'So cakeage is a controversial one'

A Twitter storm erupted this weekend over restaurants charging you cakeage to bring in a cake for a birthday celebration.

Twitter was flooded with controversy this weekend after a tweet from Ivor Baddiel regarding his experience went viral.

The tweet explained how he'd asked a restaurant, that he was going to for a birthday lunch, if they could bring a cake and if it could be brought out at the end of the meal.

He then said that the restaurant agreed to it but would charge an extra £10 a head. A charge, the tweet stated, the restaurant called Cakeage. The tweet then ended with "What is this world we live in?"

I asked the restaurant I’m going to for a birthday lunch today if we could bring a cake with to be brought out at the end of the meal. They said yes, but they’d charge us cakeage (yes, cakeage) at £10 a head. What is this world we live in?
— Ivor Baddiel (@Ivorbaddiel) April 3, 2022

It was clear people were split in to two camps, with many chefs, such as Paul Foster and Andrew Scott, replying to the tweet stating that they do add Cakage to bills and explaining why.

Andrew Scott stated: "You’ve stopped them being able to sell a dessert to you though, as you’ve brought your own?" to explain

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his support for the Cakeage.

However, another person responded: "Personally, I'd have cancelled the entire booking and found a restaurant that wanted yr business" and that "they don't seem interested in making my meal enjoyable at all. Just a transaction."

This like many other responses split into a smaller discussion with people arguing that restaurants are businesses that need to make money. This then led to other people responding that a Cakeage charge was a ripoff and restaurants shouldn't charge it.

These responses only led to people arguing that it wasn't a rip off, the people arguing against it were the ones trying to rip people off.

It triggered 1,600 retweets and over 400 quote tweets on the original tweet.

Eventually, the energy died down and Paul Foster's tweet on the incident sums it up quite nicely.

He tweeted: "So cakeage is a controversial one."

He also added: "don’t mention it on Twitter, the know it all army will be after you."

So cakeage is a controversial one 😂

🤫 don’t mention it on Twitter, the know it all army will be after you.
— Paul Foster (@Paulfosterchef) April 3, 2022