Which States Require Restaurants to Disclose Service Charges Before You Order?
By Yan Payments
Which states require restaurants to disclose service charges before you order?
If you run a restaurant in Florida or Colorado, you now have to show customers any mandatory service charge, gratuity, or similar fee before they order, not just at the bottom of the receipt. Florida’s SB 606 took effect July 1, 2026. Colorado’s HB 25-1090 took effect January 1, 2026. Both follow the same basic idea California adopted in 2024: service charges aren’t banned, but hiding them until the bill arrives is.
What does Florida’s SB 606 require?
SB 606 amends Florida Statutes section 509.214 and creates a new term, “operations charge,” for any automatic fee added on top of the menu price that isn’t a government tax. That covers automatic gratuities, delivery fees, and credit card surcharges, not just a line labeled “service charge.”
The disclosure has to show up everywhere a price does: printed menus, your website, online ordering apps, and any written contract for a banquet or catering event, in addition to the final receipt. It needs to state the amount or percentage and what the charge is for.
There’s no private right of action built into SB 606 itself, meaning a customer can’t sue you directly over a missed disclosure under this specific law. The Department of Business and Professional Regulation can still factor noncompliance into inspections and licensing, and a bad enough pattern could support a separate deceptive-practices claim. Either way, no lawsuit risk isn’t the same as no risk.
Compliance guides covering the law also flag a gap nobody’s fully resolved yet: it’s not clear how a restaurant is supposed to handle disclosure on a third-party delivery platform it doesn’t control the layout of, like a DoorDash or Uber Eats listing. If you sell through one of those apps, don’t assume the platform is handling this for you. Check what the app actually shows a customer before they order and be ready to ask the platform to adjust the listing if the charge isn’t disclosed the way the statute wants.
What does Colorado’s HB 25-1090 require?
Colorado’s law is part of a broader junk fee bill and is now codified at C.R.S. section 6-1-737. It requires restaurants, bars, and similar food and beverage establishments to disclose any mandatory service charge, including the amount and how it’s distributed among staff, before the customer orders.
Unlike Florida’s law, Colorado’s comes with real teeth: violations are treated as a deceptive trade practice, and a business found in violation is liable for actual damages plus 18 percent annual interest. That’s a meaningfully different enforcement posture than hoping the health inspector doesn’t notice.
How do these compare to California’s rules?
We’ve covered California’s own version of this in detail on the blog: SB 1524 carved out an exception to the state’s broader junk-fee ban for restaurants, so long as the service charge is clearly and conspicuously disclosed everywhere a price appears, in type that’s set off from the surrounding menu text. California backs that up with the Consumers Legal Remedies Act, which lets individual customers sue directly, with statutory damages of at least $1,000 per violation.
Put the three side by side and the pattern is obvious: more states are converging on disclose before ordering, not just on the receipt, even though the enforcement mechanism differs state to state. California’s penalty runs through a flat statutory minimum per violation under the CLRA. Colorado’s runs through actual damages plus a set interest rate. Florida leans on licensing and inspections rather than a direct lawsuit. Three different enforcement models aimed at the identical underlying problem: a customer finding out about a mandatory charge only after they’ve already ordered.
If you operate only in California today, this is still worth watching. State legislatures tend to borrow from each other once a model law gets attention, and Colorado’s statutory-interest approach or Florida’s licensing-based enforcement could eventually show up as an amendment to California’s own rules. Nothing suggests that’s imminent, but a disclosure practice built to the letter of today’s law is worth revisiting if the penalty structure changes.
What if you operate in more than one state?
A menu, a POS prompt, or an online ordering page built around one state’s exact wording won’t necessarily satisfy another state’s. Before you assume your existing disclosure covers you everywhere, check what each state actually requires for placement and wording, not just whether a disclosure exists at all. If your point-of-sale system auto-applies a service charge, confirm with your Clover or terminal provider that the on-screen and printed language matches what each location’s state requires, since one receipt template across multiple locations can quietly fall out of compliance in one of them.
A quick checklist
- Service charge amount and purpose shown on every menu, every online listing, and the receipt
- Wording matches across all three, not slightly different phrasing in each
- If you operate in Colorado, you also disclose how the service charge is distributed among staff
- If you operate in Florida, the disclosure appears before the customer places the order, not just at checkout
- Review this any time you open a new location in a state you haven’t operated in before
This is general information about recent legislation, not legal advice. Check the current statute text and talk to a restaurant or hospitality attorney licensed in the state where you operate before changing your menus or contracts.
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