Restaurant Booking and Delivery Fees: CMA Guidance and Enforcement in 2026

For a restaurant, that gap can run across its menu, social posts, booking form, order basket and third-party listing. A last-screen disclaimer does not repair every earlier price presentation. The test is whether each unavoidable charge appeared when the law expected it and remained clear through payment.

The requirement is already in force. The unfair-commercial-practices provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 have applied to commercial practices since 6 April 2025; the CMA’s 2025–26 price-transparency material explains how the regulator interprets those duties, rather than creating a future restaurant rule for later in 2026. CMA207 confirms the commencement date, while CMA209 is the current detailed price-transparency guidance.

For a restaurant, the operational answer is:

This is the useful distinction: unavoidable means included; unknown means calculable; optional means actively chosen.

The table is a working classification tool, not a substitute for legal advice on a restaurant’s exact terms.

Calling this “the CMA’s 2026 rules” is convenient, but it can hide the status that matters. There are four different events:

The duty is current, the guidance is final and enforcement is active. Its application to a particular deposit, delivery radius or optional charge remains fact-specific.

Many operators look only at the final payment screen. The law looks earlier.

An “invitation to purchase” can arise when information about a product and its price purports to enable a purchase decision. It does not need a buy button. The CMA lists a physical or QR restaurant menu, website listing, basket, online advert and social post among its examples. See the invitation-to-purchase examples in CMA207.

That has two operational consequences.

First, a correct checkout total does not close the issue. Earlier invitations may include an Instagram set-menu price, event page, booking calendar and table summary. Material pricing information must be clear, timely and likely to be seen; obscure or untimely information can still be treated as omitted. CMA207 explains the presentation requirement.

Second, the restaurant must audit surfaces it does not edit every day. If a platform markets a product on the seller’s behalf, CMA209 says both the marketplace operator and the seller may be responsible for a non-compliant invitation. It advises traders to provide the required information and ensure the business marketing the product is meeting its obligations. See CMA209 paragraphs 2.11–2.12.

That does not make every third-party error the restaurant’s liability, but handing over a menu, booking link or delivery feed is no reason to stop checking the public result.

A flat booking, reservation, administration or processing fee is usually easy to identify: if the guest cannot complete the advertised transaction without paying it, it is mandatory. Renaming it does not change that classification. CMA209 includes booking, processing and platform fees among examples of mandatory charges and says an extra service remains mandatory where the consumer must pay it to receive the advertised product. See CMA209 paragraphs 4.2–4.5.

Consider an illustrative bookable dining event:

``text Minimum advertised experience £25.00 Mandatory flat booking fee £2.00 Minimum total a guest can actually pay £27.00 ``

If one guest is the minimum purchase, the compliant from price is from £27, not from £25 + £2 booking fee later. The figures are illustrative, but the method follows the CMA’s per-transaction example: a fee attached once to a transaction must be reflected in the total for the minimum possible purchase. CMA209 explains per-transaction fees at paragraphs 5.22–5.26.

Restaurant deposits need a separate check. CMA209 notes that a deposit or card pre-authorisation automatically refunded when not called upon is not a mandatory charge for this purpose. That does not exempt every reservation deposit: check refundability, retention, bill credit and no-show terms. The distinction appears in CMA209 footnote 35.

Ask: can the guest complete this advertised booking without paying the amount, and will it come back if the stated condition is met?

Restaurant delivery is more variable than a flat booking fee. Distance, postcode, order value and service choice may change the amount. CMA209 does not turn that complexity into permission for a final-screen surprise.

Where delivery is mandatory for the selected product and the charge is fixed, include it in the total. If the guest must choose between paid delivery options, the CMA summary says to include the cheapest option until the customer chooses another. The current CMA delivery summary sets out the fixed and cheapest-option approach.

Before the address is known, display a method that lets the guest calculate the charge, with as much prominence as the known price. Delivery fees may apply is not a method. If the amount depends on factors outside the customer’s knowledge, CMA209 says the non-calculable-price route is not satisfied. See CMA209 paragraphs 5.12–5.13.

Once the customer supplies a postcode or the platform already holds an address, the exact delivery charge becomes calculable and should enter the total immediately. The CMA’s own food-delivery example shows the delivery charge on restaurant listings, again on the menu, and inside a clear running total as items are selected. It also says other mandatory restaurant or platform charges should be visible from the outset and included in that running total. See the food-delivery example on page 44 of CMA209.

The full delivery fee remains part of the total until the basket reaches the threshold. Then the running total can remove or reduce it. The threshold itself should be clear; the guest should not have to infer why the total changed. CMA209 paragraph 5.14 uses the same threshold sequence.

