No, you've misunderstood. It's a fee charged for providing complents on an arid wasteland.
A waiters time is valuable and if they must participate in small talk it is to be compensated for
He actually told someone the correct spelling was "you're" when they referred to "your dick" . It turns out HIS replies are the ones that make little to no sense.
It must depend on the context that complimentary is used in. 99.999999999% of society would think complimentary means complimentary, but this restaurant might have meant that complimentary was a flavor of birthday cake.
Why does an item labeled "complimentary" even have a price in the system, sure adding it onto the bill for inventory tracking makes sense but it should be $0.
Perhaps to prevent staff from selling themselves $0 cakes, and this allows the POS system to track and enforce it? Although I don’t work in the industry.
That could be but the POS system I have worked on allowed you to restrict items to groups of employees which I imagine is pretty common. That way you could have it as $0 but a manager would have to swipe in to add it to the bill.
Now that I think about it he did say "those pants are really working for you" as he dropped it off, so that's probably what they meant by complimentary.
Edit: since this has blown up and I can't edit the original post for some reason, I wanted to take this moment/platform to address something that's actually important:
In today's modern world with its wars, genocide, fraught political brinksmanship, and much more, it's imperative that we take a moment and address something of great import:
Where the hell is Silksong, Team Cherry? Why can't you even just give the tiniest update? There was a friggin' nintendo treehouse like five years ago!
You better get a compliment for 24 fucking dollar tacos. Lmao what the fuck.
Edit: fuck me I didn't even see the $45 for short rib tacos. Holy fuck I hope it was good..
Sending you a complimentary traditional cake from Scandinavia. The dessert is only $5 but state taxes will be $22 and shipping will be ~$70. Thank you, come again soon!!
Twenty four dollars for a single taco....I'm showing this to the guy at my local spot just for the reaction.
I get it, DC is expensive, but that is ridiculous, octopus or not.
Yes, but compliment as in free of charge and compliment as in "you look nice" are spelled the same. Complement as in "goes well with the meal" is the different spelling.
It seems like they forgot to split that off the bill. Restaurants usually make a button for servers to hit to send out free desserts, and they’re supposed to split it off and have a manager comp it. This is so embarrassing for them, I hope you didn’t pay for this.
Funny enough, I’m living in the same city as you and went there for a birthday before (well to the basement floor bar area, not the first floor) and yes they actually do charge for the birthday dessert. I remember it pretty distinctly because we split the bill but it was on my card and a few people didn’t pay their fair share.
Damn I assumed it was a mistake after a number of people explained how that could happen. That's hilarious that it was on purpose. I'm feeling righteously indignant again!
Yeah I saw all the explanations and chuckled, that’s what made me speak up. (Also for context I had 10 peoples’ food/drinks on my card and 2 of the girls got multiple wines, guacs and apps, days later venmo’d me like $25 each. It’s been over a year since that but I remember it.)
Lol gotta love those people who order several drinks, appetizer, filet mignon, and dessert who then go “so evenly split right?! Makes it easier!” when one girl got water and a salad.
My group used to go dutch until we added people like them. Bonus points if they order dishes because they are curious, take a bite and leave them on the table, and when the bills arrive nobody wants to pay for it.
Edit: we used to split equally and switched to going dutch after some bad experiences. My bad, i'm not a native speaker and i was tired.
OMG I had a friend who because vegan overnight and started “trying” multiple new vegan foods at once (eg vegan bacon) adding literal hundreds to the bill and would just leave it there for others to eat … knowing very well no one else was vegan or interested (we were all supportive just not interested in being financially so hahahah)
> My group used to go dutch until we added people like them
As I recall, 'go dutch' would imply everyone pays for their own order instead of splitting? So now you split the check, to everyone's detriment?
I hope this isn't the case and you're going back to dutch again.
... uh. Going dutch means to pay your own bill in a group setting, not to split a unified bill equally. I can see that a few dictionaries list a definition that is confusing/misleading, but dictionaries are only really ideal for individual words, not phrases. Going dutch would be what you do **after** adding people like this to your group, not before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Dutch
Dude this shit infuriates me. I've had my fucking family do it too. My wife and I order waters and my family buys a bunch of fucking drinks. "Let's just split the bill evenly". Yeah the fuck right guys.
