of walking it to the dumpster.

But on the renter side...don't charge me more because of them.