Restaurant under fire for adding health insurance fee to customers' bills

A Georgia restaurant is receiving backlash and unwanted publicity after being called out for a fee imposed on customers' bills.

The Atlanta restaurant was flagged by a customer who shared a photo of a bill from a recent trip to JenChan's Pizza and Chinese in Cabbagetown. The photo, posted on Reddit last month but later deleted, showed an additional $2.02 charge that was purported to be a 4% fee for employee health insurance.

Although the Reddit post was eventually deleted, it garnered more than 2,000 comments and nearly 9,000 reactions, according to Fox Business.

Fox business reported:

Criticism came from others, with one Facebook user even commenting on a photo of JenChan's owners — showing married couple Jen and Emily Chan, plus their child — with these ominous words: “I've never seen a family that needs to be hit. more, make this health care useful.”

The owners responded in a statement posted on Facebook on December 29, 2023, writing that “everything seemed fine” when they served the customer in question at the restaurant.

“We put it on the menu itself and on the receipt to avoid it,” the restaurant said, noting that the charge is optional for customers. “It's been on the menu for about a year now; We were inspired by a couple of other restaurants here that do the same thing.”

The restaurant's letter and invoices say: “On your receipt, you will note a 4% health insurance that we implemented after our premiums tripled last year. Thank you for being a part of our efforts to ensure our staff can seek care for any mental or physical illness they may be suffering from. We appreciate all your positive feedback, thank you! Please know that we will be happy to remove it without hesitation.”

Emily Chan told Fox 5 Atlanta that the owners have not wanted to include the costs in the price of the food.

“We don't want to do that,” he said. “We want to raise awareness. We want people to see that there is a crisis.”

The restaurant had posted that “this is a hostile climate for small business owners with rising food costs, taxes, inflation, whatever.”

“We're just trying to keep our doors open and our employees' health insurance covered, and we're doing it as transparently and honestly as we can. Because we care,” the post read, according to Fox Business.

“If we didn't do something, we would do it [had] cancel insurance or close our doors,” the owners said in a statement. “So we do it because we're driven by passion and sentimentality and a desire to bring people together around a table… It's in our bones. Hospitality is what gets us up in the morning.”

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida, where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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