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I’ve noticed it. You’ve noticed it. We’ve all noticed it.
Where once 12.5 percent was the standard service charge when eating out in London, slowly but surely, it’s started creeping upwards.
Over the past year, we’ve found it not uncommon to see a 15 percent service charge added onto a bill at the end of a meal. The Delaunay in Covent Garden, Bebe Bob in Soho, Langan’s in Mayfair, Sessions Arts Club in Clerkenwell, Cut at 45 Park Lane, and Hutong in London Bridge are among those restaurants asking for a higher than usual tip. As well as a ‘discretionary 15 percent service charge’, The Wolseley on Piccadilly also asks for a cover charge of £2.50.
But why? Well, we asked a bunch of London restaurants why their service charge is now 15 percent, including the places mentioned above, and all of them declined to comment. Which doesn’t really help us to work out why the shift has happened.
In the United States, 15 percent at a restaurant has long been seen as the minimum acceptable tip amount, with many customers paying 20 percent or 25 percent in tips for a meal. However, in the United States the higher tipping amount has long been accepted because many restaurants (and bars) offer a lower than average hourly wage, and tips are seen as a way for service staff to make up their income, with anything under 20 percent seen as a poor tip.
This UK slide to US tipping culture still can’t quite be accounted for. However, in October last year, the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act and the statutory Code of Practice on fair and transparent distribution of tips in the UK came into force. This meant that workers were now entitled to keep ‘100 percent of their tips, gratuities and service charges’, suggesting that some work places were not fairly distributing tips among their staff.
The new act ‘require[s] employers to pass all tips, gratuities, and service charges on to workers, without deductions… if an employer breaks the law and retains tips, a worker will be able to bring a claim to an employment tribunal.’
The Department for Business and Trade estimated that around ‘£200 million will be received by workers that would otherwise have been retained by these employers’.
Is London’s tipping culture out of control? We investigate.
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