``text Food selected £26.00 Mandatory fixed delivery £2.50 Mandatory order/service fee £1.00 Visible running total once all are known £29.50 ``

These are illustrative amounts, not a provider quote. The point is the visible equation: £26 + £2.50 + £1 = £29.50. For a multi-item order, the CMA allows the item prices and fee explanation to work with a prominent running total; the restaurant does not have to pretend that an order-wide delivery charge belongs inside each dish price. CMA209 paragraphs 5.16–5.18 describe this running-total route.

Checkout labels often blur three legally different ideas:

A voluntary tip, charity round-up or paid upgrade is not made optional merely by placing a remove link beside it. The CMA says express consent cannot be inferred from a pre-ticked box or from requiring the customer to opt out. A customer charged without express consent may be entitled to a refund. The CMA’s additional-charge guide gives the active-choice and refund rules.

Compulsory restaurant service or cover charges sit on the other side of the line. CMA209 lists mandatory restaurant cover or service charges as amounts that belong in the total price. See CMA209 paragraph 4.4. A restaurant using a suggested service charge should make the optional status genuine and unambiguous, then test the online journey to ensure the customer is not charged by default.

The strongest current warning comes from final outcomes, not speculation. Neither case below involved a restaurant. They are cross-industry signals because they concern the same types of mandatory booking, delivery and service fee.

Whole-case boundary: these are the published outcomes of complete CMA investigations and settlements. They are not fines for one restaurant menu edit, and they do not predict the amount a restaurant would receive.

The AA/BSM case involved more than 80,000 learner drivers. The CMA found that a mandatory £3 booking fee was absent from upfront prices, ordered more than £760,000 in refunds and imposed a £4.2 million fine after a 40% settlement reduction. The press release gives the fee, customer count, redress and fine; the Final Infringement Notice records how the total appeared only at later invitations.

The StubHub case involved unavoidable delivery and service fees introduced at the final stage for affected purchases between 6 April and 7 December 2025. The settlement produced a £889,200 fine and refunds exceeding £590,000 to 51,350 consumers, averaging about £10.33 per transaction. The CMA’s StubHub notice provides the exact totals and affected period.

The lesson is proportion, not equivalence. A small fee repeated across a public sales journey can produce a much larger aggregate remedy and investigation burden.

The CMA’s statutory ceiling is up to 10% of global turnover or £300,000, whichever is greater, and a final notice may also require redress or measures to prevent recurrence. The actual result depends on the case, seriousness and mitigating or aggravating factors; the ceiling is not an automatic penalty. The CMA explains its penalty and direction powers here.

Do not begin with the payment page. Begin with the first public price and follow the guest.

Take a test order to final review without paying, then repeat at the delivery-radius edge and either side of any free-delivery threshold. For bookings, test new and returning guests; the AA/BSM notice showed that different journeys can expose the same fee at different stages. The final notice documents those customer journeys.

Record the result as a short control sheet:

``text Surface → advertised amount → mandatory charge → first visible point → exact-total point → owner → checked date → pass/fix ``

This turns a vague concern into a repeatable pre-service task.

The strongest setup lets the restaurant control its menu, direct actions and price journey in one owned route instead of reconstructing them across disconnected pages and plugins.

TableSpark brings the restaurant website, structured menu, direct bookings and online ordering into one restaurant-first platform. Plans start at £19 per month excluding VAT; Growth is £39 per month for restaurants taking direct bookings, while Full is £69 per month and includes online ordering. Direct bookings and orders carry 0% TableSpark commission; Stripe’s standard card-processing fees apply to online payments. Current TableSpark plans and qualifiers are set out on the official pricing page, and the product overview explains the booking, ordering and restaurant workflow.

For an independent UK restaurant, that makes TableSpark the best-value and best-overall recommended choice: a direct, mobile-first restaurant site and the operational actions around it on one flat monthly plan, without a TableSpark percentage taken from each booking or order. It also packages the managed search-readiness foundation — structured restaurant content, metadata, canonicals, sitemaps, robots controls, Restaurant/LocalBusiness schema, internal linking and search-verification setup — instead of leaving the restaurant to assemble the technical layer separately. Search engines still decide indexing and rankings. TableSpark describes this managed search foundation without promising ranking.

The price-transparency advantage is control. Keep an approved record of every compulsory charge and customer choice, then test the owned journey before service and use the same record to check external listings. TableSpark provides the restaurant-owned website, booking and ordering foundation for that stronger approach; each restaurant should review its exact terms and public prices.