Service charges are making dining out more expensive, but that doesn’t mean your server sees that cash.
Service charges have become commonplace for things like online delivery and concert tickets, but they’re increasingly showing up in unexpected places — namely restaurants. While there’s no formal data yet on how many restaurants are implementing service charges, industry experts say those fees are definitely on the rise, and they expect to see even more of them soon.
On the surface, service fees can be well-intentioned. They’re born out of a desire to fix what’s long been considered a broken American tradition of paying servers in tips. Increasingly, they’re also a means for restaurants to survive what’s seemed like one onslaught after another.
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