Cafes, restaurants face fines for service charges

ANKARA

The Trade Ministry has imposed hefty fines on several restaurants and cafes over adding service charges without visibly displaying them on price lists and informing customers.

According to an announcement made by the ministry on April 7, the service charge penalty aligns with an obligation effective from Jan. 1 for restaurants to visibly display price lists at the entrance and on tables.

The statement also emphasized that any additional fees, such as service charges or under any other name beyond those listed in the tariff and price list, must be disclosed accordingly. The restaurants may charge an extra service fee of up to 10 percent of the total bill.

In March, a cafe chain in Istanbul was fined a total of 834,000 Turkish Liras ($26,000) for not displaying price information for some items on the menu and for imposing service charges.

"Widespread and intensive inspections of price labels, tariffs and price lists will continue in 2024, and an administrative fine of 2,172 liras will be imposed for each violation detected," the statement said.

Before the Eid al-Fitr celebrations, the ministry intensified inspections not only to verify price disclosure but also to ensure that prices for products such as sugar, chocolate and sweets, which are in high demand during the holiday period, were not unreasonably inflated.

In addition to scrutinizing products with high demand, the inspections also examined the labels of basic food and necessity items to check for exorbitant price hikes, discrepancies between label and checkout prices and whether outdated price information was present on labels.

Participated in inspections at the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul, a senior official from the ministry noted that inspections were conducted in 18 out of 30 districts of the city with 130 personnel ahead of the holiday.