The definition
A cake cutting fee is a charge for cutting, plating, and serving a cake or dessert that guests brought from outside the restaurant.
It is also called cakeage or a plating fee. It covers the plates, forks, the server’s time, and the dessert orders the restaurant did not sell. It is usually charged per person at the table, sometimes as a flat fee per cake.
How you hear it
The fee is rarely the problem. Hearing about it for the first time on the check is.
Where it shows up on the menu or the check
Most restaurants print the cake cutting fee in the fine print at the bottom of the dessert menu or with the private dining terms: “Outside cakes welcome, 4 per guest to cut and plate.” Some put it on the website and the reservation confirmation, since birthday parties are usually booked ahead.
On the check, it is one line, either a per-person charge times the party size or a flat fee. Private events often roll it into the contract instead.
What it means for prices and printing
Price it against what the table would have spent on dessert. A fee that is close to a dessert’s price per guest keeps the numbers even; a very low fee is hospitality, and that is a fine choice too.
Decide the rules along with the price: whether you allow outside desserts at all, whether you hold them in the refrigerator, whether candles are allowed, and who takes the leftovers home.
In Gaslamp, add the fee as one item in your Desserts section at its price, with the rules in its description, or put it in the menu’s disclaimers field so it shows as fine print on the hosted menu. The printed dessert menu carries the same line.
One more line worth printing with it: the kitchen did not make the cake, so it cannot tell a guest what is in it. If someone at the table has a food allergy, the question goes to whoever baked the cake, not to your server.
Where it comes from
We could not find a reliable origin for “cake cutting fee” or “cakeage”; both read as plain descriptions, and “cakeage” looks modeled on “corkage”, but we found no source that says so.
Go deeper: How to build a dessert menu