Faced with high staff costs, restaurants are finding ways around new laws to make sure waiters can keep their tips. There is a better way, says Richard Crampton Platt

“Call it whatever you want, it’s still theft!” I said to my flabbergasted general manager. It was bright and early on a Monday, we were sitting in our restaurant’s shoebox office, and I was being shown how to compile a FLASH report, a weekly financial summary. We’d come to how the tips were distributed amongst the staff, via a method called “fixed deductions”. This sounds very boring, but the result was that a proportion of tips was funnelled away from waiting staff to cover nebulous administrative costs. My bosses admitted they didn’t understand it, read me the head office line from a handbook, but I smelt a rotten fish immediately.

This happened over a decade ago, when I was more idealistic but ethically bang on the money. In my time I’ve seen plenty of other techniques for not sharing out tips. Judging by recent news that L’Antica Pizzeria in Hampstead has relabelled service charge as “admin fees” not much has changed. And yet last year the Tipping Act came into force, designed to ensure that tips get distributed transparently and fairly. Do they? Or are the 54 per cent of people don’t think tips go to staff correct?

To understand this mess, you need to understand why restaurants do it. Labour is the biggest cost, but the........

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