New Law on Consumer Protection changing rules in restaurants – Cover charges to no longer allowed to be a surprise on the bill

The new Law on Consumer Protection, published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia No. 35/2026, also introduces new rules for catering establishments. According to Article 10, a restaurant, café or other catering establishment is obliged to make the price list available before receiving an order, while the prices of food, drinks and beverages must be stated in a single amount.

One of the provisions of the new law that has attracted the most attention among caterers relates to additional costs. According to the provision, a guest cannot be charged for a service that they did not order, as is often the case with a cover charge, nor for an additional service that they provided on their own initiative. The law specifically lists costs that are an integral and inseparable part of the basic catering service, such as setting the table, cutlery and napkins.

So, if the cover charge is an automatic fee for what is already an integral part of the service, such an item can no longer appear as an additional charge on the bill. However, this does not mean that the caterer cannot set the price to include the costs of labor, serving, cutlery, napkins, bread, and everything else that makes up their service. The difference is that the guest needs to know the total price in advance.

Similar rules apply to food supplements. The law stipulates that ingredients and supplements that are not clearly included in the offer and price list, or that are not part of the dish’s norms, cannot be charged. This is important for restaurants and street food establishments that automatically serve sauces, vegetables, lemon, or other supplements with certain dishes - if they have a special price, it must be clearly communicated.

The new regulations also concern delivery, meaning that restaurants can have a different, higher price for food and drinks when they are sold via delivery, but that price must also include the cost of delivery. For caterers, this means that there is room for different pricing depending on the sales channel, but without additional costs that only appear at the end of the purchase.

For restaurants and other caterers, the new rules primarily mean the need to carefully define menus and the way they present their offer, and the goal is not to limit the ability of caterers to set the price of their service, but to make it clear and transparent in advance.

Fines are also provided for failure to comply with certain obligations under Article 10. For a legal entity, they amount to 300,000 to 2,000,000 dinars, for a responsible person in a legal entity, from 50,000 to 150,000 dinars, while for an entrepreneur, fines of 50,000 to 500,000 dinars are provided.

In practice, the new law thus opens up space for a simple rule that should suit both guests and caterers, namely that the restaurant has the right to set the price of its service and include its real costs in it, and that the guest must know clearly and in advance what that price includes.

And the cover charge? It seems that it will not necessarily disappear from restaurant calculations - but it could disappear forever as a surprise at the end of the bill.

Law on Consumer Protection

cover charge