MINNEAPOLIS — A Twin Cities restaurant group has been sued for tacking on a 3% "employee wellness surcharge" to customers' tabs.
Chris Ashbach, a self-described foodie from Arden Hills, brought the lawsuit against Blue Plate Restaurant Company after seeing that itemized charge on his lunch receipt at The Freehouse in the North Loop.
His class-action lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County District Court, aims to end the practice and procure refunds for all the customers who've paid the surcharge since Blue Plate added it in June of 2019.
Ashbach's attorney, Jon Farnsworth, said his client initially thought the surcharge was a tax or some other government-mandated fee, which it wasn't.
"The employee wellness fee was located right above the total amount due, so it does appear as a mandatory charge on the bill, and this is nothing he saw any kind of disclosure on, so it surprised him," Farnsworth explained.
A spokesperson for the Blue Plate group said customers shouldn't be surprised by the surcharge or the need for it. The company issued the following statement:
"Blue Plate Restaurants are proud of the benefits we provide our valued employees and their families. Information about the Employee Wellness Surcharge is printed on menus in our restaurants."
Several online menus for Blue Plate restaurants have yet to be updated. A take-out menu from Blue Plate's Edina Grill had the following line in smaller print at the bottom of both pages:
"To continue to provide quality benefits to our employees, Edina Grill adds a 3% Employee Wellness surcharge to our guest checks. This is not an employee gratuity. Kindly direct any questions you have to our management."
One Edina Grill customer told KARE she had read a newspaper account about the Freehouse surcharge, but was unaware it applied to the Edina Grill and other Blue Plate properties.
"I think it should be more upfront if they’re going to do it, they should not have it in the teeny tiniest print, but I might be okay with it," she said.
"It would probably be better if they just raised the price a few cents on their menus."
Blue Plate isn't the first group to try such a surcharge.
Kim Bartmann of The Bartmann Group told KARE in 2018 that she added a three percent fee to tabs to help her contribute more towards the cost of her employees' health coverage.
The Bartmann Group owns and operates nine restaurants in the Twin Cities.
Farnsworth said Ashbach is sympathetic to the financial plight of full-service restaurants in a time of growing government-issued mandates, especially in cities that are phasing in a $15 per hour minimum wage. But he'd rather see the health care costs reflected in the restaurant's prices, rather than as an itemized extra charge.
"He truly and fundamentally believes this is an unethical business practice, and he wants to expose it. And what we’re seeing is, in the marketplace perhaps, a greater trend to restaurants doing this and that needs to stop."
He said he believed customers would understand if restaurants raised their prices and added a message to their menus saying those prices reflect rising cost of employee health care.
