Customer says they will ‘never support’ restaurant after owners add ‘tacky’ surcharge to bills

Rising costs have hit every business hard over the last year, especially the cost of fuel.

But with their razor-thin margins, hospitality businesses are particularly vulnerable to any fluctuations in the market; and small, family-owned establishments are the most vulnerable of all, without the safety net of a larger backer.

Despite that, one restaurant has drawn the anger of a customer who noticed that they had taken an unusual step to help get through the difficult times.

The customer took to Reddit with an image of a notice which had been put up in the window of the establishment.

This described an unusual temporary measure that the business had put in place as a way to cope with rising costs.

It read: "Due to gas price increases we are adding a 6% surcharge to all checks temporarily until prices come back down."

The customer was not impressed with the surcharge, fuming: "This is a very tacky way of gaining revenue or doing business."

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They went on to criticise the decision to add a surcharge, instead of just increasing prices in line with costs.

"Everyone knows that inflation is high, add that 6% into your prices, customers will understand", they wrote. "This is a big turnoff right away, and I will never support a business doing this."

People took to the comments of the post, with many of them agreeing with the customer's sentiments.

One person said: "This has major “no one wants to work” vibes."

Another posted: "Just raise the price by a dollar on a few dishes and nobody will even notice or care. This is just inviting conflict."

A third wrote: "I’d turn and go elsewhere, unless they wanted to pay for my gas to to there restaurant."

Reddit / u/Material_Indication1

Another posted: "What’s even worse is when it just appears on your bill with no prior warning, and now you’re the a**hole if you confront them about it."

One person also drew attention to another thing which can particularly impact small businesses. This is, of course, card payments.

They wrote: "Funny this is here, because my boss put up multiple signs informing guests that there's a additional 3.5% charge when they use their credit cards. I'll take pictures when I get to work in a few hours."

But the message from commenters was pretty overwhelming in how unified it was, and that was to just raise the prices instead of adding a surcharge.