A Daily Herald reader wrote in after my column on tipping wondering about — complaining about, really — surcharges on restaurant bills these days. In this article I will be talking about three different add-ons to checks.

First, we are seeing a trend where restaurants are passing on the credit card fee to the guest. This is usually around 3% if you are using a credit card to pay.

Secondly, restaurants have been adding on surcharges, which means they are charging you a bit extra to pay for items they feel they need the guest to cover.

Thirdly, there are service fees (gratuities) that a restaurant will add to the bill rather than leaving it up to the guest.

“It is absolutely infuriating that restaurants have started to charge us a fee to take our money when using a credit card,” he wrote. “Add it to the price of the food, but don’t sneak another dollar amount onto the bill.”

He went on to say that he and his buddies regularly tip 30% to 35% (your servers must love you), but the $10 or $15 credit card surcharge is “a sneaky, greedy add-on.”

A restaurant owner or operator, of course, would have a different point of view, so I’m going to spend this column looking at the issue from both sides. Also, I’m going to make it easy for you to identify what you need to pay vs. what is an option to pay.

Service fees are typically gratuities that restaurants use for large parties (six or more guests). Typically, restaurants let you know in advance about these fees so as long as your meal and service went well there should be no issue and no surprise when you have to pay the bill.

Fees, more specifically credit card fees paid by the customer, began almost 10 years ago in New York and other big cities. Now, restaurant owners everywhere are being hit with food prices that have increased by 25% to 50% and labor costs up 50% since 2019. Restaurant owners are trying to come up with ways to continue to make money without having to raise menu prices even further.

“Surcharges” are new charges created by the restaurant. During COVID-19 restaurants began to add on these surcharges because of the extensive amount of PPE that they were going through. In addition, the local governments were requiring the restaurants to use the PPE, which cost the average restaurant over $10,000. In essence the government was forcing restaurants to spend a great deal of money to stay open. During COVID-19, I did not have a problem paying that surcharge.

However, there are restaurants who have gone too far with their surcharges, and I typically ask the

server to remove them from my bill. Recently, one restaurant wanted me to pay a 3% surcharge for PPE. I asked that to be removed because none of the staff was wearing any PPE, including all the cooks in the open kitchen. Another restaurant had a surcharge of $5 for the chemicals to clean dishes.

Other restaurants are adding a “hospitality charge” of 4% or more, and this goes to the server as an additional tip. Some restaurants are using the same vocabulary as a “hospitality charge” to do the following: “a 4% surcharge has been added to your total bill to help offset the increasing cost of doing business, including higher minimum wage rates. This is not for services provided and is not paid directly to the staff.”

From the point of view of the diner, though, it’s still aggravating. You’ve just spent maybe a couple of hundred dollars for a meal, and then the restaurant wants you to pay extra.

The worst part for me is when a restaurant doesn’t disclose its surcharges in advance. Last year, a man sued the Tinley Park location of a restaurant chain for not disclosing a 3% COVID-19 surcharge before he made his purchase.

To make it even more confusing, restaurants don’t use the same wording to characterize their extra fees. Some surcharges are meant to cover the fee a business pays to the credit card company, but some say their surcharges (up to 20% at some places) supplement employee salaries and benefits or cover the rising costs of everything: labor, food, rent, utilities and so on.

Like our reader above, you wonder: “Why not just increase your prices?”

Let’s start with that question. Many restaurants have already raised their prices, 40% to 60% in some cases, and are hesitant to raise them more. In addition, once you raise the prices on the menu, those increases are going to stick, whereas a surcharge can be easily reduced or even removed when, for example, labor conditions improve, and inflation gets back to normal.

That said, I don’t think surcharges will be going away anytime soon. The typical small-business restaurant is lucky to have a 3%-5% operating margin before taxes. To manage their costs, they don’t have many tools left in the toolbox. They can reduce their operating hours, reduce the number of tables or slim down the menu in favor of less expensive items, but when worse comes to worst, they have to consider raising menu prices or adding a surcharge or a fee.

In the National Restaurant Association’s August 2022 Restaurant Business Conditions Survey, of 4,200 restaurateurs surveyed, 16% had added surcharges. During January’s Restaurant Week in Chicago, of the 362 restaurants participating, 39 tacked on surcharges of anywhere from 3% to 20%.

So you’re going to run into service fees and surcharges from time to time when you dine out. Here are my recommendations for diners who are navigating this new restaurant pricing structure.

Tip what you would normally tip. Remember that the surcharge doesn’t usually go to the server. It’s counted in the restaurant’s business income, and the restaurant will pay taxes on it. The tip you leave goes straight into the server’s pocket.

It’s up to you whether to base your tip on just the food or the food plus tax, but don’t include any surcharges or service fees in your tip calculations.

Check for disclosures. A restaurant that is charging additional fees is required to tell you upfront, ideally with a sign by the host station, on the menus and on their website. If your bill arrives with a surcharge that you didn’t know about, ask the manager to have it removed.

Also: Let the buyer beware. If you don’t see any surcharge notifications, ask at the host station whether surcharges are in place.

I certainly empathize with diners — many struggling with rising prices themselves — who are feeling nickeled and dimed by restaurants. You have a choice: to patronize restaurants with surcharges or not. Whatever you decide, don’t take it out on the server when you are unhappy with a surcharge.