[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen you enter Hurricane’s Grill and Bar Steakhouse restaurant in the new section of Narellan Town Centre you can’t help but be impressed.
There’s high ceilings, quality light fittings, very nice, classy furniture.
Welcome to the new level of ambience in the dining scene in Macarthur – who needs the inner city now?
So it’s in this setting that our family, all 22 of us, is enjoying a lovely birthday celebration last Sunday evening.
The service is very good, as is the food.
We cut the cake and people start to leave, as you do.
The bill arrives and all seems OK until everyone’s contribution is in and we’re almost $100 short.
No worries, we’ve had a great time, so those left chip in another few bucks, we pay and leave.
Later that evening, a family member goes on our Whatsapp account to let us know that at Hurricane’s a “10% service charge will be added for groups of 20 plus’’.
Which suddenly explains the shortfall when the bill arrived earlier.
A big family discussion ensues and we’re in agreement the 10 percent service charge for groups of 20 more should not be there.
One of us calls the restaurant at Narellan and speaks to someone there.
The Hurricane’s guy tells our family member that the surcharge is because of “extra staff needed to wait on big groups’’.
When it was pointed out to him that we just had the one waiter, just like a table of two would, the Hurricane’s guy conceded we had a point and the surcharge was a “head office decision’’.
By the way, in case you go there, Hurricane’s also have a cakeage charge of 10 percent.
While the group surcharge is mentioned online on their website, the cake surcharge is not, so they may start with that.
But the surcharge, while it’s mentioned online, and apparently is in the small print at the end of the bill, is an outrage, don’t you think?
OK, we had a wonderful time, food and service excellent, but the surcharge is wrong, wrong, wrong.
There was no extra wait staff, to start with, so it’s just penalising big families or friends who go out together.
But the other point is that they are making plenty of money already out of a big group, so why get greedy.
And finally, why 20? Why not groups of 10, 12, 14, 16 or maybe 19. Looks like the 20 was just a figure plucked out of the air by someone in management at Hurricane’s head office.
Our family will go back to Hurricane’s, but only if they drop the surcharge.
That’s just wrong
At their prices they probably assume with a bill so high no one will even pick up on it.
Not cool I say