Woman says a New Jersey restaurant added 18% gratuity to her family of five on a $300 bill: ‘How dare you tell me how I have to be generous’
She says the menu applies the charge to groups of at least six, and a manager agreed with her but asked for a review.
A woman says a New Jersey restaurant added an 18% automatic gratuity to her family’s bill even though her table had five people. According to BroBible, she described the experience in a TikTok video. The restaurant’s digital menu, she states, applies the charge to groups of at least six.
The family went out for her mother-in-law’s birthday. The table also held her husband and their two children. She describes the service as slow, with food and drinks taking a while to arrive. They still enjoyed the evening until the check came to over $300. “Parties of six or more, we’re gonna add 18%. That’s fine. We had five,” she states.
When the family asked about the charge, the waitress blamed the system. The woman then pointed to the fine print on the menu and asked for a manager. He told her the system applies the gratuity automatically. She says she argued that the size of the order did not justify a mandatory charge, and that he agreed. “You’re right,” she recalls him saying.
She says the manager asked for a review
The manager then asked her to submit a review. She says he told her the feedback has to be recorded so the owner can consider a change. “It’s not that we didn’t wanna pay, but it’s just, like, how dare you tell me how I have to be generous based on the level of service you gave me? It wasn’t even up there,” she adds.
From now on, she plans to tip in cash. “It’s the entitlement at the end of the day I cannot stand,” she states. The outlet reached out to her by email and TikTok direct message. All details come from her account in the video and could not be verified independently.
The IRS addressed a similar setup in Revenue Ruling 2012-18. It describes a restaurant that adds an 18% charge to the checks of parties with at least six diners. The ruling concludes the charge is not a tip under section 3121 of the tax code. Among its factors for a tip, the payment must be “free from compulsion” and the customer must have “the unrestricted right to determine the amount.”
The ruling also states that an employer’s label for a payment as a tip is not determinative. A service charge distributed to employees, it adds, counts as wages for FICA tax purposes. A New Jersey Assembly bill, A3256, addresses disclosure directly. Its introduced text bars a restaurant from charging a mandatory gratuity without disclosing it prominently on the menu, at the entrance and on the patron’s bill. Penalties start at $1,000 for a first offense and reach $5,000 for a third.
A Pew Research Center survey of 11,945 US adults found 72% say tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago. Among adults who eat at sit-down restaurants, 92% say they always or often leave a tip. A broad majority also say service workers ask them to tip more often than in the past.
Other diners have questioned tip charges on their bills. A woman in Maryland challenged an automatic gratuity on a solo dinner. A San Francisco TikToker warned others about a bar’s reversed tip screen.
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