India’s consumer watchdog has directed restaurants reeling from a sharp rise in input cost due to shortage of commercial LPG not to add charges such as LPG fees, gas surcharges and fuel recovery costs to customer bills, lest it be treated as an attempt to circumvent the guidelines on service charges “by adopting a different nomenclature.” Commercial cylinders are already 30 percent costlier or even more as almost 90 percent of the country’s liquified petroleum gas (LPG) imports come from West Asia. This marks the biggest challenge to the industry since the Covid lockdowns forced restaurants to shut, with many going out of business, rendering servers, chefs, delivery staff and those in related roles jobless.India’s consumer watchdog has directed restaurants reeling from a sharp rise in input cost due to shortage of commercial LPG not to add charges such as LPG fees, gas surcharges and fuel recovery costs to customer bills, lest it be treated as an attempt to circumvent the guidelines on service charges “by adopting a different nomenclature.” Commercial cylinders are already 30 percent costlier or even more as almost 90 percent of the country’s liquified petroleum gas (LPG) imports come from West Asia. This marks the biggest challenge to the industry since the Covid lockdowns forced restaurants to shut, with many going out of business, rendering servers, chefs, delivery staff and those in related roles jobless.
Restaurants told not to add rise in fuel costs to customer bills
