Restaurant owners interviewed in the media here in SF are directly quoted saying they can’t do that because “customers would notice”, or think “oh that’s expensive, I can’t eat out twice a week”.

These are arguments for including the fees that make the customer __still pay the same higher price__, implying that the whole point is that they won’t notice. And reporters don’t seem to even register the absurdity of those remarks or question them in any way.

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/sf-restaurants-junk-fees...

https://www.kqed.org/news/11992412/californias-junk-fee-ban-...

They're trying their best to make it seem that government policies and regulation compliance costs are responsible, hence the names of these charges.

If you want to claim "we have the lowest prices in town" in advertising, you can't increase the "price".