We will no longer be adding the customary optional 12.5% service charge onto our bills. Instead, it will be incorporated into our menu prices.
The optional service charge has always gone to our staff, in full.
Service charge- A Thread.

However, this service charge, while optional for our guests, has never been optional for us. Without it, we would not be able to pay our skilled staff the wage they deserve and would simply not have survived as a restaurant.

The furlough scheme introduced by the goverment during lockdown brought this issue into sharp focus: for many restaurants, their tronc (the service charge portion of the wages they pay their staff) was not taken into account for the furlough pay.

Hospitality employees faced up to a 50% reduction in their take-home wage during lockdown.
We want to continue looking after our staff as best as we can and sustain the restaurants we love. Therefore, the service charge will become a part or our menu price.

What you see on the menu is what you pay - and you (and us too) will be confident this goes towards a healthy restaurant with staff that are paid what they deserve.

Hospitality is a career as valid as any other, and we will no longer be making a large portion of our staff’s wages open to discretion. We have wanted to scrap service charge for many years, but in all honesty we haven’t had the confidence to take the step.

It can be hard to break the mould, but the coronavirus crisis has broken the mould for us and we would like to embark on this new ‘normal’ of the post-lockdown world with policies we really believe in.

As an industry we run on very tight margins, often putting our craft, passion and love of hospitality before the bottom line. This can’t be the case any longer.