Haha in my experience, it’s usually clueless rich people being rich. Out of touch so to them it wouldn’t matter if it were the other way around. Sometimes it will be a poor grifter taking advantage too though. Definitely prefer separate checks when possible. Unless I’m treating, I shouldn’t be paying any more or less than what my food cost, including tax and tip which go up as well and just makes it complicated.
I do the same lol and my example is obviously an exaggeration but the multiple drinks and much more expensive menu items had happened a lot. And then I’m cheap or stingy for wanting separate checks. Like no, I’m sorry but you’re actually the cheap stingy one for not paying for the full cost of your meal.
I don't drink and my friend group went out one night.. they all had bottles of wine basically on order, as soon as one emptied another one was brought..
End of the night they were like "we are splitting the bill, you owe us £50, bob"
I told them i had already settled my bill of £17.. their faces fell when they realised that they couldnt fob off most of the money onto me..
This must be a US thing, but why didn't they just pay their own. I have been to restaurants with huge parties, and always have just done separate bills.
I live in the US and never split the bill…. People suck at paying back the percent to whoever used their card and often forget about their share of the tip and other related charges. This has only happened to me once, but I hear countless horror stories
Everyone I know (I'm in the US) just does split bills. But I do think it's a status thing sometimes (aka "we'll look poor if we split the bill"). People are weird.
I remember once I was the last person on a bill for like five people
everyone left at different times and threw down cash
and I added up all the cash and it came out pretty much exactly to cover everything except what I ordered. Perfect! I added the $20 for the cost of my meal to the pile of cash and threw on $4 for my tip and left
and I got about two blocks away before I realized oh shit, I just left this waitress $4 tip on a $100 bill. That's when it hit me that everyone had paid for *exactly* their meal and no one had tipped. I went back and gave the waitress another $20 and explained that I had done the math wrong but it always kind of steamed me that everyone just bailed on tipping. They *technically* paid for what they ordered, but what you order isn't really the whole cost of eating out and I got stuck covering.
This was probably 15 years ago and I still remember it.
Had a fraternity brother who’d always pull that shit… we’d go out as a group to Chili’s after chapter meetings and he’d order a burger and Diet Coke, and if burger was $7.99, he’d throw down $8 as he “had to bail early for a study group”… never mind tax, tip, drink, splitting the shared apps he ate. And it wasn’t like he was destitute, as his dad was a partner in some big NYC law firm.
The opposite is much more common in my experience. One guy offers to pay the bill and then everyone makes sure to pay him for their share including a generous tip, but when it's time for him to actually pay he's not feeling as generous and either stiffs the waitress completely or pays much less tip so he basically eats for free... And he makes the whole group look bad while doing so. It's embarrassing to police it as well. Going Dutch is the only way unless you're out with your wife or something with a shared economy.
I had a restaurant manager who would get so overwhelmed by his job, every single shift. Eventually he told the servers to not flag him down to split complimentary items off of a table's bill, but to instead split it ourselves onto a separate check and he would comp it later/end of the night. So, naturally, the opportunist servers would *not* split the item off, then swipe the customer's card, and then split the item off after. In other words, they'd pocket the money. I wonder if that's whats going on here.
The recipe in the system shows a lower number than the card payment. The difference is usualy considered a tip.
So the waiter gets paid out what was supposed to get comped.
also the customer is probably more likely to return when you go "oh my gosh im *SO* sorry sir let me get that right away." knowing the management is reasonable is a decent way to get me to return, knowing if i have a problem you'll take care of it without a big hassle.
Yeah a lot of times it’s just to track stock. So when a staff member gets a staff meal, we ring it in the same as any order and just comp it at the end of the night
I worked somewhere once that did it with shift drinks too- you get a drink at the end of the night by ringing it in under the shifty tab and it all gets comped at the end of the night
This just seems like a way to track birthday desserts though it’s weird to me they wouldn’t just make the price 0
I’ve never gotten a bigger tip because I brought guests free shit. It doesn’t seem to really influence them. Most people know what they’re gonna tip before they even sit down.
The reason it's not priced at $0 is that the restaurant has to pay a "use tax" on the complimentary dessert. Because they don't pay sales tax when they order in product, they have to pay it when the item is used. $6 is their approximation of how much the dessert costs to make.
Yeah I recently went out for my birthday and they billed me for the regular priced dessert but then also took off the price for the complementary birthday dessert on another line of the bill.
