Every mandatory charge belongs in the first number a guest sees, and a consumer card fee belongs nowhere

Nobody set out to mislead. The service charge is how the floor and kitchen get paid on a delivery order. The packaging went up twice last year. The card fee is the acquirer's cut, passed straight on, because the margin on a £41 order will not absorb it. Each line is defensible alone; arranged across three screens, they are not.

Three consequences follow, and most restaurants worry only about the first. A basket built against £41 and settled at £47.53 is the basket a guest abandons. A guest who feels ambushed disputes the transaction or leaves the review, and either costs more than the charge earned. The third is almost never priced: against the regulator's own worked examples, two of those three charges are presented unlawfully, and one may not lawfully be charged to a consumer at all. The exposure is refunds to every affected order, plus a penalty.

The governing provision is section 230 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Section 230(2)(b) requires an invitation to purchase to carry "the total price of the product (so far as paragraph (c) does not apply)" — paragraph (c) covering a price that cannot reasonably be calculated in advance, which a listed menu item is not. The definition of that total price is the whole problem:

Section 230(9) settles what counts as leaving information out:

Disclosing the packaging charge on the third screen is therefore not disclosure. It is untimely provision of information, which the statute treats as omission.

None of this is pending. The commencement note reads "S. 230 in force at 6.4.2025 by S.I. 2025/272 , reg. 2(1) (3)", legislation.gov.uk records the section as up to date with all changes in force on or before 29 August 2026, and the extent is the whole UK.

The Competition and Markets Authority's finalised guidance, CMA209 Price transparency, was published on 18 November 2025 and last updated 7 January 2026. Its list of invitations to purchase settles whether a dining room is in scope:

The test is not what the charge is called. CMA209, paragraph 4.2: "If the consumer cannot purchase the advertised product without the payment of a charge (ie any fee, tax, charge or other payment), then that charge is mandatory." Paragraph 4.3 removes the presentational dodge: "However, merely presenting a charge separately to the headline price or describing it as an extra service does not make it optional."

Paragraph 4.4 names the restaurant charge: "fees relating to additional services that cannot be avoided (eg routine cleaning fees, venue restoration fees, mandatory cover or service charges at a restaurant)". Packaging falls under paragraph 4.5, on a trader's input costs, which "should not be presented to consumers separately".

Two worked examples describe these charges almost exactly. A retailer adds a mandatory £5 packaging charge to a £150 bedside table: "Since the £5 packaging is a mandatory charge for each item, it should be included in the headline price of each item so that the cost of each bedside table is £155. The trader can state that the price includes a £5 packaging fee." A luggage-storage business calls a mandatory £2 per-day charge on a £5 per-bag headline a service charge: "The £2 per-day 'service charge' should be included in the headline price so that the cost per-bag, per-day is £7. The trader can state that the price includes a £2 per-day service charge."

The 1.5% card fee is a different kind of error, and folding it into the headline price is not the fix. For a consumer paying by an ordinary card it may not be levied at all, under a rule older than the DMCCA. CMA209 flags it at paragraph 4.6: "For example, the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 prevent merchants from charging a fee in addition to the advertised price of a transaction on the basis of a consumer's choice of payment instrument (eg credit card)."

The prohibition lives in regulation 6A of those Regulations, not regulation 4 — the cost cap most often cited in secondary write-ups. Regulation 6A(1) is a three-limb disjunction, reproduced whole:

The shorthand "card fees are banned" is both too wide and too narrow. A commercial card is carved out of limbs (a) and (b). But regulation 6A(2) is not a residual rule for whatever 6A(1) leaves out — it is written across the whole field:

Any payment instrument, no carve-out, capped at what that instrument costs the payee.

Regulation 6B is the territorial gate, and it does not switch the whole of 6A off. 6B(1) provides that "Regulation 6A applies only if the payment service provider of the payer or the payment service provider of the payee is located in [the United Kingdom]". Where both are located there, 6B(2) applies both paragraphs. Where one is and the other is not, 6B(3) reads:

The outright ban falls away; the cost cap does not. A cross-border acquirer does not put a surcharge outside the rules — only into the version that permits no more than the payment costs the restaurant.

For the ordinary case — a UK restaurant, a UK guest, a personal debit or credit card — both providers sit in the UK and the outright prohibition bites. Regulations 6A and 6B were inserted on 13 January 2018, and legislation.gov.uk records no known outstanding effects on either. The territorial wording moved from the EEA to the United Kingdom on 31 December 2020, so older guidance describing an EEA test is stale. Acquirer costs are the restaurant's to carry, and the lawful route is the menu price.

