Florida lawmakers have proposed a bill amendment that would ban automatic restaurant gratuities for parties of five or fewer and would also allow guests to decline paying service charges and gratuities if they complained about service quality.
The original bill, HB 535, allows hotels and restaurants to easily remove nonpaying guests from the premises, and has already passed multiple state government committees. According to Click Orlando, state Rep. Demi Busatta (R-Cape Coral), proposed the amendment after dining out at a restaurant in Miami that had both a service fee and preset mandatory gratuity.
“In Miami, we’ve seen a growing circumstance where all the restaurants are automatically including a 20% gratuity, or they’re calling it gratuity or service charge or service fee or tip, not just on regular sit-down meals but on take-out as well at fast-casual establishments,” Busatta said.
The restaurant industry in Florida does not agree with this new proposed legislation.
“While we understand consumer fatigue surrounding service charges at businesses where it does not make sense for there to be gratuity, many restaurants in Florida and across the U.S. use service charges as a key tool for ensuring service and success,” Samantha Padgett, the vice president for government relations and general counsel for the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, said in a statement. “Florida statutes already require that a service charge notification appear on the menu and on the customer’s receipt.”
It’s not just Florida that has proposed legislation in response to fee fatigue. Last year, former President Joe Biden announced the launch of a new strike force to fight “unfair and illegal pricing,” with the goal of saving American consumers nearly $20 billion in junk fees and to promote more competitive pricing in the corporate community.
More locally, California and Illinois have separately considered legislation to crack down on service fees and surcharges, including ticketing websites, airlines, and restaurants. In California, however, the junk fee bill was amended to exempt restaurants from the law.
In Florida, if HB 535 is passed with this current amendment, the law would go into effect July 1 — giving business owners just a few months to prepare.
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