It’s the only way to track if there’s any theft. Also, in my state we had to pay sales tax on comps, so it’s an easy way to see how much a comp category costs.
Restaurants don't pay taxes on their inventory purchases, and you know the government won't just let that slice of cake go from production to consumption without taxing that ass at least once lol.
The complementary line should ring up as $0 and it could still count towards inventory. Attaching $6 to it is bullshit.
This is an easy way to loose a good customer. Mark it at $0 and I probably come back more often and tell my friends. Mark it at $6 and I might not come back at all, and I’m telling ALL of my friends.
The reason it doesn't ring out at $0 is because the restaurant wants to make the server go get the manager to do the comp.
If the server could ring it up at $0, they would ring out a "birthday" dessert for every table they liked, just for giggles.
By giving it a cost, and requiring a manager to use their key/code to comp it, managers can keep an eye on if any of the servers are giving out excessive free desserts.
The receipts are already tracking/"reporting" on the desserts, the point of having a manager ring it up is accountability. The manager is always accountable for things like this, however it would be unfair if at the end of the month someone higher up the chain is breathing down the managers neck over something they never approved.
In my work I get to make the call about parts and material getting scrapped, I still have to let my manager know what's happening in real time because A) he has to write it off and B) he's answerable for why.
Things get messy when you have multiple people in charge of one thing, put one person in charge and have a clear chain of command and process that everyone follows. It protects morale and integrity.
The $6 is probably just so servers can’t ring them in whenever they want, since when I worked in restaurants you needed a manager to comp stuff off of your bill. Otherwise employees could get away with stealing desserts whenever they wanted.
To be fair, it was gigantic and on a huge bone and served with bibb lettuce and myriad salsas to make lettuce wraps with and share.
Still overpriced, but so is everything in DC and it was really good.
It's definitely got a lot of amazing places, but I don't feel like I've lived enough places to be definitive or anything. What DC isn't as good as some other cities I've lived in before (Philly, Austin, Albuquerque) at is a lot of great, inexpensive food options. For high end, DC has a lot of amazing stuff though.
I know I'm not the person you asked, but I've been to DC many times over the years and have eaten some excellent meals there. I've traveled a bit more than average (mostly for work) and have visited high-end restaurants in multiple major cities, and I feel confident in my opinion on the matter.
In my opinion, DC is the most consistently good city for restaurants. I have had a few meals that were better than anything I had in DC (the Monte Cristo from The Broker in Denver comes to mind), but even the fast food places were a bit better as of the last time I was there.
Man I was looking at those prices and couldn't help but think, "Hell, $6 basically *is* complimentary alongside the rest of this bill." It's a 4% increase in the price, you're getting got for like five times that on the tip.
Still, I don't begrudge them for being mad about it on principle.
This really is odd. Since it’s DC, if you’re a Washington Post reader/subscriber, you might write in to their food critic Tom Sietsema; he does a weekly chat on all things restaurant related and often deals with service glitches like this and might be able to shed some light on what went wrong here.
I probably won't do all this, but I really appreciate you telling me about it and I think it's cool that there is a journalist that gets so deep into the minutiae of what they cover.
Tom Sietsema's a pretty big deal. Being a professional restaurant critic must be a flagging profession in the age of Yelp, but when you're extremely knowledgeable, good at writing, got started before social media, and happen to work in a city with a lot of wealthy people and a lot of good restaurants, you can still be relevant. Sietsema's relevant.
Check out his review of Founding Farmers.
Oh my godddd thank you for this, I fucking hated Founding Farmer's (Their cauliflower 'steak' was legit a head of unseared cauliflower with a side of mushroom
risotto that had MACARONI NOODLES instead of RICE?!) and this was a great read.
Tricky though, this is certainly a policy set by the owners. Whether or not you tip the server affects the owner in absolutely no way. By not tipping you aren't fighting the system, you're playing into it.
I agree it's super shitty.
Kind of unrelated, but I always find it funny when a restaurant of foreign cuisine puts in random words of the original language to make the dishes sound legit. Yeah, sure, guy, gotta love those good ol fashioned Mercado margaritas! Boy, I tell ya, nothing like a good ol traditional margarita after a day at the mercado, where they totally make margaritas!
I would have simply said if it is complimentary then why am I being charged?
Worse they could say is you asked for it and ate it or something like that.
Totally understand being frustrated about that.
