Check Your Receipts! Upstate NY Restaurant Adds Extra Fee to Bill

Check your receipts. One Upstate New York restaurant is adding an extra fee to bills and they aren't alone.

One customer noticed a 10% inflation fee added to her bill at the China Wok in Tupper Lake.

"Apparently inflation is a thing you can charge for these days," Rachel Armstrong wrote in a Facebook post.

The receipt even showed an extra dollar charged for having no onions.

New Fees New Norm

This isn't the first restaurant to add an unusual fee and probably won't be the last. Owners have been adding service fees, surcharges, junk fees, or whatever they call them, to customers' bills for a while now.

Many say they don't have a choice.

The increase in wages and the out-of-control prices on well, everything, is forcing restaurant owners to make up for the loss caused by inflation somewhere.

Antonio_Diaz/Think Stock

Fees vs Increasing Prices

Rather than increasing prices on menu items, owners have opted to add extra fees onto the bill, sometimes as high as 20%. And it's there whether you pay with a card, which costs restaurant owners even more, or with cash.

According to the National Restaurant Association, 15% of owners are charging an extra fee, while 92% say the cost of food is a significant issue for their restaurant.

Things are looking up though. The restaurant industry saw sales grow to $937 billion in 2022, up from $824 billion in 2021. The industry is forecast to reach $997 billion in sales this year, driven in part by higher menu prices and extra fees.