Restaurants are charging ‘vomit fee’ at bottomless brunch

‘A $50 cleaning fee will automatically be included in your tap when you throw up in our public areas,’ one restaurant sign says

Some restaurants in California are charging an additional fee to customers who throw up in the public space after drinking too many mimosas during bottomless brunch.

A restaurant based in San Francisco, Kitchen Story, first made customers aware of the cleaning fee with a sign in the bathroom, as reported by SFGate. In its message, the popular brunch spot – which offers bottomless mimosa for 60 minutes – encouraged customers to drink responsibly, before describing the rules they should follow if they don’t want to be charged extra.

“Dear all mimosa lovers,” the sign reads. “Please drink responsibly and know your limits. A $50 cleaning fee will automatically be included in your tap when you throw up in our public areas. Thank you so much for understanding.”

Speaking to SFGate, Kitchen Story owner Steven Choi specified that the sign has been up ​​for nearly two years, after staff members had to spend a lot of time cleaning customers’ vomit.

“This was still during the pandemic and it became a very sensitive issue for customers and staff having to clean up,” he said. “But this is not unique. It’s there to make the customers stop and think about other people.”

Chaiporn Kitsadaviseksak, the co-owner of Kitchen Story, said that the sign has successfully prevented customers from getting sick in public spaces of the restaurant. Although he couldn’t recall the last time that someone was charged with a clean-up fee, there were multiple instances of customers throwing up before the sign went up.

“People were scared with Covid. And this was happening a lot. My workers don’t want to do that,” he said. “It got better. Now [customers] know they have to pay. They understand.”

Another restaurant in San Francisco, Home Plate, had a similar sign as Kitchen Story, warning customers about the cleaning fee if they vomit. The sign on the wall of the eatery read: “Please Drink Responsibly. $50 Cleaning Fee for any incident incurred as a result of intoxication.”

Speaking to SFGate, owner Teerut Boon said that customers vomiting after drinking was an issue in 2021, which is why he instituted “pretty much the same policy” as Kitchen Story.

While customers complained about the sign, prompting it to be taken down in July, the fee still applies. In fact, the same warning from the sign is on the bottom of Home Plate’s menu, right under the price of bottomless mimosas per person. The menu also specified that customers can only do bottomless mimosas for 75 minutes.

Although it’s not the same rule as Home Plate and Kitchen, a gastropub in San Francisco, The Sycamore, has its own way of making sure that customers drink responsibly. Speaking to SFGate, restaurant co-owner Liz Ryan said that although the eatery doesn’t charge a fee to customers who throw up in the restaurant, there is one staff member who keeps an eye on how much people drink.

“We have a staff member who is a mimosa fairy. They bring a pitcher around that they use to refill glasses,” she said. “There’s a [mimosa] station and it says this is for staff use only so please do not help yourself,”

She also noted that during the two-hour brunch, the “mimosa fairy” goes to the dining area every 15 minutes or so to pour more of the drink for customers. Throughout the time, workers also examine how customers are behaving.

“Our staff is trained to make sure our customers don’t overdo it. Nobody wants to see people throwing up. That sort of spoils the party vibe that we’re trying to create,” she said, referring to a Responsible Beverage Service training from the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

As noted by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, the service “teaches servers to responsibly serve alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption and mitigate alcohol-related harm in California communities”.

During the interview, Ryan also claimed there have been “ways to cut people off” from drinking without them realising it.

“This is the kind of thing they teach you. We practice eye contact and engagement, we come by with a pitcher of water,” she said, before acknowledging that there have been people who step outside to throw up and then come back into the restaurant after drinking too much. “People can get carried away.”