BOSSES at one of the biggest restaurant groups in the UK are still taking a 2.5 per cent cut of workers' tips to cover "admin fees" – despite many others dropping the practice as pressure from the public mounts.
Casual Dining Group, which owns Cafe Rouge, Bella Italia and Las Iguanas, takes a 2.5 per cent cut of tips left by people on credit or debit cards, while Turtle Bay also takes a slice of workers' earnings.
It comes after the Queen confirmed today that restaurants will finally be forced to hand over tips to staff – more than three years after the Conservatives first promised a crack down.
A new law announced in the Queen's Speech will force employers to pass on all gratuities in full and to share any pooled tips in a fair way.
In 2015, an investigation by trade union Unite found that many high-street chains were deducting fees from tips.
These included Ask, Pizza Express, and Zizzi, which were taking 8 per cent, and Giraffe, which was taking 10 per cent.
All of them have since scrapped their fees altogether and now hand 100 per cent of both card and cash tips to staff.
Others, such as Chiquito, Frankie and Benny’s, Garfunkels, GBK, Nando’s, Pizza Hut, and Wagamama also have no administrative charge.
But at Casual Dining Group restaurants, for every £1 in tips given on a credit card, the restaurant staff will keep 97.5p but 2.5p goes to the company.
Any tips paid in cash are kept by the waiter who served you, the group said.
A spokesperson for Casual Dining Group said the policy "is in line with government-sponsored guidance, which was approved by [union] Unite and HMRC".
Restaurants argue that the new legislation gives them another burden
DINERS were left outraged in 2015 when it emerged that tips were not always going to the staff who earned them.
Many chains were charging up to 10 per cent in administrative fees to handle tips, particularly on money left on cards.
This meant staff members were missing out on hundreds of pounds a year in extra earnings.
But since then, most chains have dropped their fees altogether, although some still charge 2.5 per cent.
The hospitality trade body, UK Hospitality, says the fact restaurants had acted voluntarily means new legislation is unnecessary.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality said: "Legislation on tipping threatens to add another unwanted burden on businesses at an already very challenging and complex time.
"Any new measures need to have full input from the hospitality sector, the businesses who will be affected.
“Deductions are sometimes made to service charges as hospitality businesses are charged by banks in order to process payments.
"If the full amount is to be passed on, then hospitality businesses are going to be forced to foot the bill.
"If there is a new legal obligation to pass on the full amount of a service charge, then there needs to be action to ensure that hospitality, a sector that provides over 3.2million jobs around the UK, is not stuck with yet another tax.
"That may mean measures to cap or remove charges to hospitality businesses altogether.”
Meanwhile, Caribbean restaurant Turtle Bay has also come under fire for its tipping policy.
It redistributes 30 per cent of tips to the wider workforce – but it calculates the total by taking 3 per cent off the sales of each member of waiting staff.
That means if someone has served £1,000 worth of food, they must put £30 of their tips in the pot, regardless of what they have actually earned.
Turtle Bay says on its website: “We aim to be fair to every single team member who contributes to the Turtle Bay experience – our tipping policy helps us achieve this fairness.”
It was yet to comment when The Sun asked.
As well as being upset about restaurant bosses creaming off a percentage of tips, workers have also complained about them being unfairly distributed at Carluccio’s.
Waiting staff complained that a new tipping policy has left them hundreds of pounds a month worse off.
The new policy hands a greater share of tips to managers – which some staff said had meant a cut in real pay of up to £400 a month.
Before the changes, waiting staff received 65 per cent of credit and debit card tips, the rest being shared between kitchen and bar staff.
Now, tips are divided according to the number of hours worked, and are also handed to managers.
Mark Jones, Carluccio’s chief executive, called the policy “one of the fairest in the industry”.
It is unclear whether the new law would make these practices illegal as tips are technically still going to staff. We've asked the government and we'll update this story when we get a response.
Dave Turnbull, Unite’s officer for hospitality, said: “Unite will be scrutinising the bill to ensure it represents the actions needed to stop greedy bosses pocketing people’s hard earned tips.”
It has been a tough few years for high street restaurant chains. In May, Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Italian chain collapsed, with the loss of 1,000 jobs.
And last year saw the Goucho group go into administration and Prezzo close 100 restaurants.
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