Washington, D.C

These Helpful Tools Are Tracking Every Restaurant Fee Across DC – Washingtonian

Published

2 years ago

January 11, 2024

These Helpful Tools Are Tracking Every Restaurant Fee Across DC – Washingtonian

Screenshot courtesy TransparentFee DMV.

The confusion and lack of transparency around restaurant fees is leading diners to take matters into their own hands. A spreadsheet crowdsourced via Reddit over the past year is perhaps the most comprehensive list yet of dining establishments charging a fee. Meanwhile, a Chrome web browser extension that one Redditor built off the data will pop up an alert anytime you visit the website of a restaurant with an extra charge.

The spreadsheet (with accompanying Google submission form) was created early last year by Sarah Stella, a federal government employee. She’d already been seeing a bunch of posts on the Washington, DC subreddit about people being caught off guard by menu surcharges. Then, she and a co-worker visited (now-closed) ramen restaurant Hatoba. Ordering form a QR code menu, she missed the 20-percent service charge and ended up leaving an additional 20-percent. She felt she needed to do something to create more transparency for diners like herself.

“I like having the full information before I go out to eat,” Stella says. “I know some people say, ‘Oh, I won’t go out if a place has a service fee.’ And I don’t feel that way at all. I just want to know in advance,” Stella says.

The spreadsheet tracks fee amounts at each restaurant, where they’re advertised, whether the charge is in lieu of tipping, if there’s an option for additional tip, and whether the fee can be removed upon request, among other information. Reddit took off with it and the submissions rolled in: As of now, there are 227 restaurants on the list.

Zachary Grimshaw, a digital and technology consultant for non-profits, wanted to take the fee tracker one step further and make the information more accessible and useful. Like Stella, he’d been finding himself overtipping, not realizing when there was a fee. So he built a Chrome extension called TransparentFee DMV with the help of ChatGPT and his software-engineer brother. Once you install it, a small alert will pop up in the corner of the browser anytime you visit the website of a restaurant charging a fee: “Heads up! People have reported this establishment has a service fee in addition to menu prices.” You can then click further to see the fee amount and fee language. The same “Heads up!” also shows up under the restaurant profile in a Google search. Grimshaw says he’d like to eventually expand the functionality of his tool so that people will get fee alerts on popular reservation sites and in Google Maps.

“The primary goal is to simply make the users aware of any additional fees, not necessarily discourage customers from giving an establishment business,” Grimshaw says. “Additionally, I hope it encourages restaurants to become more transparent with fees, specifically around if and how it benefits the staff.”

Stella says she checks in on the spreadsheet from time to time to keep the information tidy and do some light fact-checking, but ultimately she relies on others to submit accurate details. Grimshaw says he also does his best to verify the information on each restaurant’s website—but the fees are not listed on about half of the websites he’s searched. (The Chrome extension has an option to submit inaccurate or missing data.)

Both Redditors have found the fee transparency across the DC dining scene to be a real mixed bag. Asked to rate restaurants on a whole about their fee transparency, Stella says she’d give them a six out of ten. “I think most people are trying to figure it out in good faith,” she says. “And I think that it’s just going to be confusing for a while.”

Food Editor

Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.

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Washington, D.C

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

Published

30 seconds ago

April 19, 2026

Press Room

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

4 things to know about the weather:

Chances of rain in the morning
Gusty Sunday
Chilly Monday
Temps will rise again through the work week

Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.

After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.

The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.

Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.

However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.

QuickCast

SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s

MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s

Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.

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Washington, D.C

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2026

Press Room

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.

In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.

“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”

Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.

Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.

“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.

“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”

Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”

A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.

Rachel Reeves posted this image on Instagram from Washington DC on Thursday with the message: ‘Friends that run together – work together.’ Photograph: Rachel Reeves/Instagram

Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.

Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.

But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.

“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”

At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.

The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.

Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.

For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.

“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.

“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”

For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.

In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.

Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.

“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”

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