Fury in Italy: Restaurant charges shocked customers £50 to cut their birthday cake

A restaurant in Italy has sparked anger after charging diners a whopping £50 to cut their birthday cake.

A family went to a restaurant in southern Arezzo to celebrate their mother’s birthday after asking in advance if they could bring a cake from the pastry shop.

However, after enjoying a leisurely meal on Thursday, the €659 bill included a €58 charge to cut the cake and bring it to the table.

The cost turned out to be even higher than that of the birthday cake – which cost 45 euros – with an expenditure of 4.50 euros for each of the 13 guests, reports Corriere Fiorentino.

The news comes after it was revealed that customers in London were being charged for the “privilege of paying their bill” on top of a 13.5% service charge.

Triggering a storm on social media, the mother’s daughter told the story in a message posted on an Arezzo Facebook group.

She claimed the restaurant said it was their restaurant policy and they were required to pay it.

The restaurant owner told the Italian news site: “We don’t charge an entrance fee and we mainly serve dishes of our own production, so we try to discourage those who bring things from outside.

“If we consider that in Arezzo the average price of a meal is 2.5 euros per person, there is not such a big difference.

“My restaurant has to pay the waiter who serves at the table, the dishwasher and other ancillary services. We have to recover them somehow.”

However, the owner admitted: “I was not there that night and my employees may have been too picky in handling the situation that arose, perhaps reducing the usual price a little or even not charging anything for the cake.

“It’s better to have 50 euros less and for people to go home happy than this misunderstanding in which we are all harmed.”

In August last year, another restaurant in Italy shocked customers by charging them €20 to cut a birthday cake.

The family had brought the cake with them to a party in Palermo, Sicily.

But revellers were shocked to learn they had been charged €20 (£17.26) to cut it into pieces.