SB 606: Florida's New Operations Charge Disclosure Rules

Starting July 1, 2026, SB 606 requires any non-exempt operations charge collected by a restaurant to be disclosed on menus, written contracts, ordering websites and apps, bills, and receipts. An exemption exists for dining plans, packages, and fixed-price meals where the total price is disclosed before purchase.

SB 606 amends F.S. 509.214. It defines an "operations charge" as "an automatic fee or charge, other than a government-imposed tax, that a customer is required to pay in addition to the cost of the food and beverage purchased." The list is non-exhaustive. Auto-gratuities on large parties, percentage-based service charges, credit card surcharges, and delivery fees all fall within the statutory language.

Eleven weeks separate the filing date of this briefing (April 14, 2026) and the July 1 enforcement date. POS vendors and third-party ordering platforms routinely require 4–8 weeks' lead time for template changes; that window is now inside the compliance window, not ahead of it.

What the statutory definition covers

The statutory definition of "operations charge" covers any automatic fee beyond the listed menu price and tax. The statute captures the category, not just the four named examples.

Operators who assumed their fee fell outside a narrower reading of Chapter 509 because it was labeled an "appreciation" or "hospitality" charge are directly exposed. DBPR's authority under Chapter 509 extends to any violation of F.S. 509.214 regardless of the label applied to the charge.

Five disclosure points

The statute requires disclosure in five places, each with specific formatting:

Menus. The notice must state both the amount or percentage and the purpose of the charge. Font size must equal or exceed the font used for menu item descriptions. Counter-service restaurants and food trucks without printed menus must post the notice on a menu board or a sign by the register.

Websites and apps where customers place food and beverage orders.

Written contracts for banquet, catering, or event services.

The face of the bill. The notice must clearly state the percentage or amount.

Every customer receipt. Gratuity, the operations charge, and sales tax must each appear as separate line items. If the operations charge includes an automatic gratuity, that gratuity must be broken out separately on the receipt.

Receipt templates that combine gratuity and service charge on a single line, or that roll both into a "service" total, fall outside the five-line-item requirement. POS configurations common in 2025 treat auto-gratuity and service charge as a single field. SB 606 separates them.

The five-point pattern — menu, website, contract, bill, receipt — is where enforcement gaps are likeliest to appear. Operators who updated printed menus but left their online ordering platform's fee descriptor unchanged, or who revised POS receipt templates but not banquet contract boilerplate, satisfy four of five requirements and remain out of compliance on each occasion the fifth point is used. DBPR's Chapter 509 inspections cover on-premise materials; online and contractual materials are reached through complaint-driven review.

Amount, percentage, and purpose

The statute requires the notice to state the amount or percentage and the purpose. A disclosure such as "18% automatic gratuity for parties of 6+" states both elements on its face. A disclosure such as "Additional fee" states neither the rate nor the purpose, and does not meet the statutory requirement.

Menu descriptors in wide use before SB 606, including "Kitchen Appreciation Fee," "Service Charge," "Health & Wellness Fee," and "Operations Fee," state the purpose in branded form but omit the percentage. These descriptors on their own fall short of the statutory two-element requirement.

Applied to common fee types, the two-element test produces predictable outcomes. "3% operations fee applied to every check" states the rate and the purpose; "Operations fee" states neither. For auto-gratuity: "18% automatic gratuity for parties of 6 or more" satisfies both elements; "Automatic gratuity" satisfies neither. A flat-dollar charge follows the same pattern: "$2.00 kitchen support fee per table" passes; "$2.00 additional fee" omits the purpose. A delivery fee disclosure reads: "5% delivery fee on all online orders" — rate and purpose stated; "Delivery fee" states purpose but omits rate and fails. In each case the statutory test turns on whether rate and purpose appear together on the same surface, not on the label's phrasing.

The cost of updating a single menu PDF or printed insert to add a percentage is nominally zero to a few hundred dollars in print costs. A single administrative complaint under s. 509.261 carries a fine ceiling of $1,000 per offense. Under Chapter 509's per-occurrence framework, a menu inspection finding across a lunch and a dinner service on the same day can generate two separate offenses.

