Представь се гостинок погледи в чужой июлский меню и видля бургера по $18. Они поручат два, добавят планички, и ождваю чек на $52 плюс тай и чаеве. Вместотв как чек приходит на $61.20: 4% „operations charge" (операционен плат) и отделна „delivery-platform-style" сервис лине и за dine-in, и никако не показано возло цена бургера. По новому флоридскому SB 606, този е забре сея на — от 1 юли 2026. То чек не комплeшфул — и фикс касается вашего меню, вашего вебсайта, вашего POS речпитной формы, и внутреннего учета.
Florida calls the fix its „operations charge" transparency rule. It does not ban service charges, auto-gratuities, delivery fees, or card surcharges. It bans hiding them. If you run a public food service establishment in Florida and you add any mandatory fee on top of food and beverage, you now have a specific, font-size-level duty to show it before the guest pays and to break it out again after they pay.
What Actually Changed in SB 606
SB 606 is Senate Bill 606 (2025), signed as Chapter 2025-113. Most of the bill — new rules for removing guests from public lodging and food service establishments — took effect July 1, 2025. The operations-charge provisions were deliberately delayed one year. The legislature amended Florida Statutes section 509.214, and that section becomes enforceable July 1, 2026.
The core move is definitional. Before SB 606, section 509.214 covered only an „automatic gratuity or service charge included in the price of the meal." SB 606 replaces that narrow language with a new term, „operations charge", defined as:
An automatic fee or charge, other than a government-imposed tax, that a customer is required to pay in addition to the cost of the food and beverage purchased. The term includes, but is not limited to, service charges, automatic gratuities, credit card surcharges, and delivery fees.
Two companion definitions were also added for clarity:
- „Gratuity" or „tip" means a sum presented by a customer as a gift or contribution in recognition of service, where payment and amount are at the customer's discretion.
- An operations charge is, by contrast, mandatory. If the guest cannot decline it, it is not a tip — even if you call it a tip.
That distinction drives both disclosure and bookkeeping. A voluntary tip is the guest's money passing through you to staff. An operations charge is your revenue (or your reimbursement for a cost you chose to pass on), even if you later distribute some of it.
The bill also contains two limiting clauses restaurants should note:
- No private cause of action is created under section 509.214 itself. A guest cannot sue you under 509.214 alone for a missing disclosure.
- Fixed-price exceptions: the rule does not apply to a dining plan, package, or fixed-price meal where the total price is disclosed before purchase (think a $55 prix fixe or a bundled catering package with a stated all-in price).
Neither clause is a free pass. Before SB 606, hidden mandatory fees were already potentially actionable under Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA), Fla. Stat. § 501.201 et seq. What changes is evidentiary leverage: FDUTPA asks whether a reasonable consumer would be deceived; SB 606 now gives regulators and plaintiffs a bright-line checklist — font size, placement, line-item separation — to show you did or did not meet it.
Where You Must Disclose — and How
SB 606 is prescriptive about where and how the notice appears. Three surfaces matter before payment, and two matter at and after payment.
1. Menus, Contracts, and Online Ordering
Every public food service establishment that imposes an operations charge must include notice on each applicable surface:
- Food menu — where prices are listed
- Written contract — for banquet, catering, and event services
- Website or mobile application where food and beverage orders are placed — including your own site, a QR-code ordering page, and third-party marketplace listings you control
The notice must state both the amount or percentage of the charge and its purpose. „3% service charge" alone is insufficient if the purpose is not stated. „3% operations charge to offset rising labor and benefits costs, distinct from a gratuity" satisfies both prongs.
Font rule: the notice must appear in a font equal to or greater than the font used for menu item descriptions or the general provisions of the written contract. A footnote in 6-point gray type beneath a menu printed in 10-point black fails. A clearly readable line adjacent to prices, in the same size and weight as the dish descriptions, passes. The same logic applies to contracts — not tucked into an exhibit, but in the body where fees are described.
