MIAMI (CBS4) – We live in a surcharge society. We pay extra to check a bag on a plane and to use a credit card, our hotel and cell phone bills have charges we’d never dreamed of… it never seems to end.

Now, a different kind of surcharge may soon start appearing on restaurant menus and it will have nothing to do with what you eat.

Restaurants in New York, the city that’s often the country’s trendsetter, are looking at charging people more if they want to get a table during high-demand times.

So, if you want to go out to dinner at eight you might see a surcharge on your check.

Let’s hope this trend doesn’t make it to South Florida.

Many restaurants have long offered early bird specials and some new online sites offer discounts at restaurants when you go at off hours. These new surcharges, which I’ll call “primetime pain,” would be the flip side of the coin.

I can’t blame restaurants for charging what the market will bear. But, I for one, am not going to pay more for the same food, so just call me “early bird.”