Ivy Collection restaurants accused of retaining service charge
The Ivy Collection, a chain of eight spin-offs from London's Ivy restaurant, has been accused of not handing on service charges to waiting and kitchen staff. Ordinary waiters and chefs receive £1.30 an hour "commission” on top of the £7.20 an hour minimum wage, regardless of the size of the service charge. Some staff receive as little as 80p in commission, while others receive nothing. The Ivy Collection, which is planning to open 10 more restaurants and has underlying profits of £1.9m, rejected the accusations from staff and the Unite union. The Ivy Collection does not include the original Ivy restaurant.

A chain of restaurants spun out of the prestigious London celebrity haunt the Ivy has been accused of failing to give waiters and kitchen staff their fair share of the money diners pay in service charges.

The Ivy Collection, which owns eight restaurants, hands ordinary waiters and chefs only £1.30 an hour in “commission” on top of the £7.20 an hour minimum wage no matter how much is collected from the service charge, according to staff and the Unite union.

The Ivy Collection does not include the original Ivy restaurant, which is controlled by a separate company, Caprice Holdings. Both are controlled by the former BHS shareholder Richard Caring.

Staff on probation and some runners, who shuttle food and dishes between the kitchen and dining areas, receive only 80p per hour on top of the minimum wage or no commission at all, according to staff.

A member of the kitchen staff told the Guardian: “Business is good, business is bad, our commission stays the same. Nobody feels they can do or say anything about it or we will lose our jobs.”

He said he had also spoken out because he felt diners were being shortchanged. “People think that money is going to the waiters and it’s going into what we call ‘McDonalds’ – opening new restaurants.”

One former waiter told the Guardian: “I put through more than £1,500 [in diners’ bills] on a shift and when you see only about £7 of that on top of the minimum wage you can see they are very tight with money.”

A spokesman for the Ivy Collection denied the claims made by Unite and said the majority of the service charge did go to waiters and junior chefs.



“All restaurant based staff at the Ivy Collection are paid, at the very least, the minimum wage and this wage is then significantly increased with money from the service charge, minus the relevant taxes imposed by HM Revenue and Customs. The vast majority of the money from the service charge is given to the restaurant staff, not the management,” a spokesman said.

“At present, if a customer does not want to pay the service charge of 12.5%, they can opt to leave a cash tip, and this will be given directly to the waiter. Customers also have the option of not leaving a tip.”

However, Dave Turnbull, regional officer of Unite, which has led a long-running campaign against unfair handling of service charges and tips, said the Ivy Collection group could be saving millions of pounds a year by using the 12.5% fee automatically added to diners’ bills to boost senior restaurant staff wages. The union estimates that ordinary waiting and kitchen staff could be receiving less than half of the service charge.



After examining accounts for the group’s Chelsea Grill restaurant, Unite said the restaurant took about £1m in service charges while total wages and salaries, including the “commission” handed out by the company, were £2.6m.

Even if all the restaurant’s 184 employees, excluding two directors, worked the entire year for 45 hours a week on average, and all received £1.30 an hour the total paid out in commission works out at less than £600,000. Turnbull said this prompted questions over whether the restaurant was using the money to top up managers’ wages.

“Most people pay the service charge without question believing that the extra cash goes entirely to the staff that served them. And yet, there is currently no legal requirement for employers to give staff a portion of it,” said Turnbull.



“That is why we’re calling on the government to publish the recommendations of its consultation on tipping, which is now eight months overdue.”

The Ivy Collection plans to open 10 new restaurants in the year to July 2017. Accounts filed at Companies House show the group more than tripled underlying profits to £1.9m as it opened outlets in Bristol, Marylebone and Kensington.



