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Italian restaurant chain Romano’s Macaroni Grill is being sued in federal court for adding a $2 “temporary inflation surcharge” to its checks.
Brandee Faria, a Hawaii-based consumer attorney, filed a class action lawsuit against the Denver-based eatery alleging that the inflation fee is deceptively pasted onto customer checks — hiding the fee between orders.
Restaurateurs have said they will have to raise prices as inflation continues to climb — hitting a 40-year high of 6.6 percent last month — forcing them to pay more for their ingredients and delivery costs.
But some restaurants, such as Macaroni Grill, which operates 41 franchises across the country, have chosen to add a surcharge rather than increase their menu prices.
Doing this, Faria argues, distorts a meal’s true cost, giving it an “unfair advantage” over its competitors.
She is now seeking monetary damages, restitution and writ of execution and declaratory relief of an unspecified amount in the Hawaii Federal Court.
Brandee Faria, a Hawaii-based consumer attorney, has filed a class action lawsuit against Macaroni Grill, alleging that the inflation fee is deceptively pasted onto customer checks
Romano’s Macaroni Grill operates 41 franchises in the United States
In the lawsuit, filed in June, Faria claims consumers will not be notified of the “temporary inflation surcharge” until they receive the check at the end of the meal.
She writes that “reasonable consumers” understand that the prices on a menu “are the true and complete prices for the food items, excluding government-imposed taxes and discounts that a customer may be eligible for.”
Only when they get the check, Faria argues, will the $2 prize be revealed to the customer.
Those charges aren’t even at the bottom of the check, which is where most people look first, she told FOX Businesswhich she said “makes it even more blatant and stealthy.”
“By stopping the temporary inflation surcharge between orders for eggplant parmesan and spinach artichoke dip, consumers are being misled into believing the fee is part of their order,” Faria wrote in the lawsuit.
Over the summer, the company began adding a $2 “temporary inflation surcharge” as inflation hit record levels
And if they find that there’s a surcharge, Faria told FOX Business, most customers will choose not to start a fight over $2.
“The whole key to maintaining their ability to continue this is just making it a nominal amount that no one is really going to grumble about,” she said, noting: “Companies like to charge fees or surcharges. adding $2 or 3 percent, the average individual isn’t going to do anything.’
But, Faria said, three budget-conscious clients reached out to her over the summer after noticing the new charges on their bill due to her decades of work specializing in consumer law.
As she told FOX Business, “Restaurants and businesses like to add these fees that have to look official and somehow required, and basically it’s just a way for them to increase their bottom line and reduce their overhead costs.” lower” amid record inflation.
But by calling the surcharge a “temporary inflation fee” rather than an increase in the food itself, Faria argues, Macaroni Grill is misleading customers.
She references a section of the Macaroni Grill website that reads: ‘We are in unusual times with significant macroeconomic headwinds spanning global supply chain deficits and the ever-increasing pressures of inflation.
“These headwinds have had a significant impact on our operating costs and our ability to operate at a high level,” the site said.
“Like many others in the industry, it would have been easy to simply increase our menu prices, but we believe these charges will eventually go away, which is why we chose to use a workaround with the $ 2.
“The fee helps us partially offset the increase in operating costs and maintain the standards our guests have come to expect.”
And by pushing the extra cost on consumers as compensation rather than an increase in menu prices, Faria argues that Macaroni Grill has an “unfair advantage” over its competitors.
As she explains in the lawsuit, by not making consumers aware of the extra surcharge in advance, they cannot properly ‘compare’.
“By falsely marketing food at menu prices that are less than the actual cost of the food to customers, and without showing the temporary inflation allowance, Macaroni Grill is tricking consumers into making food purchases they wouldn’t otherwise.”
DailyMail.com has reached out to Macaroni Grill for comment.
Underlying inflation in the United States has now reached a four-decade high, according to The Commerce Department’s latest consumer price index.
But Macaroni Grill isn’t the only restaurant adding hidden costs amid record inflation.
A restaurant in Coral Springs, Florida, came under fire over the summer after a customer posted a photo of her receipt on Facebook showing an 8 percent charge for “temporary inflation,” the company said. South Florida Sun Sentinel.
And the Wall Street Journal previously reported that fees for a “non-cash adjustment,” “fuel surcharge,” or even “kitchen appreciation” have appeared on restaurant bills across the country.
In fact, the number of restaurants adding service charges rose 36.4 percent between April 2021 and April 2022, the Journal reports, as the average price of supplies for restaurant operations increased 17.5 percent.
Underlying inflation in the United States has now reached a four-decade high, according to The Commerce Department’s latest consumer price index.
It found that core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 6.6 percent in September from a year ago.
That’s the largest annual gain since August 1982, indicating that high prices are spreading broadly throughout the economy, despite the Federal Reserve’s efforts to fight inflation with rate hikes.
Meanwhile, headline U.S. inflation, including food and energy, was up 8.2 percent from a year ago, a figure that remains alarmingly high but marked another drop from the recent high of 9.1 percent recorded in March. June was reached.
The decline in headline inflation was largely due to falling global energy prices, which have since started to rise again.
Biden responded to September’s report by acknowledging prices remain ‘too high’ but argued his administration is making progress against inflation
In a recent interview ahead of the midterm elections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats should steer clear of the issue of inflation.
Biden responded to the report by acknowledging that prices remain “too high” but argued that his administration is making progress against inflation and even claimed that fighting high costs was a “main reason” he became president.
“Today’s report shows some progress in the fight against higher prices, even though we have more work to do,” Biden said in a statement.
“But even with this progress, prices are still too high. Fighting the global inflation that affects countries around the world and working families here at home is my top priority.”
However, in a recent interview ahead of the midterm elections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats should steer clear of the issue of inflation.
“When I hear people talking about inflation… we have to change the subject,” she said. ‘Inflation is a global phenomenon.’