The Indicator from Planet Money - Petty! Econ! Grievances!

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

We have some grievances. Economic ones. And we’re airing them out. On today’s show: Redeeming fast food rewards points in airports, not knowing the full price of your meal upfront, and the pen-and-paper restaurant bill slowdown. Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.  Your Next Listen — Three beefs: U.S. and Brazil, Taco Bell and liability, Waymo and trial lawyersConnect with The Indicator — Sign up for The Indicator’s brand new newsletter — Find our socials, YouTube and more! — For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+ See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. A little while ago, I was at the airport getting coffee from Duncan Donuts. I tried to get credit for Duncan's rewards program, but the Duncan Powers That Be said, no, not at this airport location. And it got me thinking, well, first, why? But also, does anyone else have a petty economic grievance to air? This is petty grievances of the week. Oh, you bet it is. Do you have one to share?

I am full of petty grievances. I think we just need one more person. Over here, over here. I have got a grievance, Whelan. Stephen Bissarha, a guest appearance from none other than NPR's personal finance reporter. Yeah, that's right, Darian. You know, instead maybe today call me NPR's personal grievance reporter. It is a very important beat, and I think we have a quorum now, so let's start the show. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong.

I'm Daryan Woods. And I'm Stephen Bissaha. On today's show, three economic grights, all involving paying for your food at restaurants. We'll tell you what they are and the economic logic behind why they exist. All right, petty restaurant grievances. Stephen Missauga, you're up first. All right, so picture this. You have just finished a perfect meal at a restaurant.

Filet mignon, caviar and champagne, quarter pounder and fries. Whatever it is, you are satisfied and ready to leave. But you can't. You need to pay your bill, which means, one, flagging down the server, probably busy with a dozen other tables. Two, wait for them to bring back the check. Three, wait again for them to come back to get your card. And four, wait for them to once again return with your card.

This is so much waiting. It's true. Sometimes this part can take longer than the meal. Yeah, and you also need to have a lot of trust that nothing nefarious is happening with your card when it's taken away out of sight. And this checkout system is not just a problem for customers. It's also a problem for servers.

It was a hassle having to take multiple tables, come in and out, and just everything took forever. This is Miguel Aguilar. He was my server at a restaurant in Jersey City. Are you all set to close out? Perfect. Like me, Miguel also hated how long that old pen and paper system took. Then his restaurant brought in the solution. You have probably already seen these out in the wild.

There are these handheld devices that let servers scan your card and let you pay right at your table in one step. The minute we got these, we could take four, five, six tables outside, not worry about having to run in for every single. single order and they nearly have the time that we needed to serve. Of course, everybody listening internationally or anybody's traveled, probably has seen these for a while. I do see these devices more now in Chicago when I go out.

What I like about them is that they allow you to split the check really easily. Yes. Oh, that's a big bonus too. Yeah, yeah. Now, Miguel's device came from a company called Toast, and one of the company's executives told me that it could be hard to get restaurants past the inertia of using the traditional checkout method. Also, these devices can be expensive.

One of them can be hundreds of dollars. Right. So depending on how big your weight staff is, it could be a lot of money. But hey, these devices are getting more popular. Toast says as of March, more than 170,000 locations in the U.S. were using them. And with other competitors out there, it is possible this checkout grievance could soon become a common convenience. Talking about paying your restaurant bill, my petty grievance at the restaurant is at the beginning when you're looking at the price of the menu and it doesn't include tax. But this is true of like everything you buy in America.

It is a very international tape. I understand this does not bother a lot of Americans, but I want to know the price of what I'm paying for. You want to know like the price all in, right? Not getting surprised when you actually go to pay. But I guess this grievance does apply to the entire American economy. But you know what? Even Sherry Kimes didn't share my grievance. She's an emeritus professor at Cornell University who's done a lot of research on restaurant prices.

As an American, it never even really, I've never even noticed it. But there are reasons for it. Yeah, Sherry listed three reasons. One of them is just sort of traditional. They've never done it, right? And then if one restaurant decides, okay, I'm going to include the tax and none of my competitors do it, then I'm going to look more expensive and customers aren't going to want to come to me.

Right, so it becomes this like a collective action problem where you need all of the restaurants to agree all at once that they're going to show the full price because if any one restaurant sticks its neck out, it could have lower sales. Exactly. And the difficulties with getting all the restaurants to calculate their taxes

brings us to reason number three. The tax rates are all so different, right? And so you get state tax and then you have city tax And then you have county tax. And from a restaurant's perspective, it's like, okay. I mean, especially if it's a printed menu, how am I going to take care of that? Yeah, so in New Zealand, where I grew up, my reference point, the sales tax is a lot simpler. There's just one sales tax nationwide.

But in the U.S., you have counties, cities, states, federal government. And that is kind of overlapping and confusing. And, you know, you start to understand the plight of the people. who are writing the menus. Oh, Darien, sounds of the U.S. is rubbing off on you. A little sympathy to not include full prices now? I'm more sympathetic.

You know, my grievance has been cured with better understanding. Well, I'm not here to show any personal growth because I'm not sure there's a cure for my grievance. All right, hit us. So remember, I was at an airport. I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts.

I am a member of Dunkin Rewards. This is the company's loyalty program. There's a mobile app. You can earn points and redeem them for rewards like free donuts or whatever. And I noticed that this airport location did not participate in Dunkin Rewards, so I could not get credit for my purchase or get any rewards. Yeah, I know this is the petty grievances episode, but this feels like a heavy emphasis on the petty side of things. Listen, I know that these loyalty programs exist so that corporations can collect my data.

I have made my piece with this. In return, I simply want credit for my $4 purchase at the airport. But no, I can't have it. So what was the answer? How come the loyalty program doesn't work with Air Force? locations. Okay, this brings me to another grievance. I emailed Duncan Donuts. Their director of public

relations wrote me back saying there are nuances with airport locations and I'll send details over ASAP. Then I never heard from them again. This is my many follow-up emails. Welland, the IS and ASAP met as slow as possible.

Oh. Do we have any clue about what these like nuances actually are? Well, I looked around at some other fast food loyalty programs, and they seem to offer some clues as to what may be happening. So, for example, McDonald's, they told me that participation in the rewards program is at the discretion of owner operators, which is what they call their franchisees. Fair enough. This owner operator didn't want to be part of the whole scheme. Is there anything

else? I also talked to Robert Byrne. He's a senior director at Technomic, which is a food industry research firm. And he told me that often at airports, the franchisee for a fast food chain is a big company that runs a bunch of restaurants at the airport. These airport concession companies often have their own point-of-sale systems, and then these systems aren't always compatible with whatever tech the individual chain uses to run their loyalty programs. All right, that's it for our petty economic grievances. I'm sure we can come up with a few more, or maybe you, dear listener, have one. You can email us at indicator at npr.org. This episode was produced by Vito Emanuel with engineering by Jimmy Keely.

It's fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kagan-Kennan edits the show and The Indicator is a production of NPR. If I ever hear back from Duncan, I will alert our listenership immediately. I'll be loyally listening.