I wonder how much Dodd was promised, or paid by the California Restaurant Association and Unite Here to introduce the legislation.
Smells. Crooked fucks.
There’s no need to imagine a bribe when a bunch of constituents from an industry (that hires a lot of other constituents and pays a lot of taxes) and a labor union for that industry (whose members are also constituents) say they’d like a reasonable change in the law.
There may be further changes after other unions that have pushed for regulation of how service charges can be used weigh in.
I’m not imagining a bribe I’m imagining a ton of campaign donations. Wait, I’m not imagining them. They’re real.
Why are you posting your imaginings instead of looking up the facts?
The California Restaurant Association makes donations, but they don’t have very deep pockets. Their last reported donations to the legislators mentioned in the article were $2200 to Bill Dodd in 2020, $2500 to Jesse Gabriel this year, and $1500 to Scott Wiener in 2020. The latter raised a total of $3,034,035 for his 2020 campaign, so the CRA donated 0.05%.
Yeah, you’re citing the California restaurant association as a whole. And while I appreciate it, I’d be interested in knowing how they’re doing from individual donations from members of that group as well. Granted these guys aren’t raising a ton of money for their campaigns, so I’m sure every little bit helps.
The bottom line for me is this. You can say that they’re carving out reasonable exceptions. Well every industry should carve out what they consider reasonable exceptions… to everything.
The font must be in 12 point, cannot have a serif, not italicized. Bold is recommended but not required. And must be displayed in the top half of the menu, But not necessarily on page one.
As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing reasonable about any of this, The whole premise used by these restaurants is crooked, deceptive, and they’re going to use the exemptions or exceptions to find new ways to be deceptive.
Like when you go to buy a car. 
Feckless cowards our legislators are
Could already be happening but i wonder if sites like resy, opentable, etc youll be able to sort by tip or service fee
OpenTable and Resy make money by charging restaurants for their services, so they probably won’t do anything that would annoy their customers.
Looks like price is changed to $325 at Kato starting July…but will service be included? or are they still asking for 20% on top for tip? 0___0
review forthcoming?
Jon & Vinny’s as opaque as ever.
The comments in that jv post are 
I mobile ordered from a place (fish chips, fish/shrimp tacos) that uses the Union app (Pay tab system).
That place charge by default
25% Post Tax!
It wasn’t easy choosing tip option on that app, so I ended up paying 25% Post Tax twice. One on $30 (Fish Tacos and Shrimp Tacos) order and the other on $16 (Fish and Chips) order.
My 2 cents
- I’m okay with the surcharges as it’s stated clearly on the bill. When I see them, i’m like ok, noted. Might not be coming back for some of these spots.
- what I’m not okay with is seeing the suggested tip calculated from anything that’s not the subtotal (eg calculated on subtotal + surcharge and/or + tax). If this has already been discussed on another thread, can someone link me to that discussion? I’m curious what you guys think
https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/junk-fees-law-restaurants-carveout-19534400.php
I am certainly beating a dead horse, but for me the issue is restaurant owners hoovering up money intended for waiters, cooks etc. Tipping led to FOH/BOH equity issues but is highly regulated, and owners regularly get charged/fined for stealing money from workers in the chain of service. Happened at Genwa a few years back, fined 2.1 million.
With service charges it’s totally legal. They can keep as much of the service charge as they choose, though patrons certainly do not imagine or hope the 20% service charge is going straight into the owner’s pocket.