Customers Paying Obamacare Surcharge in Florida Restaurant

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A chain of sports bars in Florida is charging a 1 percent tax and customers aren’t taking it with a grain of salt.

8 Gator Dockside chain restaurants have started adding a 1 percent “ACA Surcharge” to customers bills, according to CNN Money on Thursday. The Gator Group says the surcharge is a necessity, offsetting the cost of Obamacare.

  

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The company says it’s just being transparent with customers. The restaurant chain is blaming the surcharge on Obamacare. The employer mandate, that states Gator’s Dockside is required to provide coverage to 70 percent of it’s full-time employees, doesn’t go into affect until 2015. Only the managers at the restaurant receive healthcare, according to CNN Money.

The owner opted to do this so the customer can see the cost increase themselves,” Chayse Nail, a general manager at the Clermont location, according to The Huffington Post. “If we added to it food costs, you’d be paying more on your food and sales taxes, it’s something we’re doing to generate more profit.”

Some of the customers at the sports bar are expressing how they feel about the surcharge on the company’s Facebook page. “This is about making an angry statement & passing the owner’s irritation on every customer who eats there,” writes Samantha M Phillips on Facebook. “The approach is immature & unprofessional.”

“Plenty of places sell wings and burgers and don’t try to make political statements. I’ll be taking my business to one of those restaurants from now on,” writes Larry Ross.

Nail said customer reactions have mostly been indifferent. “As long as they have good food and good service they don’t particularly care about the one percent, because it is just a penny on a dollar,” Nail said. “Only one or two people actually left the restaurant over it, and we have some people say we’re geniuses, that it’s the smartest thing they’ve every seen.”

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