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. 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.
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.
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. have gotten out of control. It’s also worth noting that the public Google Sheet is far from accurate. 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. (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. diners by surprise. Now, whether big or small, many of these extra fees are now available for all to see, free of context.
Among 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. 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. tipping etiquette. 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.
In recent months, L.A. Reddit has called out restaurants from time to time, including Silver Lake’s Alimento, for smaller fees or so-called “hidden” fees. 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.
For 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. The spreadsheet also misguidedly includes automatic gratuities for larger party sizes at some L.A. restaurants, a standard policy at many, if not most, full-service restaurants.
In theory, these service fees should be translating into better pay for employees across the board, though it’s impossible to fully verify this as a consumer, and the “employee comments” section of the Google Sheet occasionally contradicts this. One example, listed under Bicyclette, allegedly comes from a current employee, saying in part: “Our parent company Sprout LA is unable to provide employees with proof of where this money goes or how it is accounted for.”
Since before the pandemic, restaurants in L.A. have been adding smaller fees to subsidize employee wages and benefits, but within the last year or so these fees, as well as larger service fees, have increasingly drawn the ire of the r/LosAngeles subreddit. Interpreted generously, the wording of service fees might suggest to some customers that they also need to add a tip; others simply don't notice the additional line on the receipt, and tip anyways.
Believe us: We’ve totally been there. It’s why we remind readers of the 20% service charge plus gratuity expected policy at Downtown’s Orsa and Winston on our citywide best restaurants list, though the Michelin-starred spot is the rare restaurant we think is worth the fairly outrageous upcharge.
In the interest of price transparency and accuracy, Time Out independently verified the restaurants with mandatory service fees listed in the Google Sheet as of August 9. We ultimately found that most L.A. restaurants implement service charges instead of, rather than in addition to, a standard 15 to 20% tip. (Additional tip is appreciated, but truly not required.)
Most businesses who charge a service fee also include language on the menu or on receipts like “extra,” “additional” or “for exceptional service,” which we interpret as meaning that any extra gratuity is not expected by staff. That’s the case at Pijja Palace, where owner Avish Naran says that no additional tip is expected—the included service charge essentially acts as one to begin with. “I can confirm that my service charge is 19%, all of which goes to my staff,” he says. “I do not realize a dime of the money.”
The spreadsheet’s few remaining restaurants with service fees that also expect a standard tip are as follows:
Duck House in Monterey Park: 15%
Jon and Vinny’s (multiple locations): 18%
Orsa and Winston in Downtown L.A.: 20%
Son of a Gun in Beverly Grove: 18%
In other words, dine at any of these restaurants and you’ll end up paying, unless you decide to be a jerk and not tip, between 33 and 40% more than your actual bill. Whether you choose to forgo dining at these places is up to you—you’d be missing out on one of L.A.’s best restaurants, for starters—but it’s good to know exactly where seemingly reasonable menu prices might actually be somewhat deceiving.