Some restaurants in the DC area have begun adding new surcharges to their customers’ receipts due to Initiative 82, a law that changed the pay model for tipped workers.
On Wednesday, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb issued a statement to the city’s restaurants, saying his office has received hundreds of complaints in recent weeks about extra charges on their restaurant receipts.
“Consumers have the right to know in advance what they are spending their money on and that information must be displayed in a prominent, clear and understandable manner before they make a decision about what they are ordering and how much they want to pay,” Schwalb said.
Beginning Monday, May 1, tipped workers in Washington DC will see their wages increased, following the passage of Initiative 82.
Initiative 82 is a measure that was approved in November of last year, which aims to increase the base wages of tipped workers. Starting July 1, the wages for these employees increased to $8 an hour plus tips paid by customers.
The subsidy for these workers is projected to continue to increase annually until it reaches $17 an hour, the DC minimum wage.
Initiative 82 means a fundamental change in how DC restaurants pay their workers and manage their finances. Because of this, many restaurants have raised their prices or added new extra fees, supposedly to cover the cost of paying their workers.
“We prefer to be transparent with customers, we prefer to sell the dish for 20 cents more and let the customer know that they are paying,” said Aris Compres, owner of Mecho’s, a Dominican restaurant located in northeast DC.
Compres said these additional fees are confusing to its customers and that it prefers to add the cost of paying its workers directly to the dishes it serves at its restaurants.
“People get confused, you don’t know if it’s a tip or sometimes they don’t leave a tip because they think it’s included in the fee they’ve already paid, which is sometimes up to 20%,” shared Compres, who warns that these additional fees can negatively affect to DC workers as customers may think tipping is not necessary.
Currently, for most workers in the industry, tips represent a large part of their salary, since restaurants only have to pay them less than half the minimum wage and the tips paid by their customers complete the salary of these workers.
The minimum wage for servers and other tip-dependent workers will increase by $2 each year through 2027, until it reaches $17.
