The next time you go to pay for your meal at a restaurant using one of those digital tablet-like point-of-sale systems (POS), take a hard look at the charges because you might find a charge you don’t want to eat.
Toast, one of the restaurant world’s leading POS providers and used in 85,000 restaurants, bars, pizza joints and bakeries across the country is adding a 99-cent surcharge to all online orders over $10 beginning in July.
The Boston Globe reports the charge will show up as an “order processing fee,” but consumers may gloss over it when they go to pay and not realize they are getting charged a new fee.
The Globe had an opportunity to review a mock-up of Toast’s online app and found that like similar “hidden fees,” the charge is tucked into a combined line called “Taxes & Fees.” The only way a consumer would know about it is if they click on a small, gray “i” (as in “information”). There, they would see Toast’s explanation that the fee was “Set by Toast to help provide affordable digital ordering services for local restaurants.”
Sneeeeaaaaakkkky.
“The many restaurants that Toast works with have already been notified, and some are outraged,” The Globe’s Aaron Pressman said, adding that there’s no way around paying the 99-cents. Not only is it mandatory, the restaurants were told, but in some states it’s even taxable, which could jack up the price another five or 10 cents.
According to a mockup of Toast’s interface, the 99-cent fee will not show up separately and will be instead part of a combined line called “taxes & fees” that already regularly shows up when customers place online orders. Unless consumers expand the “taxes and fees” subsection, they won’t see the new “order processing fee,” which, according to Toast, is intended to “help fund product investments” like SEO menus, customization, and chargeback coverage.
'Laughable'
In a LinkedIn post, Gardy Desrouleaux, owner and partner at Craft Food Halls in Boston wrote an open letter to Toast, calling the company out for its “lack of transparency in billing and invoicing to a laughable gap in customer support and service.”
“But this most recent move of imposing a mandatory 99 cent fee on our guests is disrespectful and un-hospitable,” Desrouleaux wrote.
“You are not a B2C [business to consumer] company, you are a B2B [business to business] company,” he argued. “In other words, our guests choose to do business with us and we choose to do business with you. It is unfathomable that it would be decided to forcibly tack on a fee to already impacted consumers. It is with vigor and great urgency that I, on behalf of our restaurant communities and loyal guests, implore you to move from this unorthodox business practice.”
Attention President Biden
If President Biden gets his Junk Fee Protection Act passed, hidden fees like this one from Toast or others from ticket-selling websites could be under fire. But Toast doesn’t seem to be all that concerned.
“As we innovate, we remain committed to keeping restaurant digital ordering costs low and protecting restaurant bottom lines from third-party commission fees,” a representative from Toast told NRN in an emailed statement.
“We also take any changes to our pricing model at Toast very seriously. ... This change helps fund product investments and continued innovation in support of helping restaurants maintain the direct relationship with their guests.”
Does Toast care what Desrouleaux and other operators think? When NRN asked about the negative feedback from its customers, Toast said that “customer feedback during product development has been incredibly valuable and will continue to be.”