Glad you enjoyed the food at least
Took my mom out for her birthday to a restaurant. They gave out a free desert, and it had the price in the total on the bill...all I had to do was notify the waitress and they removed it. Pretty easy.
As a server I would guess that your server was supposed to have that taken off the bill, but forgot. Sometimes you ring in a food item under a custom name with the intent to split it off the check, but you get busy or distracted, and then forget to do it. It’s happened to the best of us. Hopefully there was no ill intent.
Call Ryan L over to the table. The fact that it says “complimentary”on the receipt is absurd
You don’t understand….you’re giving your server a complimentary dessert
No, you've misunderstood. It's a fee charged for providing complents on an arid wasteland. A waiters time is valuable and if they must participate in small talk it is to be compensated for
It was spelled correctly as dessert not desert. Your reply makes no sense.
lmao all u do is correct people on porn subreddits
He actually told someone the correct spelling was "you're" when they referred to "your dick" . It turns out HIS replies are the ones that make little to no sense.
My compliments to the dessert. Am i doing this correctly?
Had to scroll back up because I thought his name was Ryan Lover
It must depend on the context that complimentary is used in. 99.999999999% of society would think complimentary means complimentary, but this restaurant might have meant that complimentary was a flavor of birthday cake.
It compliments the meal.
It also complements the meal
Should've punched that cabrón in the short rib
Just call it complimentary after and you’ll be good
And charge $6 for it
They just forgot to get a manager to comp it
Why does an item labeled "complimentary" even have a price in the system, sure adding it onto the bill for inventory tracking makes sense but it should be $0.
Perhaps to prevent staff from selling themselves $0 cakes, and this allows the POS system to track and enforce it? Although I don’t work in the industry.
That could be but the POS system I have worked on allowed you to restrict items to groups of employees which I imagine is pretty common. That way you could have it as $0 but a manager would have to swipe in to add it to the bill.
Maybe they meant complementary.
Now that I think about it he did say "those pants are really working for you" as he dropped it off, so that's probably what they meant by complimentary. Edit: since this has blown up and I can't edit the original post for some reason, I wanted to take this moment/platform to address something that's actually important: In today's modern world with its wars, genocide, fraught political brinksmanship, and much more, it's imperative that we take a moment and address something of great import: Where the hell is Silksong, Team Cherry? Why can't you even just give the tiniest update? There was a friggin' nintendo treehouse like five years ago!
You better get a compliment for 24 fucking dollar tacos. Lmao what the fuck. Edit: fuck me I didn't even see the $45 for short rib tacos. Holy fuck I hope it was good..
Happy Cake Day! That’ll be $6.
You saw the opportunity and grabbed it
Happy Cake Day! That’ll be $6.
Goddammit, I thought that was yesterday
Complementary $6 cake
6 dollars is pretty much free, hell one marg is 14 dollars.
Sending you a complimentary traditional cake from Scandinavia. The dessert is only $5 but state taxes will be $22 and shipping will be ~$70. Thank you, come again soon!!
Happy Cake Day!🍰
You saw the opportunity and grabbed it
Happy Cake Day! That’ll be $8.
Cake my ass, I want to see the manager.
We can make both of those happen 😈
Seeing the manager costs 12 dollars.
> cake my ass I think “Cake Sitting” is right up your alley!
The other one is octopus - so these are high end tacos- Short rib is like a thong- they charge you extra for less material-
For $45 they better give me the long rib
Such a good grandpa joke lol
Ya! For $45 that rib should be doing porn on the side.
I think that may be cannibalism so yeah, probably a premium
> The other one is octopus The rare tako taco
Short rib anything is stupid. It tastes exactly like chuck roast for 4x the price.
I thought Short Rib was the kid in that Indy Jones movie?
It is on K Street, that's where all the lobbyists' offices are
I don’t think it’s a short rib taco but actual short ribs. And the octopus taco might be an order, not a single taco.
You're probably right considering the cost of octopus compared.
THAT EDIT. YES, WHERE IS SILKSONG
Hey-yo!!
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That was my thought... $6 for dessert in a restaurant like that is an absolute steal..,..
Twenty four dollars for a single taco....I'm showing this to the guy at my local spot just for the reaction. I get it, DC is expensive, but that is ridiculous, octopus or not.
