Chef Andrew Gruel on How Swipe Fees Are Plaguing Restaurants
Listen to this post from Chef Andrew Gruel on X.
He gives candid thoughts on the credit card swipe fees that are plaguing restaurants around the nation. Below are just a few of his thoughts on it.
- Andy Harris of the SoCal Restaurant Show raised the topic saying: “The credit card companies are certainly not backing off the swipe fees. They make too much money.”
Chef Gruel then responds:
- The Credit Card Competition Act “hopefully is going to get passed.”
- Two credit card companies run things and “you have no choice. You cannot negotiate with them for what the swipe fees are going to be.”
- “As a restaurant, as a consumer, every time you swipe a card we pay about 3 ½ to 4% on that.”
- “Look at a restaurant’s profit and loss statement. That could be your third largest expense” behind food and labor.”
- “That is a big deal.”
- “What’s happened over the years is that as they’ve gotten bigger and they increase the charges for people that use credit cards at your restaurant, you have no alternative.”
- “The legislation that’s being pushed forward is that there has to be competitors.”
- “The key is the competition. This is about the free market. And they say, ‘Oh, well, the government gets involved’ – well, not in this case. … You’ve got to let some of these competitors in so that they can compete with some of these lower fees and perhaps bring it down because it’s only going up and it’s going to keep going up and up and up and up unless we step in and say ‘Hey, let’s allow competition in the industry.’ ”
- “These big banks get so big then they create barriers to entry.”
- “The consumers need to understand that’s something that we are facing.”
- “The credit card swipe fees are unbelievable.”
- “It’s not just the swipe fees, it’s also the chargebacks. Those chargebacks add up because you’ve got no alternative.”
- Do the savings get passed down to the customer? “They do. Trust me. In our case, any savings we have, we want to have the best food at the lowest possible price. We’re passing it down.”
COMPETITION IS BETTER FOR EVERYONE
IT'S TIME TO PASS THE CREDIT CARD COMPETITION ACT