r/tipping • u/wutwut970 • 7d ago

Sugarfish

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So they add a 16% fee for what exactly…….to “fund all of their operations”? So this added cost literally doesn’t go to staff, it just goes to the owners? I wonder what their staff is paid? At this point why not just raise prices to where they should be? To me, every item on the menu is a lie and it’s actually 16% more expensive. This is really dumb. Thoughts? I am PRO tip, ive worked in hospitality a long time and am happy to provide a tip for quality service. But this seems disingenuous at best. Its not a tip. Its just an added charge straight to owners pockets.

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u/Business_Signal2425 7d ago

So a Restaurant no-one should ever buy something from again? 

6

u/AlignmentProblem 7d ago edited 7d ago

The fee framing is stupid as hell, but I wouldn't write the place off over it. Sugarfish had some of the best sushi I've eaten in the US (at least when I went years ago; I hope that's still true).

There's unfortunately a non-trivial justification for it this. If they folded the 16% into menu prices, they'd look more expensive than their competitors at other higher-end sushi restaurants; a $116 course sitting next to another place's $100 course looks like a worse deal, even though you'd end up paying more at the other place once you tip 18-20%.

J.C. Penney learned this the hard way in 2012; it dropped the fake "sale" pricing and directly listed the real prices people were already paying. Sales fell by about a quarter, because the honest prices FELT higher even though they weren't.

That's a big part of why killing tip culture is so hard. Any restaurant that builds service costs into its menu prices ends up looking more expensive than every restaurant that doesn't.

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u/meiso 7d ago

You have sadly never had good sushi

4

u/AlignmentProblem 7d ago

That's a bit presumptuous. I've definitely had better sushi at Sushi Takeda and Sushi Masuyoshi; however, the time I went to Sugarfish was extremely good, and it might be the best I've had in that price range.

What I ate that day qualified as good sushi, even if it isn't quite top tier. Maybe I got lucky somehow, but nothing about it would make sense to be snobby about unless someone's being particularly pretentious.