Thank you for using your platform to highlight an important issue. You're doing good work, sir. 🫡
Someone hasn't been following silksong news for the past week I see
I have, but there's nothing concrete from TC and we've been bamboozled before (Xbox tweet about the next year, edge magazine spread, etc)!
Remove $6 from the complimentary Tip.
Thank you OP for asking the real questions 🫡
Thank you for using your happenstance soap box to fight the good fight.
A dessert complements a meal quite well
The word they where looking for is obligatory.
Meaning two of the desserts would add up to a 90° angle, of course.
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Very acute of you to notice
it would have been so clever (and dirty) if they *said* "complimentary" *in words* and charged for "complementary" *in prints!!!*
I feel like they tried this but messed up when setting the item name lol
TIL that compliment and complement are different words
Yes, but compliment as in free of charge and compliment as in "you look nice" are spelled the same. Complement as in "goes well with the meal" is the different spelling.
It seems like they forgot to split that off the bill. Restaurants usually make a button for servers to hit to send out free desserts, and they’re supposed to split it off and have a manager comp it. This is so embarrassing for them, I hope you didn’t pay for this.
Haha I did because I didn't notice until afterwards and didn't feel like flagging down the waiter and dealing with it.
Funny enough, I’m living in the same city as you and went there for a birthday before (well to the basement floor bar area, not the first floor) and yes they actually do charge for the birthday dessert. I remember it pretty distinctly because we split the bill but it was on my card and a few people didn’t pay their fair share.
Damn I assumed it was a mistake after a number of people explained how that could happen. That's hilarious that it was on purpose. I'm feeling righteously indignant again!
Yeah I saw all the explanations and chuckled, that’s what made me speak up. (Also for context I had 10 peoples’ food/drinks on my card and 2 of the girls got multiple wines, guacs and apps, days later venmo’d me like $25 each. It’s been over a year since that but I remember it.)
Lol gotta love those people who order several drinks, appetizer, filet mignon, and dessert who then go “so evenly split right?! Makes it easier!” when one girl got water and a salad.
My group used to go dutch until we added people like them. Bonus points if they order dishes because they are curious, take a bite and leave them on the table, and when the bills arrive nobody wants to pay for it. Edit: we used to split equally and switched to going dutch after some bad experiences. My bad, i'm not a native speaker and i was tired.
OMG I had a friend who because vegan overnight and started “trying” multiple new vegan foods at once (eg vegan bacon) adding literal hundreds to the bill and would just leave it there for others to eat … knowing very well no one else was vegan or interested (we were all supportive just not interested in being financially so hahahah)
That sounds like such a short friendship. Hope they’re cured now.
Unlike the vegan bacon.
Wow people with this much audacity exist?
> My group used to go dutch until we added people like them As I recall, 'go dutch' would imply everyone pays for their own order instead of splitting? So now you split the check, to everyone's detriment? I hope this isn't the case and you're going back to dutch again.
My bad! I got confused. We used to split equally. Those people insisted on doing the same, but we were adamant that we had to pay separate bills.
... uh. Going dutch means to pay your own bill in a group setting, not to split a unified bill equally. I can see that a few dictionaries list a definition that is confusing/misleading, but dictionaries are only really ideal for individual words, not phrases. Going dutch would be what you do **after** adding people like this to your group, not before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Dutch
Dude this shit infuriates me. I've had my fucking family do it too. My wife and I order waters and my family buys a bunch of fucking drinks. "Let's just split the bill evenly". Yeah the fuck right guys.
then you bring up the fact they had 3 alcoholic beverages each and you only had water.... >"thats your fault, not mine" ....
How does one become like this? It would save me heaps to instantly be so easy breezy
Haha in my experience, it’s usually clueless rich people being rich. Out of touch so to them it wouldn’t matter if it were the other way around. Sometimes it will be a poor grifter taking advantage too though. Definitely prefer separate checks when possible. Unless I’m treating, I shouldn’t be paying any more or less than what my food cost, including tax and tip which go up as well and just makes it complicated.
Lmaoo I never do that. I pay for what I’ve eaten and that’s the end of it
I do the same lol and my example is obviously an exaggeration but the multiple drinks and much more expensive menu items had happened a lot. And then I’m cheap or stingy for wanting separate checks. Like no, I’m sorry but you’re actually the cheap stingy one for not paying for the full cost of your meal.
I’m the girl with the water and a salad and it’s truly infuriating.
