If you can find somewhere open today – or any time this Easter weekend – potentially it’s an expensive time to eat out because of public holiday surcharges of 10% or more.
It’s a unique situation having five days straight off work and I know I’ll be chowing down in what restaurants I can find open.
I was interviewed by Channel Ten News (which should air sometime today after 5pm) on this, the fact that many restaurants and cafes are breaking pricing law as laid out by the ACCC.
It’s not the surcharge itself that is the problem but how you are told about it. If it is a one-off fee – $5 a person say – it has to be displayed prominantly on the menu and within the establishment. But it is not good enough to have a sign that says a 10% (or whatever %) surcharge applies to public holidays (or Sundays for that matter).
To be safe, a separate menu should be provided with the prices including the surcharges so you the customer doesn’t have to make – what are afterall only minor – calculations to work out what a meal will cost. Thus is a dish costs $20 and the surcharge is 10% the menu has to show it as $22. If it doesn’t do this the restaurant can be fined $6,600.
Last year in Sydney Reportage Online invited people to dob-in the sinners with the #surcharge twitter hashtag and perhaps this Easter it would be a good idea to adopt the same hashtag.
The morals of surcharges is a bigger question. It is caused by wage awards that mean extraordinary hourly rates for hospitality workers on public holidays. One venue on Twitter reported having to pay $50 an hour just for the washing up. And at the moment, because demand outstrips supply, rates payed to hospitality staff are skyrocketing.
Some restaurants don’t factor public holiday award rates into their costs and therefore surcharge. But others don’t as they have already priced it into their business model.
Aside for wanting a day off occasionally, that’s why many venues – such as Huxtable where I was interviewed – put opening on public holidays in the too hard basket and don’t open at all.
And as one Sydney restaurateur said: “Reprinting menus is easy! Deleting & re-entering every single food & bev menu/ item into the till system at midnight is the really big job.”
I know that I’d prefer to have lower prices the rest of the year and pay a public holiday surcharge so I can afford to eat out more. But i’m easy going about it.
There are always going to be those venues that want to take advantage of people by always doing the wrong thing. I believe they should be named and shamed. And those places that are ignorant of the rules should be politely reminded.
Where do you stand on surcharges?
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