The 18% fee added to every bill at Oro by Nixta goes toward staff salaries and benefits. It helps equalize what servers and cooks take home in pay, ensuring that everyone on the team makes well above the minimum wage, and that public-facing servers aren’t taking home two to three times more than the people in the kitchen.
That’s hardly what one would call “junk,” said Kate Romero, Oro’s co-owner.
But when Minnesota’s new Price Transparency Law, also known as the “junk fees” law, goes into effect Jan. 1, there won’t be any extra charges on restaurant checks. Just a traditional tip line, which leaves it up to customers to assign — and for servers to decide whether to pool gratuities with other staff and distribute it across the board, or keep the money for themselves.
“We have happy staff and people who all want to take care of each other, because we take care of them,” said Romero, who with husband and co-owner Gustavo Romero operates the James Beard Award-nominated Mexican restaurant in northeast Minneapolis. “And now we have to change it all.”
The measure, which Gov. Tim Walz signed into law last May, is designed to eliminate hidden or unexpected fees that show up at the end of a transaction. It requires that the prices displayed for goods and services are exactly what people will pay at checkout and is meant to bring more transparency to things like resort fees added onto hotel bills and extra charges from ticket-sellers. The law still allows automatic gratuity to be added to restaurant checks, but those fees must go directly to workers. What it doesn’t allow is something that’s become common since the pandemic: health and wellness surcharges that go toward restaurants’ business costs.

But Minnesota restaurant owners say those fees give them the ability to offer employees competitive salaries and benefits in an industry with notoriously tight profit margins. And when they’re gone, 5% to 21% of each bill at local restaurants will vanish, leaving restaurants to make some choices: raise prices, reduce worker salaries, cut staff, switch to a counter-service model or, worst-case scenario, close.
Whatever they decide, customers will likely feel the effects.
“I think, honestly, this is going to be a little bit of an earthquake in our industry,” said David Fhima, the chef and owner of several downtown Minneapolis restaurants.