Forum Topic

Restaurant bills

Would some kind soul please explain the differences between different restaurant charges like tips, staff gratuities, sevice charges and cover charges?  I'm confused.

Gerry Tan ● 6631d7 Comments

Well I take those items mentioned as all being one of the same thing Gerry, but I stand to be corrected on that.

Colin Vaughan ● 6630d

I'm not sure if they are one and the same thing Colin, which is why I asked the question.Perhaps a poster with a catering background might let us know.

Gerry Tan ● 6630d

A cover charge certainly differs from tips/service charge and is meant to cover the cost of laundering the tablecloths, or some such nonsense. Italian restaurants are particularly fond of this add-on.Tips go straight to the staff in cash and are part of their wages; apparently the restaurant is legally entitled to hang onto service charges that they've added to the bill and not pass them on to the staff at all (!).I don't think there's anything to stop you, other than English embarrassment, asking for the service charge to be removed from the bill and giving the waiter a personal tip.

Susan Kelly ● 6630d

I always try to tip in cash - unless it looks a small, family business and they have added the service charge. Certainly in the chains I never put it on the credit card.You can always ask your waiter if they get the tips if it's added on the bill as a service charge. they will usually be frank.

Sara Nathan ● 6630d

A cover charge usually covers the cost of laundering the table linen and for things such as rolls and butter - although cover charge should be stated clearly on the menu.As for the rest - got this from a government website - "Tip/gratuityA tip/gratuity is an uncalled for and spontaneous payment offered by a customer either in cash, as part of a cheque payment, or as a specific gratuity on a credit/debit card payment.Service chargeA service charge is an amount added to the customer’s bill before it is presented to the customer. If it is made clear to the customer that the charge is a purely discretionary amount and there is no obligation to pay, the payment is a voluntary service charge. Where this is not the case, the payment is a mandatory service charge. If you impose a mandatory service charge and the money is paid out to your employees, NICs are always due on the payments no matter what arrangements are in place for sharing out the money.HM Revenue & Customs will accept that a payment is a voluntary service charge if it is clearly presented to the customer as an entirely optional payment. The literature seen by the customer should reflect this and be consistent with advice given to customers by staff. Any amount entered on an 'open' credit/debit card slip by a customer is likely to be a gratuity.""

Trizia Fiorellino ● 6630d

There are some important differences between a tip/gratuity and a service charge and also the ways in which these are paid, collected and distributed. I now routinely ask for the "optional service charge" to be removed from the bill and then leave a cash tip for the service - assuming a tip is deserved by the staff, of course, which it usually is. What many (but it must be said not all) companies are doing is using this "optional" service charge to supplement their staff wages, meaning that effectively the staff are being paid well below minimum wage with a top-up from the service charges being used to bring them up to minimum wage, and the rest just goes straight to the restaurants' bottom line without them even having to pay VAT on it as they do on the actual bill (the food part). The Independent's website is a useful source of info on this particular subject as it has been running a "campaign for fairer tipping" recently: http://independent.co.uk/tipping -  there are numerous articles on the subject you can read there, including a few "name and shame"s of chains who are paying staff below minimum wage and topping up with "optional" charges, but this link gives a good summary: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/tipping--the-unpalatable-truth-867545.html Recently in the west country I was pleased to find that when paying my bill a waitress explained quite clearly that the service charge was optional and was only too pleased to remove it from the bill at my request (I left a cash tip). On the other hand, a couple of weeks ago at Okawari in Ealing Broadway, one of my favourite restaurants, the waitress seemed confused and almost distressed at my request to remove it. This may have been due to her being less than fluent in English, perhaps she was simply taken aback at the idea that I thought the service was not good enough (I tried to explain that as always I was very happy with my meal and I would be tipping in cash to acknowledge this). My understanding of a "cover charge" is that it is for things like the bread basket and olives type thing that many restaurants will put on your table without you asking. It's not something I see often.

Mark Dudley ● 6624d

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/leisure/article5076519.ece

Mark Dudley ● 6539d