No-menu fallback: if you do not provide menus, table service, or written contracts (common for counter-service, food halls, and ghost kitchens), the notice must appear in a obvious and clearly readable manner on the menu board or on a sign by the register where the customer pays.
Online, the timing matters as much as the placement. The disclosure must appear before checkout, not added silently on the final screen. Delivery and third-party apps have been the largest source of junk-fee complaints, and SB 606 targets that pattern directly: the fee must be shown where the guest builds the order, not injected at payment.
2. The Bill Presented to the Customer
In addition to the pre-purchase notice, there must be a notice on the face of the bill provided to the customer that an operations charge is included, and the notice must clearly state the percentage or amount. This is the paper or screen bill the server presents or the register displays before payment — not just the post-payment receipt.
3. The Receipt
Each copy of the receipt the customer receives must contain separate lines for:
- gratuity (voluntary tip)
- operations charge
- sales tax
If the operations charge itself includes an automatic gratuity component, that component must be separately stated on the receipt. A single „fees & tips" line that nets them together is noncompliant, even if the pre-purchase disclosure was correct.
That three-line separation is not just a disclosure nicety. It determines how you book the transaction.
Why the Receipt Layout Changes Your Books
When every fee was buried in a single total, many POS systems posted a single revenue line and a single tax line. SB 606 forces that breakout to mirror how the accounting should have worked all along.
Operations charge vs. tip vs. tax — different accounts, different tax treatment
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Voluntary gratuity / tip: not your revenue. Record it as a negative (Tips Payable) when collected, then output when distributed to staff. Tips are not subject to sales tax and are not revenue for sales-tax or income-tax purposes, though they are wages for payroll once distributed.
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Automatic gratuity that is mandatory: Florida and the IRS both treat this as a service charge, not a tip, regardless of label. The IRS has held since Rev. Rul. 2012-18 that any charge the customer cannot avoid is a service charge — i.e., employer revenue that becomes wages only when you pay it out. For sales tax, a mandatory service charge tied to the sale of food is generally part of the taxable sales price in Florida, while a truly voluntary tip is not. SB 606's separate-line receipt makes this visible; your POS must not reclassify a mandatory auto-gratuity as a tip behind the scenes.
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Operations charge (non-gratuity portion): this is revenue — often a separate revenue account like „Service Charges" or „Operations Fees" so you can track margin on the underlying food versus fees. For a typical 3% operations charge on $10,000 of food sales, that is $300 of additional revenue, not a reduction of a cost.
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Credit card surcharge: if you add a surcharge for card payments, the surcharge is also gross revenue (you charged the guest more), offset by the merchant discount fees you pay the processor (an expense). Do not net the surcharge against processing fees; show both gross. Florida caps card surcharges at the cost of acceptance, and Visa/Mastercard network rules add their own disclosure and limits — SB 606's disclosure is additive, not a substitute.
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Delivery fee: same principle — delivery-fee income is revenue, distinct from food sales, important for delivery-channel profitability analysis. If a third-party marketplace collects the fee, reconcile it as gross marketplace sales minus marketplace fees, not as a single net deposit.
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Sales tax: must be its own line. In Florida, sales tax is generally computed on the sales price including mandatory charges. Burying a mandatory charge inside a tax-included total understates taxable sales and invites audit adjustments.
A simple posting example
A $100 food sale with a 4% operations charge ($4), a $6 voluntary tip, and 7% sales tax on the taxable amount ($104 × 0.07 = $7.28):
- Gross food sales: $100.00
- Operations charge revenue: $4.00
- Sales tax payable: $7.28
- Tips payable: $6.00
- Total collected: $117.28
If your POS nets everything into „Sales $110.28 + Tax $7.00," you have misstated taxable sales, hidden a revenue stream you may need to explain to a lender, and lost the ability to report service-charge wage expense correctly.
