Most of us have taken a bottle of wine or some beers to a BYO restaurant and haven’t balked when we’re charged a corkage fee. But what happens when a restaurant is charging you a cakeage fee, the lesser known but much more divisive sister fee?

So what exactly is it, and why should you have to pay it?

Cakeage lives in the same region as corkage fees. The restaurant is missing out on wine sales because you’ve brought your own, and so compensation is expected, right? Cakeage is a charge tacked on by restaurants for when a guest wants to bring their own dessert.

This fee is usually charged either per person, or as a flat fee depending on the restaurant. Most will hover around the $5 mark per guest, but there are obviously exceptions. 

We don’t question corkage, however given the dwindling number of BYO restaurants on the scene these days, a fee to cut up a cake can feel particularly jarring.

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One could argue that those dollars really start to add up when you’re dining with a group, especially if you’ve been made to order a set menu.

Now consider how much you would have to spend to order everyone in your party their own dessert. That cakeage fee isn’t looking so steep anymore, is it?

The cakeage fee takes into consideration the loss of sale of desserts for the table, plus the interruption of restaurant service, attractive plating, and the cleaning of those plates after you’ve headed out into the night.

Yes, it may seem costly and some might even argue that it falls into the ‘customer service’ category, but when margins are thin, the restaurants biz is tough, and you’ve literally brought your own food into a venue instead of buying theirs, it might do well to eat some humble pie along with your birthday cake.

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