Not everyone agrees. “The thing we get to do, which is the greatest privilege, is to be the place where people mark the moments in their life,” says Nick Gibson, the owner of the Drapers Arms in Islington.
“What frustrates me is there are too many people in this industry who spend their time online complaining about customers. They might say they’re entitled to make their margin, but they’re portraying the industry as penny-pinching, inhospitable, resentful: complaining about having to wash some plates when they have a potwash out back who is just going to run them through the machine. It’s mean, it misses the point of what we’re here to do.”
Restaurateurs talk about having to make their margins, Gibson points out: “It’s about resentment over somehow being ripped off. The idea that everybody would otherwise have had dessert is fanciful. Plus, on a birthday, they might spend on Champagne.”
The pandemic has been fraught for hospitality businesses. They were blamed for spreading the disease, and then urged, via the controversial Eat Out to Help Out scheme, to drive the recovery. The costs of ingredients and energy are rising. Many European staff had already left after Brexit; many more went home when everything was shut during the pandemic.
The businesses that have survived until now need to claw back debts. Some practices, like leaving a credit card details to secure a booking, are far more common now. Cakeage might seem trivial, but it is one of those issues, like tipping, that sits on the faultline of the restaurant-customer relationship.
“We haven’t had one of these stories for a while,” says Jackson Boxer, owner of Brunswick House in Vauxhall. “It suggests we’ve left the post-lockdown honeymoon period where everyone was delighted to be eating out, and appreciative of the costs and labour involved.” He says that at Brunswick House, they welcome customers bringing their own cakes but charge a small fee to cover their costs and that “no-one, in my experience, has a problem with this.”
“Ultimately we are acutely aware of both the costs of keeping the doors open, and our fundamental purpose in making people feel happy,” he says.
Khan says that one mercy of the coronavirus crackdown has been that her restaurant is no longer blighted by out-of-tune celebratory warbling. “We might bring singing back,” she says. “But I would like to charge people for singing off-key.”
Five other ways to hike up the bill
- Sleazage: A charge for flirting with the staff
- Splittage: An extra charge for splitting the bill, with an extra pound added for each different card transaction required. Fee doubles if there is anything other than an even split
- Wipeage: A charge for bringing pouches of baby mush which the infant proceeds to spray around the dining room, to be cleared up by busy staff
- Wine boreage: A charge for all pretentious wine behaviours, especially sending back uncorked wines, sniffing rather than tasting the sample, etc
- Dad Jokeage: A charge for saying things like ‘no, it was horrible’ when empty plates are being cleared