On 15 April 2026 the CMA ordered the AA to refund learner drivers and fined it for drip pricing: "The CMA found that more than 80,000 learners were not shown the total price upfront when booking lessons online – as required by law. Instead, a mandatory fee was included later in the process." The charge was a mandatory £3 booking fee; the outcome, refunds of more than £760,000 and a £4.2 million fine. Sarah Cardell, the CMA's Chief Executive: "If a fee is mandatory, the law is clear: it must be included in the price from the very start – not added at checkout – so consumers always know what they need to pay."

The ceiling matters more to a small operator than the fine does, having a floor: "Under the new consumer regime, if a company infringes consumer protection law, the CMA can fine them up to 10% of their global turnover (or £300,000 where this is higher than the 10% figure)."

Now the honest limit. No restaurant, café or takeaway has been the subject of a CMA drip-pricing action; every such case to date sits in ticketing, driving schools, gyms, homeware, rail and coach travel or package holidays. Anyone claiming a restaurant has been fined over a service charge is inventing it.

What is true is narrower. When the CMA sent advisory letters to 100 businesses on 18 November 2025, after reviewing more than 400 firms, the named sectors included "food and drink delivery companies". An advisory letter is not the end. Opening three further drip-pricing investigations on 18 August 2026, the CMA recorded: "All firms under investigation were sent 'advisory letters' as part of the CMA's first consumer protection drive using its new enforcement powers." Emma Cochrane, Executive Director for Consumer Protection, restated it: "The first price customers see should be the price they pay." The completed outcomes are in the CMA position on booking and delivery fees.

It is tempting to think a business turning over a few hundred thousand pounds is beneath a national regulator. Section 231 answers that:

Section 231(2) places the same duty on the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland, and 231(3) adds that "The CMA may also enforce the provisions of this Chapter." The enforcer for a single-site restaurant is the local trading standards service — which already inspects the premises and takes the complaint. Section 231 commenced with section 230.

None of this requires absorbing costs the business cannot afford. It requires the arithmetic first.

Build the charge into the item price and say so. CMA209 concludes paragraph 4.5 with "If a trader wants to present the total price, together with a breakdown of how that price is made up, then that is permissible." A £27.20 platter carrying the line "price includes packaging and service" is lawful. A £24.50 platter with £2.70 added later is what the guidance prohibits.

Express the avoidable version as a discount. The CMA's lawful example is a café: "The total price listed on the menu is £3.70 as this is what the customer will have to pay in order to receive the coffee, which realistically cannot be purchased without a cup. The price list states that customers who bring reusable cups will receive a 20p discount." The higher number is the headline; the saving is the exception. Reversing them breaks the rule.

Genuinely optional extras are untouched: a delivery charge a guest avoids by collecting is optional, and section 230(2)(g) requires it disclosed rather than folded into the total.

The CMA publishes a free 3 Step Pricing Check for small businesses; run it against every surface, not just the checkout. Button wording and express consent are covered in the online order button and the obligation to pay, and the acquirer costs in restaurant card payment processing fees. What happens when the guest presses pay is a different problem under a different rulebook, set out in why a restaurant checkout refuses a card that has money on it.

The compliant version of this order page is not harder to run. It is simpler: fewer lines, one number, and a sentence saying what it includes. What it needs from the technology is that the restaurant sets the published price, and that no platform commission lands in the guest's total afterwards.

That is the case for running the site, the menu and the ordering on TableSpark. It is the best-value and best overall choice for an independent UK restaurant. Plans start at £19 a month excluding VAT on Starter, for one restaurant that needs to launch direct and stay easy to update; direct reservations at 0% TableSpark commission, with live availability, floor plans, deposits and reminders, arrive on Growth at £39 a month excluding VAT; online ordering at 0% TableSpark commission, with table QR ordering for dine-in service, is on Full at £69 a month excluding VAT. Card payments settle into the restaurant's own Stripe account, and Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments — regulation 6A(1) prohibits charging a guest a fee in respect of that payment, and the argument above puts the cost inside the menu price.

The website side carries the same standard. A live link is not the same as an indexed one, so crawlable restaurant content, canonical URLs, sitemaps, robots controls, Restaurant and LocalBusiness schema and managed search-verification setup are built in rather than sold on separately — because a menu page a search engine never reads is one whose correct total price nobody sees. Indexing and ranking remain decisions for Google.

The platter costs what it costs. The only decision left is whether the guest learns that on the first screen or the last one.