The Most Expensive Mistakes to Avoid
1. Disclosing once but not everywhere. A correct menu formula with no matching website or QR-code disclosure still violates section 509.214(2). Audit every place where a price appears: printed menus, menu boards, table tents, catering contracts, your website, you ordering, and each third-party marketplace.
2. Using a footnote font though a magnifier read. The „equal to or greater than menu items font" test is objective. If your menu descriptions are 11-point, your operations charge cannot be 8-point. Apply the same to online.
3. Calling a mandatory charge a „gratuity" and posting it tip income. That mislabels revenue as a pass-through, understates sales, and creates payroll reporting errors. If the guest must pay, book it as revenue first, then as wage expense when distributed — withhold properly.
4. Nesting the payment. A $1,000 DoorDash payout that reflects $1,250 in sales and fees minus $250 in commission is not $1,000 of sales. Book $1,250 gross sales and $250 expense, then reconcile the $1,000 cash.
5. Forgetting the invoice vs. receipt difference. SB 606 requires notice on both the bill presented before payment and the receipt after payment, with the third line. Updating only the receipt template misses the bill.
6. Assuming the fixed-price exemption covers a la carte. That $65 prix fixe disclosed up front is fine. A pizza check where you add 18% for parties of 6+ is not — that 18% is an operations charge must be disclosed.
A Quick Compliance Check You Can Do Today
Use this as a sole-proprietor’s checklist; larger groups run it per location because menus and POS patterns vary.
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Count every mandatory fee you charge: auto-gratuity for large parties, general service fee, kitchen appreciation, delivery fee, credit card extra, event service, etc. For each, note amount and purpose.
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Map each fee to law vocabulary. If it's required and added to food/beverage, it's an operations charge under 509.214(1)(b), even if your menu uses another name. Voluntary tips stay outside.
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Rewrite the notice sentence to include both amount and purpose, e.g.: „A 3.5% operations charge is added to all checks to offset increased operating costs. This is not a gratuity and is retained by the restaurant."
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Update every pre-payment surface with that sentence in correct font: reprint menus; update contract template; edit website, QR, and app ordering; sync to third-party marketplaces and screenshot.
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Update the correct templates in your POS. Create three separate lines (tip / operations charge / sales tax), and if inside the operations charge есть auto-gratuity, a fourth sub-line. Test with a live small £10 order and keep the proof.
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Retrain servers and counter staff to say the fee in a consistent way: mandatory vs. voluntary, what it supports, what it is not. Confusion over written + inconsistent verbal = violation.
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Fix the chart of accounts. Create separate revenue accounts for food, beverage, operations charges; add liability accounts for Tips Payable and Service-Charge Wages Payable; make sure POS auto-grat doesn’t post to tips payable.
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Validate every month. Reconcile POS gross sales + operations charges to bank deposits minus processor fees and market commissions; confirm sales-tax payable equals taxable sales (including mandatory charges) × rate; spot-check two receipts per week for at least three distinct lines.
Тендеции в прозрачности цен — как это местечко
Флорида не одна. Federal Trade Commission’s rulemaking by “junk fees,” California SB 478 “honest pricing” (effective 2024), и ряд штатных ограничений на доставку (включили NYC’s lawsuit against third-party big commissions) all push 아이디어: the price that consumer sees at point of choice must include mandatory charges. SB 606 is Florida's restaurant-specific version.
** Third-party enforcement also tightens. Delivery apps already face penalty for drip pricing; a Florida receipt that clearly splits basic fees (tip / operations charge) better。
Звяжи вкобы: keep у knowledge
SB 606 rewards owners who treat it as a 시스템 이 문제, not a wording problem. The ones who will survive an июль контроль are those who made one единый чейс — same phrase, same size, same checklist, same accounts — plus took a screenshot and a receipt with a date.
Соблюдение — beyond simple compliance: when each type has its own accounting, you can answer business 질: margin بدون وسيط؟ Which area bears fees? Are auto-grats funding wages 맞는 거야?
Simplify Your Financial Management
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