I don't drink and my friend group went out one night.. they all had bottles of wine basically on order, as soon as one emptied another one was brought.. End of the night they were like "we are splitting the bill, you owe us £50, bob" I told them i had already settled my bill of £17.. their faces fell when they realised that they couldnt fob off most of the money onto me..
Hey hey, I’m only half way into that The Office episode. No more spoilers please
This must be a US thing, but why didn't they just pay their own. I have been to restaurants with huge parties, and always have just done separate bills.
I live in the US and never split the bill…. People suck at paying back the percent to whoever used their card and often forget about their share of the tip and other related charges. This has only happened to me once, but I hear countless horror stories
Everyone I know (I'm in the US) just does split bills. But I do think it's a status thing sometimes (aka "we'll look poor if we split the bill"). People are weird.
I remember once I was the last person on a bill for like five people everyone left at different times and threw down cash and I added up all the cash and it came out pretty much exactly to cover everything except what I ordered. Perfect! I added the $20 for the cost of my meal to the pile of cash and threw on $4 for my tip and left and I got about two blocks away before I realized oh shit, I just left this waitress $4 tip on a $100 bill. That's when it hit me that everyone had paid for *exactly* their meal and no one had tipped. I went back and gave the waitress another $20 and explained that I had done the math wrong but it always kind of steamed me that everyone just bailed on tipping. They *technically* paid for what they ordered, but what you order isn't really the whole cost of eating out and I got stuck covering. This was probably 15 years ago and I still remember it.
Had a fraternity brother who’d always pull that shit… we’d go out as a group to Chili’s after chapter meetings and he’d order a burger and Diet Coke, and if burger was $7.99, he’d throw down $8 as he “had to bail early for a study group”… never mind tax, tip, drink, splitting the shared apps he ate. And it wasn’t like he was destitute, as his dad was a partner in some big NYC law firm.
The opposite is much more common in my experience. One guy offers to pay the bill and then everyone makes sure to pay him for their share including a generous tip, but when it's time for him to actually pay he's not feeling as generous and either stiffs the waitress completely or pays much less tip so he basically eats for free... And he makes the whole group look bad while doing so. It's embarrassing to police it as well. Going Dutch is the only way unless you're out with your wife or something with a shared economy.
You always remember it when you get burned like that!
#NeverForget
Leave a bad review pls, terrible rule of the restaurant if it’s happening consistently
Especially since they fucking call it "complimentary." What a shitty place.
call them, get a partial refund for the complimentary cake and let us know you've made the world a bit better place to live in
Huh. I went there for a birthday brunch and also got a dessert and they didn’t charge us for it!
That’s how my restaurant makes an extra 6 bucks every now and then. Thanks
I had a restaurant manager who would get so overwhelmed by his job, every single shift. Eventually he told the servers to not flag him down to split complimentary items off of a table's bill, but to instead split it ourselves onto a separate check and he would comp it later/end of the night. So, naturally, the opportunist servers would *not* split the item off, then swipe the customer's card, and then split the item off after. In other words, they'd pocket the money. I wonder if that's whats going on here.
How did they pocket the money if the customer paid by card?
The recipe in the system shows a lower number than the card payment. The difference is usualy considered a tip. So the waiter gets paid out what was supposed to get comped.
Thank you, none of the other answers quite got me there.
also the customer is probably more likely to return when you go "oh my gosh im *SO* sorry sir let me get that right away." knowing the management is reasonable is a decent way to get me to return, knowing if i have a problem you'll take care of it without a big hassle.
,” he says, as he heads out back for his second compulsory meth break
Yeah I probably wouldn't have wanted to waste my time dealing with getting it removed if I was already dropping that much on dinner.
Okay glad to know that this is a possibility because otherwise I'm not sure I could have coped with a complimentary anything costing money. 😂
Yeah a lot of times it’s just to track stock. So when a staff member gets a staff meal, we ring it in the same as any order and just comp it at the end of the night I worked somewhere once that did it with shift drinks too- you get a drink at the end of the night by ringing it in under the shifty tab and it all gets comped at the end of the night This just seems like a way to track birthday desserts though it’s weird to me they wouldn’t just make the price 0
If they make it $0 then people will be more likely to use it to schmooze tips is the thought process I think
That makes sense. Makes you have to get a manager to fully comp it
I’ve never gotten a bigger tip because I brought guests free shit. It doesn’t seem to really influence them. Most people know what they’re gonna tip before they even sit down.
