The Brief

Service fees aren’t a new phenomenon, and they aren’t going away anytime soon. However, restaurant patrons in Los Angeles have recently noticed their bills have a little extra tacked on than just their meals, ranging anywhere between 5 to 20%.

The explanations listed for the mysterious fee often cite “healthcare” or a “wellness fee” as their reasoning. And since the charge can exclude gratuity, the final cost of a meal can turn a full belly into an upset stomach rather quickly. Certain restaurants allow for the fee to be removed at the diner’s request, so better to always check when the check comes.

Brittany Gorin first noticed the surcharge on her surprisingly exorbitant bill in April. This motivated the Mid-City resident to post about her experiences on Reddit, and from there, the community sprang into action to share their own dining mishaps, ultimately leading to the creation of a spreadsheet that tracks restaurants in L.A. engaging in the practice. The list is at nearly 300 restaurants and is still growing.

Recently, I chatted with Gorin about her experience.

Q: Going out to eat can be something to look forward to, but it can also be something that troubles your bank account. Most people would suffer in silence if they paid too much for a meal — I know I have — but what made you decide to share your experience publicly?

Gorin: I started the post on the Los Angeles subreddit because I think a lot of people have felt unhappy about service fees, which are misleading, showing up on a lot of their bills when they go out to eat at restaurants.

Q: What’s your technical understanding of service fees? Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed if I’ve paid for them and I’ve certainly never given a second thought as to where they were going.

Gorin: My understanding of service fees is that they go directly to the ownership of the restaurant, as opposed to gratuities, which in the state of California, I understand, are legally obligated to go to servers.

So, it's confusing. Because when you see “service fee” on the bottom of the check or on the bottom of the menu, you would think it goes to your server, but I think it's not actually obligated to be the case. For a long time, you saw a lot of 3 and 5% service fees on the bottom of checks.

And more recently, you've seen some restaurants charge as much as 18%, which really does look like it's a gratuity.

The Reddit post by Brittany Gorin that helped launch "the spreadsheet".

Q: Can you describe the experience you had at a restaurant that inspired the original post? Thanks to this spreadsheet we know they’ve reverted to a 4% service fee since the beginning of August, but your experience was when it was much higher, right?

Gorin: What finally sparked me putting this thread together was [my husband and I] were eating at Petit Trois and had a fabulous meal, with a great server. It was one of the first nice meals we went out to since I had a baby.

And we saw some ambiguous language on the bottom of the menu that implied that the 18% may go to the server. So we thought that was the gratuity. And the server came out at the end of our meal and explicitly told us that that does not go to her, that if we enjoyed her service, and we were going to leave a gratuity, that should be on top of the 18%.

The whole thing just spoiled the meal. It left a really sour taste in our mouths after having such a nice experience, and we obviously tipped on top of the service fee because we didn't want to screw over the server who had done such a nice job. If you were a server could you imagine thinking a customer is tipping when they're actually not giving you an extra cent??

Q: So the "service fee" can be justified by any number of costs incurred when running a restaurant. Have you had any experiences where, once you’d asked about it, you were assured the fee was going back into the restaurant itself?

Gorin: One experience I had was eating at Bestia. Sometimes it says you can remove the service fee, in this instance it did. So I said to the server, “Would you please remove the service fee and I'll tack it on as additional to your gratuity so that it actually goes to you."

In this case, the server actually said to us, “Oh, no, it does actually go to us. I've seen the books. I love working here." So we knew that that extra fee actually gets given to the server. In that case, I was like, “Oh! Fine. Leave it on."

But as we've seen in other experiences, it doesn't always go to the servers. It goes to the owners and then they can distribute it however they see fit.

Q: I’m curious since you originated the post that inspired the spreadsheet, what are your hopes for a community-built opposition to service fees?

Gorin: It seems like such a collective action problem, right? If everyone comes together and says we don't want these misleading service fees, or it becomes a big enough issue that something like the city council takes it up, then we can actually have an effect. Otherwise, without a joint effort, it's just everybody going into restaurants individually and then not even realizing there's a service fee and awkwardly having to deal with it during their meal. But at the very least it can help people know what to expect ahead of time at these restaurants.

In my opinion, it’s a price transparency issue and someone getting paid a decent wage shouldn't be dependent on whether you're having a good day or a bad day. The service fee just adds to that pressure.

It seems like post-pandemic–when restaurants are really struggling–that there's been a lot more of these service fees and at much higher rates, like the 18% I saw a few months ago.

It'd be nice if gratuity, aka the wages of the workers, were also included as a cost of doing business and reflected in the price, and we could do away with service charges and tipping. Imagine knowing exactly what you were paying when you went to a restaurant just by looking at the menu?

LAist reached out to Bestia for comment on their service fee model and received this response: “We do have a small service charge which goes to directly cover our employee’s healthcare. The reason for the additional line item charge instead of us wrapping it into the menu prices is it would cost customers based on how the tax system works in California. Instead of paying 4% they would be paying 5% or 6%. It’s a way for restaurants to work the system by taking less from the customer while giving more to the employee and less to the state.”

