••• Bibi Ji has brought back omakase-style thali platters (above) on Mondays—for $39, you get a starter, kebab, and curry, with naan, rice, raita, and chutney (no splitting or substitutions).
••• Work is underway at the former Pueblo Pollo space at 2984 State Street. Anyone know who’s moving in?
••• The Santa Barbara Fish Market outpost coming to Goleta—which will also have a restaurant—expects to open in three to four weeks. —Restaurant Guy
••• Na Na Thai has shifted to one menu for lunch and dinner, and starting October 2, the restaurant will be open noon to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday.
••• Noozhawk profiled Blackbird at the Hotel Californian, where there’s apparently an off-menu fried chicken sandwich special at the bar on Wednesdays.
••• The Independent has a long profile of the new Terra restaurant at the Steward hotel in Goleta.
••• Mokutan, the Japanese restaurant on State between Ortega and De La Guerra, has closed. It opened in July 2022. Thanks to J. for the tip and photo.
••• J. also noticed that work appears to be happening at the former Treehouse restaurant at the Best Western Plus Pepper Tree Inn on upper State Street.
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that’s a bummer mokutan had great food and the chef ken made the best cooked japanese food in town
My grandparents used to take me to the Treehouse Restaurant back in the 80’s. I’m amazed it was open all these years. I’m glad a new place is popping up!
We went out to dinner last night at via maestra and we were hit with one of the additional charges that some restaurants are including. I think the chase is also including this additional charge of 4%. ( to pay for employees insurance )
Are any other restaurants in the area doing this same charge ??
Janice
via maestra and the chase, have the same owners
I don’t believe they are the same owners at the chase and via maestra.
I’m not going to be visiting either place again. I didn’t see the charge until after got home.
They are the same owners as of this past spring. https://www.santabarbara.com/dining/news/2023/03/20/the-chase-restaurant-and-lounge-under-new-ownership/
Erik, is there a way you can provide us with a list or restaurants in Santa Barbara that add on this extra charge?
That would be a massive undertaking for one person—and then it would have to be updated constantly. The better way is to create a Google document that anyone can add to.
OOOH! Is there an AI app for that? That would be an excellent use for it!
Karen, unfortunately this is something AI would not be very good at. Crowdsourcing the data is by far the most effective and accurate way to gather this information.
If you believe this charge was not adequately advertised, contact the DA’s office. They have begun the process of cracking down on hidden fees in restaurants and requested information from the public.
I came across this posting and I happy to say that it contains false information. Via maestra DOES NOT have a 4% fee for employee insurance. This is completely false.
We have a large and loyal costumers base that would attest to this.
What is that fee that comes on your final bill ?? I don’t recall what you call it but it’s definitely there. I’ve eaten at both the chase and via maestra and both places have that addition service charge that goes towards paying higher of wages.
You saying They are not including this charge doesn’t make it true.
To those complaining about the fee added for taking care of their staff, you should be thanking them for their transparency. Everyone has increased their prices to do the same thing. Either it’s just rolled in to the items purchased and everything, or it’s added as a separate fee. I like to see the breakdown, and the reminder that this is an establishment that is committed to paying a living wage to their employees.
The problem is that quite a few places don’t disclose it ahead of time, which is disingenuous and why the DA is looking into it.
Via Maestra, Chase, Cruisery and Dutch Garden are a few examples of places that it doesn’t show up until you get the check.
Other restaurants that print it on the menu, let you know when you sit down and/or have it listed somewhere in the restaurant are truly being transparent. Some examples are Sama Sama and Broad Street Oyster – both are very transparent about it and I definitely appreciate that transparency. Transparency = Trust
We’re supposed to thank restaurant owners for the junk fee’s? No thanks. Just raise the price of menu items and stop adding hidden and disingenuous fees that may or may not actually be going to staff. Thankfully they are in the process of banning junk fees in the state legislature.
This exactly. I grew up working in the industry and I’m all for hospitality staff getting adequate pay. Unfortunately, I’ve read and heard stories where those extra fees are not being fully distributed down to the staff but rather added to the business margins. SAMA SAMA I’m looking at you.
Also was not aware the Cruisery had these extra fees as they do not present you with a check but rather present you with their mobile payment device to insert your credit card. Definitely will ask about it next time and if it’s true that they charge those fees, I’ll be avoiding that place moving forward.
Here’s the scoop. It’s simple. Credit cards are assumed debt by a customer. For a business to use credit cards, the credit card processor charges the business an average of 2.5% to 3.5% of the transaction amount as a fee to the business owner. This is how the credit card processors make their money, they skim off the top of the transaction. So for a $100 bill, the restaurant gets charged lets say 3.5% which is the local average, so that’s $3.50, while the full $100 charge for your meal goes on your credit card. Now you basically just assumed debt to eat. If you paid the restaurant in cash, they get the full $100, instead they got $96.50 because you decided to pay with debt. The processing company charges the restaurant the $3.50 for using their processing service. Several years ago the state passed a law allowing the fee getting charged to the business to be passed onto the customer. The restaurant legally has to disclose to the customer either on the door or on their menu that this percentage is to be charged for credit card transactions. As of recently the restaurants started adding the fee into the bill, the customer pays the original $100, plus the $3.50 for a total of $103.50 , so the restaurant doesn’t get charged the processing fee expense. Now here’s where it gets interesting. Inflation has sky rocketed and most restaurants on average make 3% to 5% profit in a year after all of their costs. Food costs have skyrocketed and employee costs have skyrocketed, out of control of the restaurant (thank our evil state leader Newsom for that one) . This leaves the restaurant with higher operating costs and lower profits, basically they’re getting hammered at both ends. They have 3 options, close their doors, raise all of their food prices or pass the credit card processing fees onto the customers and keep food prices the same. Most have chosen option C, to charge the credit card paying customer a small fee and erase this cost to the restaurant. If a restaurant is making $100,000 a month in revenues, they’re making 3k to 5k in profit a month off of that. If they pass the monthly credit card fees of 3.5%, that’s $3,500 they just offset their rising bottom line expenses buy $3500 a month. This is why you are seeing these fees. The restaurants are scraping for places to cut costs and putting that processing fee back on the customers who pay with credit cards.
I am a business owner and I ask the question, why should I have to pay for your debt. I can pass the fee onto you and you pay $3.50, or extrapolate that fee over all the credit card transactions in a year in this example of $1,200,0000 and that’s $42,000 in fees. Thats a huge cost savings for a business that has such small margins. So if you like your local restaurants I would stop complaining about the fees and eat them or the establishments that you’ve come to like eating at are going to be gone or all computer automated sooner then later. If they can’t charge the fees they’re going to lay off staff and you’re going to order your own food from a digital kiosk like Chili’s in Goleta, basically service will evaporate as you’ve come to know it.
In fact all businesses state wide have the ability per the recent change in law to include this fee back into the final sale price, but not all do. Like they say cash is king, pay with cash and save your money, pay with debt and assume more debt, you decide, but those are your options.
You fail to mention the fact that you can choose not to accept credit cards. If you can’t maintain a profit where other businesses can, maybe the problem isn’t the credit cards.
90% of all restaurant transactions on average in Santa Barbara are credit card, so that’s not an option.