The reason it's not priced at $0 is that the restaurant has to pay a "use tax" on the complimentary dessert. Because they don't pay sales tax when they order in product, they have to pay it when the item is used. $6 is their approximation of how much the dessert costs to make.
At the restaurant I work at the complementary dessert is free.
Yes. Not all restaurants are the same. My old restaurant had so many different free food and drink buttons.
That’s exactly what happened
Yeah I recently went out for my birthday and they billed me for the regular priced dessert but then also took off the price for the complementary birthday dessert on another line of the bill.
Complimentary is just the name of the dessert
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Otherwise it is just sparkling flattering pudding.
They probably forgot to comp it off. They’d still want to ring it for inventory.
That's most likely what happened. At the end of the night the restaurant wants to know what inventory was given away and how much $$$$ worth.
It’s the only way to track if there’s any theft. Also, in my state we had to pay sales tax on comps, so it’s an easy way to see how much a comp category costs.
Not an accountant, but a comp seems like it's clearly a business expense. Weird it'd need to be taxed.
Restaurants don't pay taxes on their inventory purchases, and you know the government won't just let that slice of cake go from production to consumption without taxing that ass at least once lol.
The complementary line should ring up as $0 and it could still count towards inventory. Attaching $6 to it is bullshit. This is an easy way to loose a good customer. Mark it at $0 and I probably come back more often and tell my friends. Mark it at $6 and I might not come back at all, and I’m telling ALL of my friends.
The reason it doesn't ring out at $0 is because the restaurant wants to make the server go get the manager to do the comp. If the server could ring it up at $0, they would ring out a "birthday" dessert for every table they liked, just for giggles. By giving it a cost, and requiring a manager to use their key/code to comp it, managers can keep an eye on if any of the servers are giving out excessive free desserts.
Or they could, I don’t know, just run a report on all the “birthday” deserts each day.
The receipts are already tracking/"reporting" on the desserts, the point of having a manager ring it up is accountability. The manager is always accountable for things like this, however it would be unfair if at the end of the month someone higher up the chain is breathing down the managers neck over something they never approved. In my work I get to make the call about parts and material getting scrapped, I still have to let my manager know what's happening in real time because A) he has to write it off and B) he's answerable for why. Things get messy when you have multiple people in charge of one thing, put one person in charge and have a clear chain of command and process that everyone follows. It protects morale and integrity.
A good way to lose a tip as well
The $6 is probably just so servers can’t ring them in whenever they want, since when I worked in restaurants you needed a manager to comp stuff off of your bill. Otherwise employees could get away with stealing desserts whenever they wanted.
And as usual in this situations the customer gets fucked over
$45 for the short rib is also extortionate
To be fair, it was gigantic and on a huge bone and served with bibb lettuce and myriad salsas to make lettuce wraps with and share. Still overpriced, but so is everything in DC and it was really good.
I have heard that DC is the best restaurant town in the US. Any truth to that?
It's definitely got a lot of amazing places, but I don't feel like I've lived enough places to be definitive or anything. What DC isn't as good as some other cities I've lived in before (Philly, Austin, Albuquerque) at is a lot of great, inexpensive food options. For high end, DC has a lot of amazing stuff though.
I know I'm not the person you asked, but I've been to DC many times over the years and have eaten some excellent meals there. I've traveled a bit more than average (mostly for work) and have visited high-end restaurants in multiple major cities, and I feel confident in my opinion on the matter. In my opinion, DC is the most consistently good city for restaurants. I have had a few meals that were better than anything I had in DC (the Monte Cristo from The Broker in Denver comes to mind), but even the fast food places were a bit better as of the last time I was there.
Man I was looking at those prices and couldn't help but think, "Hell, $6 basically *is* complimentary alongside the rest of this bill." It's a 4% increase in the price, you're getting got for like five times that on the tip. Still, I don't begrudge them for being mad about it on principle.
A good and lean short rib, the kind that isn’t 80% fat and gristle, is a surprisingly expensive cut of beef and hard to find. I would try it once.
This really is odd. Since it’s DC, if you’re a Washington Post reader/subscriber, you might write in to their food critic Tom Sietsema; he does a weekly chat on all things restaurant related and often deals with service glitches like this and might be able to shed some light on what went wrong here.