Petit Trois has not yet returned our inquiry.

The interview was edited for clarity and length.

In the '90s, Guadalupe Rosales was a teenager in Los Angeles, part of the party crew scene. She remembers it as beautiful and empowering — but that’s not what she saw years later when she searched for stories about the scene online.

“I noticed that anything that was about Latino culture, '90s culture in L.A. specifically, [focused on] gang violence, everything that was mostly criminalizing,” Rosales said.

Rosales’ new memoir, East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood, is her effort to correct the absence of personal histories of people who were a key part of that scene.

The book is part historical archive, and part personal narrative. It’s also a log of her efforts to bring the scene to life for people in the 21st century, using her training as an artist and a scholar, three decades after the scene’s heyday.

Street Beat magazine documented the California party crew scene in the '90s.

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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection

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Rosales's artistic work today is in demand. Her most recent solo show was "Tzahualli: Mi memoria en tu reflejo" in 2025 at the Palm Springs Art Museum. The Broad acquired a piece by Rosales that it's including in a group show titled "Has the myth been shattered" opening in November.

Her pieces are in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Hammer, LACMA and others. Rosales has taught at UCLA and UC Riverside.

She brings that sensibility to the book. “I really wanted to think about something that could live on hundreds of years from now, something that could be studied, something that could feel empowering, especially for women,” she said.

A recent photo of artist and scholar Guadalupe Rosales.

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Fabian Guerrero

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The new memoir, East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood is about the 1990s party crew scene in L.A.

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The party crew scene in a nutshell

The ‘90s party crew scene was a multi-faceted movement that involved mostly Latino youth in Southern California. The center of the phenomenon was the party, which could take place in small backyards or large empty warehouses.

Photos from the scene.

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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection

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The music was variations of underground techno far from the pop mainstream. DJs played and mixed records on analog turntables, from people like DJ Irene and DJ Attack.

The scene also generated a lot of business activity. Partygoers paid entrance fees, and for alcohol, party organizers paid venues to hold the party and for the DJs to keep people dancing.

It was common to go out with the same group of people. The groups came up with names for their crews, such as Chicanos With Pride, Firme Hinas, Aztek Nation, Frek Show Tribe, Hispanics Causing Panic, and Playerz Cauzin’ Pleazure, among many, many others.

It was all covered by Street Beat, an independent publication loaded with photos of party crews and parties, while individuals honed graphic design styles for the fliers used to promote each party.

Fashion was another essential component of the scene.

Photos from Street Beat magazine in 1992 show the party crew scene in Southern California.

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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection

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In the book, Rosales describes the mesmerized feeling she had when she saw her first house party. She was about 13 years old and watched the young women show off their style through the window of her house in East L.A.

“They wore tank tops and baggy pants with puffed-out front pockets or overalls. Their sneakers — Adidas or Converse Chuck Taylors,” she said. “Two of the girls wore oversized shirts that hung loosely on their frames, and they had short hair like Demi Moore in the movie Ghost. The others wore their hair longer, styled in that wet, wavy look that was so popular, half pulled up with a clip. One took out a travel-size Aqua Net hairspray and mousse, then scrunched up her hair with one hand while spraying her hair with the other.”

The style and dance moves wowed her, she said, but what captivated her then, and to this day, was these young women’s confidence in who they were. It was magnetic, pointed her in a direction she wanted to go.

A photo of Guadalupe Rosales on her 15th birthday, her quinceañera.

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Guadalupe Rosales collection

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The stories

For photos, Rosales drew on her online archive Veteranas and Rucas, (which roughly translates as “experienced ladies and broads“) which she’d kept going through the years, a repository of her own photos from the scene, and other photos from the time, largely from women. She began the project while earning an MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

A photo from Guadalupe Rosales' collection of 1990s ephemera.

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Credit: Guadalupe Rosales collection

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The book includes CD covers from popular bands at the time, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, as well as photos of youth at protests against Prop. 187, the anti-immigrant California ballot measure.

“Youth culture exists for everyone. It might look different depending on where you live and who you are. And for us, as teenagers, we're living in that moment,” she said.

In the book Rosales connects a student walkout at her high school in Montebello with memories of her mother taking her and her sister to protests years before.

“Being an adult, working on this book, being an artist is also about reflecting back and also learning a lot of things that I wasn't aware of,” she said.

East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood is published by One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House and is available Sept. 8.

Two loves of Mexican American culture in L.A. are coming together in a show called “Mariachi Meets The Smiths” at The Ford.

And you know if you know.

Maira Solis is the show’s architect — as well as the director of Mariachi Tierra Mia, the L.A.-based group that will perform a mariachi program the night of Sept. 27 before launching into a set of Smiths covers with the band, The Last Line of Defense.

As to the enduring love Mexican Angelenos have for The Smiths, Solis will be the first to admit she didn’t know.

“This was, like, not intentional at all,” she said of the crossover.

Learning about The Smiths

The inadvertent mash-up happened in December 2024, just hours before Mariachi Tierra Mia was set to play a house gig — a “lucha libre-themed Christmas party” — when their client asked if the group knew any songs by The Smiths.

