After an 11th-hour intervention by Gov. Gavin Newsom, California restaurants will be allowed to continue adding surcharges onto patrons’ bills to help cover the skyrocketing cost of doing business in the Golden State. In its original form, Senate Bill 478 , authored in June by Sen.
Bill Dodd (D-Napa) and Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), would have prohibited purported junk fees from a host of businesses including bars, delivery apps, travel, ticket sales, hotels and restaurants. The law intended to ban the “advertising, displaying, or offering a price for a good or service that does not include all mandatory fees or charges other than taxes or fees imposed by a government on the transaction, as specified.
” Restaurateurs and labor organizations rebuked the nascent version of the bill earlier this year, echoing concerns about having to raise menu prices in order to cover fees that help offset higher wages and healthcare . SEE ALSO: California restaurants shouldn’t be shocked law banning ‘junk fees’ applies to them “Service charges have been increasingly common tools aimed at keeping restaurants afloat and able to pay the higher minimum wages, amid rapidly rising state and local minimum wage requirements,” the Employment Policies Institute, a nonprofit research organization studying employment growth, said in a statement . “Since the state began annual wage hikes up to $16.
50 per hour starting in 2017, and localities raised wages even higher, California restaur.
