Florida’s New Restaurant Fee Law: 7 Hidden Charges You’ll Start to See
Do you think the number next to the blackened mahi on your menu is what lands on your card?
Not quite.
Florida restaurants have picked up a habit of adding charges below the food total. Since this month, a new state law makes them show those charges before you order, not after.
These are the fees turning up on Florida checks, and the new rules that now govern them.
1. Auto-Gratuity on Big Tables
Bring a party of eight to a Tampa steakhouse, and the tip may already sit on your check.
Restaurants add an automatic gratuity to large tables, often 18 or 20 percent, so a big group doesn’t stiff a server who worked it for two hours.
That part is old news.
What changed in Florida is the paperwork.
Under the state’s 2026 fee law, a restaurant has to print the auto-gratuity on the menu and list it as its own line on your receipt, apart from any tip you add by hand.
Read that line first.
Otherwise, you might tip twice on the same meal.
2. The Flat Service Fee
Sit down at an Orlando bistro, and you may see a service fee on the check whether your table holds two people or ten.
This flat charge, sometimes labeled a service-and-hospitality fee, adds a percentage to every bill.
Owners use it to lift pay across the floor without raising each menu price.
A service fee isn’t the same as your tip, so anything extra you leave still goes to the server.
Two different things.
The Florida law now makes restaurants show that fee up front, so you spot it before you order instead of at the register.
3. Card Surcharge
Pay with plastic in Florida, and you might owe a few percent more than the menu says.
Some restaurants tack a card surcharge onto the bill to cover their swipe costs, and the card networks cap it at around 3 percent.
Cash dodges it.
Florida once banned these surcharges, but a federal appeals court struck down that ban years ago, so they’re legal here as long as a restaurant discloses them.
The new law covers card surcharges too, so the percentage shows on the menu and appears on its own receipt line.
4. Kitchen Appreciation Fee
That line reading kitchen appreciation on your Fort Lauderdale check isn’t a typo.
Restaurants add it, usually 2 to 10 percent, and send the money straight to the cooks and dishwashers in the back.
The cooks split it.
Servers and bartenders take home tips, but back-of-house workers earn a flat wage, so owners built this fee to close that gap.
It works like a tip you don’t control, which is why the Florida law treats it as one more operations charge and requires it up front.
Psst! How much do you know about tipping and restaurant fees? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Fee and Tip IQ
Answer these questions on restaurant fees, tipping, and the fine print. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
The FTC’s 2025 junk-fee rule forces all-in upfront pricing, but only in which two industries?
5. The Wellness Fee
Order dinner in Miami Beach, and a wellness fee may sit near the bottom of your check.
Restaurants use this charge, sometimes called an employee benefits fee, to help cover health coverage for their staff.
Coverage costs money.
The idea started in cities that required restaurants to fund worker health plans, and it spread as owners hunted for ways to pay for benefits.
In Florida, the wellness fee now falls under the same disclosure rule, so restaurants have to name it and its amount right on the menu.
6. To-Go Packaging Fee
Order your Key West grouper to go, and you may pay a packaging fee on top.
Restaurants charge a flat amount, often a dollar or two, for the containers, bags, and utensils a takeout order needs.
Boxes aren't free.
Third-party delivery apps stack their own service and delivery fees on top, which stay separate from the restaurant's own packaging line.
Florida's law counts delivery and to-go fees as operations charges too, so the amount has to show on the online ordering page before you check out.
The rule reaches any public food service establishment, from a corner diner to a beach resort.
7. Living Wage Surcharge
Some Florida restaurants add a living wage surcharge, a percentage aimed at lifting hourly pay.
Owners started adding it as pay rose, since Florida voters approved a plan that raises the state minimum wage to $15 an hour by late 2026.
Wages went up.
Restaurants use the surcharge to raise pay without reprinting every menu price, close to the service fee but tied straight to labor costs.
The 2026 law treats it like the rest, so any restaurant using a living wage surcharge has to disclose the amount and break it out on the bill.
What the Law Requires
Florida's fee law doesn't ban any of these charges.
It only forces restaurants to disclose them.
A restaurant has to print any operations charge on the menu in the same size type as the food descriptions, or post it on register signage where no menu exists.
The charge also breaks out on your itemized receipt, listed apart from gratuity and apart from sales tax.
Even the Federal Trade Commission's 2025 junk-fee rule leaves restaurants out, so this stays a state matter.
Other states have written their own fee-transparency rules, and more keep joining.
An earlier draft of the Florida bill would have limited these charges to parties of six or more, but lawmakers cut that line before it passed.
Read before you order.
Florida's law skips a private lawsuit, so you can't sue over a surprise fee. But the state can act against a restaurant that keeps one hidden.
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