That would be the ‘80s Manchester band — led by singer-lyricist (and the Pope of Mope himself) Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr — that crafted songs as gorgeous and achy as they are wry and over-the-top. “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” and “Girlfriend in a Coma” are popular titles.

“I was like, ‘I don't think so,’” Solis said. She double-checked with her husband, Ivan Peña, guitarist and singer.

“He turned around, and he's like, ‘I f—ing love The Smiths,’” she recalled.

The Smiths tour posters photographed in London this month. The band and its lead singer remain very popular with Mexican Americans.

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Carl Court

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Getty Images

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A few hours later, Peña, with a serape draped over his Charro suit and little preparation, belted out “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” — and brought down the house.

“Like, the mariachis were jamming out, the taco people, the bar people, everyone in attendance was just like, ‘Yeah,’” Solis said.

That performance, captured on video, went viral on social media. Then the requests started to flood in.

“Hey, we love all your traditional songs,” her clients would tell Solis. “But can you put a Smiths song in there?”

Learning mariachi's centuries-old songbook one gig at a time

Solis picked up the violin in middle school and continued on in high school. Both schools in Boyle Heights offered mariachi programs that exposed her to the music.

Some of the students, she said, were already doing paid gigs and took her under their wing.

Solis was very much humbled at her first backyard gig, armed with a repertoire of about 20 songs learned from school, around age 14.

“I realized, ‘Oh my God, I don't know anything,’” she said, comparing her knowledge to the music’s vast songbook that has been passed down for generations.

Then there are the subgenres. “People will ask for a bolero, a huapango, a son, a ranchera,” she said.

And the music keeps adding new numbers, such as “Risk It All” by Bruno Mars.

Is it really so strange (yes, that’s indeed a Smiths reference) then, that mariachi would meet The Smiths?

“A lot of mariachi songs stand the test of time because they're very poetic,” she said, as they are commonly about heartbreak and hardships. “The melodies really give life to those words.”

Just like the music of The Smiths.

“That's why they're timeless,” Solis said. “The whole purpose  of our ‘Mariachi Meets The Smiths’ — it’s gonna blend that.”

How to go

Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and multiple insurance companies he owns have been sued, alleging they failed to disclose an ongoing federal probe to customers while directing policyholders’ money into Walter’s other companies.

The lawsuit lists Walter, Delaware Life Insurance Co., Clear Spring Life and Annuity, TWG Global Holdings and Walter’s Guggenheim Partners investment firm as defendants.

Ira Rosner, a 67-year-old Florida man, brought the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Miami on Wednesday. He purchased a policy from Delaware Life in April and he had until late May to withdraw his money without penalty. However, the company did not disclose the investigation to him until June,

Rosner is seeking a jury trial in the lawsuit that seeks damages for negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract and aiding and abetting fraud.

TWG Global didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Walter has been under investigation since last year by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission following a whistleblower complaint regarding alleged misrepresented loans made between companies within his business portfolio.

TWG Global Holdings is the holding company through which Walter controls Delaware Life, Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co. and his stake in Guggenheim Partners. TWG Global denied any wrongdoing involving the probe in a statement last month.

Walter and co-owner Todd Boehly sold their stakes in English Premier League club Chelsea this week. Last month, Walter agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers in a surprise move less than a year after buying the NBA franchise from the Buss family. The deal is under review by the league.

The Dodgers have been adamant that Walter has no plans to sell the baseball team.

Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley has won a national education prize recognizing his leadership in improving student achievement in the district.

Brawley will receive the 2026 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, which includes a $50,000 award, at a ceremony in New York City in November.

The McGraw Center for Education Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, which administers the prize, cited the “extraordinary impact” of Brawley and the two other recipients. Brawley won for his work in K-12; prizes are also awarded for higher education and lifelong learning.

“At a time when schools and communities are confronting profound educational challenges, three visionary leaders are demonstrating what meaningful change can look like,” the McGraw Center said.

With about 20,000 predominantly low-income Black and Hispanic students, Compton was singled out nationally for test scores in math and reading that did not fall back during the COVID-19 epidemic and continued to exceed the national and state averages since.

The center noted that Compton’s graduation rates increased from 58% to 94%, and college acceptance rates exceeded 95% during Brawley’s 14 years as superintendent. It also highlighted the district’s expanded college and career pathways and innovative industry and community partnerships.

Last year, EdSource detailed an unusual drama program at Compton’s Dominguez High. Another EdSource article this year highlighted the inclusion of student-centered “calming corners” and learning stations in school renovations.

The McGraw prize, named after the CEO of the McGraw-Hill education publisher, has been awarded since 1988. Other recent California recipients have included Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County schools superintendent; Jody Lewen, president of Tamalpais College, who introduced academic programs at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Stanford University professor and researcher Roy Pea; and Sol Khan, creator of a worldwide free online education and tutoring platform.

The higher education prize went to Shai Reshef, who founded the University of the People, the first nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited online university, and the lifelong learning prize was awarded to Michael Webber, a nationally recognized professor of mechanical engineering and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.