Implementing the Dining for Justice 1% Surcharge

Community Kitchens Window Sticker/Poster and Postcards

Please apply your Community Kitchens window sticker or poster in a visible space near your main entrance.  The window sticker lets your customers know that you are a Community Kitchens restaurant partner.  Our postcard flyer can be provided to guests with their check and contains a QR code linking to the Community Kitchens website for those who want more information

Surcharge Language for Your Menus

Restaurant partner menus should contain language informing customers about the surcharge.  Preferred menu language is “(Your restaurant name) is a Community Kitchens restaurant partner.  A 1% surcharge will be added to all purchases to support Community Kitchens’ food donations in Oakland. For more information, please visit www.CKoakland.org”  For shorter language, omit the first sentence, for the shortest language, omit the first and third.  We encourage partners to use the entire statement to raise program awareness in the community.

Staff Training

Some of your customers will have questions about Community Kitchens and the surcharge.  Your staff should be ready with some basic information, and they can also provide our CK postcard to direct the customer to the Community Kitchens website for more information.  Your service staff should know the following:

Community Kitchens is a nonprofit and restaurant collective that provides free meals to community groups that feed people in Oakland. The meals go to people who don’t have access to hot, nutritious meals every day:  People living in the streets, people who are shut in, people who are just scraping by financially.  100% of the surcharge revenues go to Community Kitchens, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.  You can learn more information about Community Kitchens from this postcard.

Programing Your Point-of-Sale System 

If available, set up the surcharge to apply automatically, like sales tax. If your POS system doesn’t support automatic surcharges, you will have the option to set it up as a charge that the server can apply to each guest check.

  • The surcharge should apply only to dine-in sales and should not apply to to-go sales and sales of gift certificates/gift cards.  

  • Please be sure to program your POS system to include sales tax on surcharge revenues (for sales tax reporting)

  • Surcharge receipts should be shown in your restaurant’s basic sales reports (for surcharge payments to CK)

  • Set up your guest checks to present the surcharge with our preferred guest check language:  “1% Community Kitchens Food Relief”

Independent Courier and Pick-up Order Services (Caviar, DoorDash, GrubHub, etc.)

Independent courier and pick-up order services do not have the programming option to include a 1% customer surcharge in guest checks.  Therefore, the Community Kitchens surcharge doesn’t apply to orders placed to-go.

Sales Tax

Because our funding mechanism is unique, there is no existing Board of Equalization policy specifically addressing this type of surcharge, but it is extremely likely that the Board of Equalization will take the position that the surcharge is mandatory and, therefore, subject to sales tax.  

Be aware you will see an increase in excess sales tax to report to BOE, just like when you report sales tax on mandatory service charges.

Accounting for Surcharge Revenues and Payments

Surcharge revenues are booked as revenues by each restaurant in the same manner as sales revenue and then deducted as charitable contributions to a 501(c)(3) organization, subject to the rules and limits of the Internal Revenue Code.   

In general, Individual taxpayers can deduct up to 60% of their taxable income as charitable contributions and corporations can deduct up to 25%.  However, there is currently a temporary suspension in effect on these limits, meaning that most taxpayers can now deduct charitable contributions up to 100% of their taxable income.  


Restaurant partners should consult with their tax advisors for taxpayer-specific questions about whether deduction limits will apply.  For more information, see the IRS guidance on charitable contributions.

Making payments into Community Kitchens

Most POS systems will show the surcharge on the 1st page of a monthly sales report.  Please enclose a POS report showing the month’s surcharge revenues with your remittance.  

A monthly remittance form will be provided and details on where to submit payments.  Surcharge revenues are payable into Community Kitchens monthly by the 24th day of the following month.  We timed the payment with sales tax payments.

Customer Pushback or Refusal

The surcharge is not intended to be optional.  However, the decision to charge it or not when confronted with a non-cooperative customer is ultimately in the hands of each restaurant operator.