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.

News that Warner Bros. Discovery is up for sale has Hollywood buzzing. The legendary film studio, which has grown to include streaming services and cable channels, is currently accepting non-binding bids until Thursday. According to company spokesperson Robert Gibbs, they expect to have a decision about the sale by Christmas.

It's become something of a Hollywood parlor game to guess who will ultimately take over the business, which was founded in 1923 by four brothers: Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner. They owned a movie theater in Pennsylvania before coming to Hollywood to make movies.

Warner Brothers Pictures found one of its first silent picture stars in a German shepherd named Rin Tin Tin. By 1927, the studio made history with its feature-length "talkie" picture: The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson.

Over the years, Warner Brothers has made or distributed countless iconic films including: Casablanca, The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon in the 1940's. The list goes on, with titles like A Clockwork Orange, Goodfellas, Barbie, as well as Bugs Bunny and all the Looney Tunes cartoons.

Warners Brothers has had multiple owners over the decades. Three years ago, Warner Media, as it was called, merged with Discovery. And in June, the company announced it would split in two, with film, TV and streaming studios in one camp, and in the other, mostly legacy cable channels, including CNN.

The planned split has not yet happened, and a new buyer might get the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery and its film and TV libraries.

As the film industry continues to consolidate, there's speculation that Warner Brothers' old rival Paramount could take over. Having just merged as Paramount Skydance, CEO David Ellison has already made several overtures.

The idea of streaming giant Netflix buying the company has raised antitrust concerns on Capitol Hill. In an earnings call last month, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors, "We've been very clear in the past that we have no interest in owning legacy media networks. There is no change there."

Industry watchers suggest other suitors could be Comcast, Amazon, or an investor who's not already in the entertainment business.

Regardless of whoever does end up buying the company, theater owners say they hope making movies for cinemas will be a priority.

"As long as we have more movies," says Daniel Loria, senior vice president at The Boxoffice Company, which analyzes data from studios and theaters. "That doesn't mean the same amount, doesn't mean less, but more movies. I think you're going to find folks in the movie theater industry support any business decision that gets us there."

Loria recalls that after Disney purchased Fox and Fox Searchlight, their combined studios significantly reduced the number of films they released in the theaters. Crunching the numbers, Loria says in 2016, a year before the merger announcement, Disney and Fox released a total of 38 theatrical films. This year, the consolidated studios released 18.

That's a problem for theater owners who've been struggling to bring audiences back to cinemas after the COVID-19 pandemic shut them down; they're competing with movie-watching on TVs, computers and phones.

Some theater owners and cinephiles also fear studio conglomerates will only greenlight a few big-budget blockbusters, leaving the lower budget indies behind.

"The concern is you're going to see less of that risk taking, less of that experimentation and less of that embracing new directors, new filmmakers in the future," says Max Friend, the CEO of Filmbot, the ticketing platform for independent cinemas in the U.S. "It's really important that there are studios that are funding and supporting, cultivating that kind of work."

He points out that this year, Warner Brothers made a string of critical hits, including Ryan Coogler's Sinners, the horror film Weapons and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another.

Friend wonders if the next owner will take similar risks with future original, creative films.

Warner Bros. Discovery is a financial supporter of NPR.

Copyright 2025 NPR

A downtown hearing kicked off Wednesday, during which a federal judge will consider holding the city of Los Angeles in contempt of court. The hearing is the latest step in a long-running legal saga regarding the city's response to the region’s homelessness crisis.

The hearing was ordered by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who has been overseeing a settlement in a lawsuit brought against the city by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group of downtown business and property owners. L.A. Alliance sued the city, and county, in 2020 for failing to adequately address homelessness.

Several witnesses are expected to testify during the contempt-of-court hearing, including Gita O’Neill, the new head of the region’s top homeless services agency, and Matt Szabo, the L.A. city administrative officer.

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger watched at least part of Wednesday’s hearing in the courtroom.

Why now?

Carter said in court documents that he’s concerned “the city has demonstrated a continuous pattern of delay” in meeting its obligations under court orders. During a hearing last week, the judge pointed to several delays, including recently reported issues related to data and interviewing city employees.

The judge noted that similar concerns have come up at previous hearings. Carter told attorneys for the city in March 2024 that he “indicated to the mayor that I’ve already reached the decision that the plaintiffs were misled” and “this is bad faith,” according to court transcripts.

The judge said in a Nov. 14 order that he’s concerned the “delay continues to this day.”

The contempt hearing is expected to cover whether the city has complied with court orders and provided regular updates to the court under the settlement agreement.

Reducing delays

Attorneys for the city have pushed back against the hearing, filing objections with the judge and making an unsuccessful emergency request with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to block it from happening.

City authorities also asked the appeals court to press pause on the judge’s order to appoint a monitor in the case to make sure the city stays on track with the settlement. The city argued that Carter handed the monitor “a blank check to interfere with the democratic process,” according to court documents.

The appeals court partly denied the city’s request. It allowed Wednesday’s hearing to move forward, but it agreed to pause the appointment of Daniel Garrie as monitor.

In light of that response, attorneys for the city have argued that looking at the city’s cooperation with Garrie “would be inappropriate” during the hearing and that L.A. “cannot be held in contempt for either the substance or the manner of its compliance with the order,” according to court documents.

Previous hearings related to the settlement have elicited tense questioning of witnesses and harsh words from the judge, who has been vocal about reducing delays and moving the case forward.

In an opening statement Wednesday, Theane Evangelis — one of the attorneys representing the city — urged the judge to “turn down the heat” on the closely watched case. Evangelis said the “city is constantly under fire” in court while L.A. has made “enormous strides” in getting people off the streets.

Elizabeth Mitchell, lead attorney for L.A. Alliance, said the city treats transparency as a burden.

She said Wednesday that the “city still fights oversight harder than it fights homelessness” and that the court should address L.A. 's “consistent” delays throughout the case.

What’s next?

The hearing will resume Dec. 2, when more witnesses can appear in person.

City authorities told the court they believed a one-day hearing wouldn't be enough time to go over all the evidence.

If the judge does find the city of L.A. in contempt of court and that it "isn't doing what it promised to do," the consequences could range from nothing all the way up to serious sanctions, according to Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for L.A. Alliance.

Umhofer told LAist after the hearing that sanctions could include the court ordering more intensive monitoring of the city’s performance, imposing new requirements on the city, monetary penalties or possibly a receivership.

Carter previously stopped short of seizing control of the city’s hundreds of millions of dollars in homelessness spending and handing it to a court-appointed receiver, deciding against that option in a June ruling.

L.A. Alliance is considering asking for an extension to the settlement agreement, Umhofer said.

“The city has gotten away with not complying for a very long time,” he said. “So extending the agreement can be among the things that we might ask for ... given the pattern of delay and obstruction."

Evangelis and Bradley Hamburger, another attorney representing the city, declined LAist’s request for comment after the hearing.