No DBPR guidance as of March 2026

DBPR's 2025-2026 Annual Regulatory Plan lists ch. 2025-113 and says it "can be implemented without rulemaking." As of March 30, 2026, no FAQ, advisory, compliance bulletin, or model disclosure language has been published. The agency appears to consider the statute self-executing.

The absence of a DBPR safe-harbor template means operators cannot demonstrate compliance by reference to approved model language. The operative test is the statute itself: amount or percentage, purpose, on each of the five disclosure surfaces.

Enforcement

The statute does not create a dedicated penalty for operations charge violations or an express private cause of action (subsection 5). Enforcement runs through DBPR's existing Chapter 509 authority, which includes administrative complaints, fines up to $1,000 per offense under s. 509.261, and license action. Rule 61C-1.005, which sets the DBPR fine schedule, does not yet list §509.214 violations. How inspectors will assess non-compliance, and what the penalty will be, remain undefined.

The enforcement ladder under Chapter 509 typically runs: routine inspection finding → administrative complaint → notice of noncompliance or citation → civil penalty or license action. For a new statutory requirement with no rule-level penalty schedule yet published, early enforcement cases are likely to establish the fine quantum by precedent. First-wave citations — those issued in the weeks immediately following July 1 — tend to define the range applied to subsequent cases across a regulatory cycle.

The highest-risk ambiguity is the "purpose" disclosure requirement. The statute says each notice must state the purpose of the charge but does not define "purpose." Published legal analysis diverges on whether a generic descriptor ("service charge") satisfies the test or whether disclosure of how the charge is distributed (to the house, to staff, or split) is implied. Until DBPR publishes guidance or an administrative complaint tests the question, disclosures that identify both a distribution and a rate carry the lowest interpretive risk.

The undisclosed-fee scenario — an operations charge appearing on a receipt but absent from the menu or online platform — is the factual pattern most consistent with complaint-triggered enforcement. Guest-initiated DBPR complaints are filed when a customer sees a charge at payment that was not visible at the point of ordering. This is the compliance gap most likely to generate an administrative complaint before a scheduled inspection would have caught it.

Dining plans and fixed-price meals are exempt

Subsection 6 exempts "the purchase of a dining plan or package or fixed-price meal for which the price of the plan or package or meal is disclosed to the customer before purchase." Where a pricing model fits that language, the disclosure requirements don't apply. Where it doesn't fit squarely, the disclosure requirements apply.

Tasting menus, banquet packages, and wedding packages with a single all-in price disclosed on the contract sit inside the exemption. À la carte dining with an auto-gratuity above a party size, service charges on regular tabs, and delivery fees on online orders sit outside it. Hybrid models (a package for food plus a separate auto-gratuity) retain disclosure obligations for the non-package components.

Multi-site BBQ or sports-bar operators running loyalty or bundled dining programs should map each program individually against subsection 6 before July 1. A program that qualifies as a "dining plan" at one price point may not qualify at another if the all-in price is not disclosed before purchase at each tier.

Where the July 1 deadline lands across the operation

SB 606 requires every applicable fee to appear on the menu, bill template, receipt template, and online ordering platform with both the amount and the purpose stated, by July 1, 2026.

Four operator-side systems commonly fall short of that standard: menu files that list a charge without a percentage, POS receipt templates that combine gratuity with service charge on one line, third-party ordering platforms (Toast, Square, DoorDash, Uber Eats) that use their own fee descriptors, and banquet contracts with inherited boilerplate. Each is a separate change, and each is tied to a different vendor or internal owner.

The change-owner problem is where multi-site operators most commonly fell short on prior Chapter 509 disclosure requirements. A corporate directive to "update fee disclosures" that lands in a general ops inbox without a named owner for each of the four systems — menus, POS, ordering platforms, contracts — tends to produce partial compliance: one or two systems updated before the deadline, the others missed. DBPR inspections and guest complaints surface the gaps independently.

The statute applies to each licensed premises individually. Multi-site operators with differing fee structures between locations face the disclosure test per location. A disclosure template covering one location's fees doesn't satisfy the requirement at another location with different charges.

Operators who did not act before a comparable disclosure deadline — Florida's 2020 resort fee transparency requirements under F.S. 509.214's predecessor provisions — found that DBPR enforcement in the first 90 days post-deadline was concentrated on establishments where guest complaints had already been filed. The administrative complaint, not the routine inspection, was the primary enforcement trigger in that period.