A hot new French restaurant in Hancock Park serves up rich dishes, delicate pastries and a surprise when the bill comes around. Republique servers explain to customers that a 3% surcharge called the “Healthy LA” tax pays for workers’ health care.
RELATED: Healthcare surcharge riles customers at top LA eatery
Managing partner Bill Chait told KPCC’s Ben Bergman, “We knew that we wanted to offer the opportunity to get everybody into the health insurance pool....The problem is the structure for health care really makes it very difficult to insure part-time people... [W]e concluded that the most transparent and effective way to do it was to have a charge that basically was illuminated to the guest as opposed to one that is buried inside of the cost of the food.”
Under Obamacare, businesses like Republique with more than 50 full-time employees have to offer affordable health care benefits or pay fines. (This week, that mandate was delayed again, to 2016.)
However, Taylor Parsons, Republique’s sommelier and beverage director, says he doesn’t see the surcharge as “political at all; it’s a pragmatic decision.”
Taylor continues, “I don't even think about it in the context of health care, I just think about it in the context of having worked in restaurants for the better part of a decade and seeing how broken the existing system is."
Still, some customers perceive it as political and others as just too much information. What do you think? Do you see it as political? Do consumers want to know about a business’ overhead? If you’re a business owner, how much information do you share with your patrons about the cost of doing business?
Poll: What do you think about the surcharge? Let us know:
Guest:
Ben Bergman, KPCC Business Reporter