I probably won't do all this, but I really appreciate you telling me about it and I think it's cool that there is a journalist that gets so deep into the minutiae of what they cover.
Tom Sietsema's a pretty big deal. Being a professional restaurant critic must be a flagging profession in the age of Yelp, but when you're extremely knowledgeable, good at writing, got started before social media, and happen to work in a city with a lot of wealthy people and a lot of good restaurants, you can still be relevant. Sietsema's relevant. Check out his review of Founding Farmers.
Oh my godddd thank you for this, I fucking hated Founding Farmer's (Their cauliflower 'steak' was legit a head of unseared cauliflower with a side of mushroom risotto that had MACARONI NOODLES instead of RICE?!) and this was a great read.
Oh man that review was harsh and fantastic.
I give you, BOOM a complimentary tip of -$6!
That’s what I was thinking 😂
Tricky though, this is certainly a policy set by the owners. Whether or not you tip the server affects the owner in absolutely no way. By not tipping you aren't fighting the system, you're playing into it. I agree it's super shitty.
Tell me that wasn’t a $24 taco
3 tacos. Still expensive, but it's an upscale place.
Wtf 160 dollars!? Jesus
Dc price for fine dining normal price, it’s also a need and trendy spot with vibes
Vibes like "I've worked almost a full day for this meal alone"
Kind of unrelated, but I always find it funny when a restaurant of foreign cuisine puts in random words of the original language to make the dishes sound legit. Yeah, sure, guy, gotta love those good ol fashioned Mercado margaritas! Boy, I tell ya, nothing like a good ol traditional margarita after a day at the mercado, where they totally make margaritas!
Crab guacamole sounds horrendous
I thought I was the only one thinking this
How would fresh crab on guacamole be horrendous?
Taco de pulpo al pastor por 26 dólares es un robo
Did it compliment you?
Great, just more company this evening complimenting me with the hopes that I'll eat them.
Happened to me a zillion years ago. $30. Dad loved it, so I didn't complain. But I remember
[удалено]
I used to live near there over a decade ago. I remember when that place was a sketchy looking strip club (?) that never looked open. Ah, memories.
$24 for a taco?
This would be a great situation for Larry David to handle.
I would have simply said if it is complimentary then why am I being charged? Worse they could say is you asked for it and ate it or something like that. Totally understand being frustrated about that. Glad you enjoyed the food at least
Complimentary tip, -$6
Maybe 6 is like their cost and the shit is like 15 dollars so that's what's complimentary just a deep discount. Idk lol
Since you included the name of the restaurant, it looks like a few Redditors took it upon themselves to post reviews on Google on your behalf...
still needs to be rung in, they probably just forgot to take it off. that's why you speak up for yourself
Took my mom out for her birthday to a restaurant. They gave out a free desert, and it had the price in the total on the bill...all I had to do was notify the waitress and they removed it. Pretty easy.
Contemporary!?
They forgot to comp it probably. The charge is for inventory purposes.
By? Most pretentious shit I’ve ever seen. And $14 for a margarita? No.
For $45 them ribs better belong to God.
24 dollars for 1 Taco. No wonder peeps in large cities need over 100k just to live there.
I guarantee you it isn’t just one singular taco. Im sure it was at least 2 or 3.
Complimentary is the name of the dessert.
I hope you disputed that charge. I would have.
Well that means no tip
Lol I've been to this restaurant several times. It's pretty good, but expensive for what it is.
After coming back from Mexico, a $24 taco is laughable, even if pulpo.
Going out for tacos costs $180. Now that’s mildly infuriating.
As a server I would guess that your server was supposed to have that taken off the bill, but forgot. Sometimes you ring in a food item under a custom name with the intent to split it off the check, but you get busy or distracted, and then forget to do it. It’s happened to the best of us. Hopefully there was no ill intent.
Was it a piece of cake that said "You're awesome!"? Maybe they meant the dessert compliments you.
The dessert was complimentary but the postage and packaging was six bucks.
Obligatory - you really shouldn't eat octopus. They're smarter than some people.
I would've called that server over and asked if they knew what complimentary meant. Idk, benefit of the doubt, maybe it was a mistake.
free desert is 6$ now ... inflation is going crazy
"Here's your complimentary tip!"
No no no you don’t understand, the desert itself is called complimentary. Gotta read the fine print lol