Friday five: the week's top restaurant stories
- A new law requiring businesses to pass on 100% of tips and service charges to staff comes into force. The implementation of the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, which was first brought forward back in 2021 and received Royal Assent in May last year, means it is now unlawful for businesses to hold back service charges from their employees, ensuring staff receive all of the tips they have earned. If an employer breaks the law and retains tips, a worker will be able to bring a claim to an employment tribunal. Employers in the wrong could be made to pay fines or compensation to staff.
- Former Holborn Dining Room chef and self-styled pie master Calum Franklin is returning to London to oversee the evening menu at Harrods’ The Georgian restaurant when it relaunches next month. The Georgian’s new dinner menu will ‘celebrate British ingredients and classic cooking’, with an emphasis on Franklin’s signature pies. It marks Franklin’s first major project in London since he left Holborn Dining Room in the summer of 2022. During the day the historical restaurant will continue to serve an afternoon tea menu that will be led by executive pastry chef Markus Bohr and Harrods inhouse pâtisserie team. As well as pies, the wider evening menu will celebrate the 120 years of history and heritage of the restaurant, with recipes inspired from the Harrods archive that have been updated with a ‘contemporary focus’.
- Chef Richard Corrigan has said trading conditions within the hospitality sector are ‘harder than they have ever been’ as his group swung to a loss of more than £1m. Richard Corrigan Restaurants, which incorporates several sites across London and Ireland, saw turnover rise from £15.7m to £16.4m in the year ended 31 December 2023, with the group describing it as an ‘ambitious year’ featuring ‘some successes and challenges’. Writing in the group’s accounts, Corrigan noted the sales growth at his Virginia Park Lodge country house in Cavan, Ireland, which reported a 7% increase in year-on-year revenues and a 57% rise in adjusted EBITDA. During the year the group also opened a new gastropub close to Virginia Park Lodge called Deerpark Inn. However, it was also forced to close its Dublin outpost The Park Café after little more than a year of trading, with the chef saying the timing of the project, the site’s location and wider economic issues all meant it was ‘not viable to continue’. For the year the group reported a loss of £1.1m, up from a loss of £216,897 in 2022.
- Michael O’Hare has closed his Leeds restaurant Psycho Sandbar just seven months after launching it on the site that previously housed his Michelin-starred The Man Behind The Curtain. In a statement, O’Hare said the decision to close was ‘very much based’ on his own plans for the future, but is also ‘reflective of the changing experience market in which we all live’. It brings O’Hare’s presence in Leeds to a close after 10 years.
- Homeless charity StreetSmart is on the hunt for new restaurant partners to join its annual Christmas campaign to raise vital funds to support people living on the streets. Some 500 restaurants across the country have already signed up to take part in this year's campaign, which kicks off on 1 November and gives diners the option to add a voluntary £1 per table donation to their bills during November and December. New additions to the evergrowing roster include the recently relaunched Julie’s in London’s Holland Park; and Andy Oliver and Mark Dobbie’s Kolae close to Borough Market. Outside of the capital, Simon Martin’s Manchester restaurant Mana and Upstairs by Tom Shepherd in Lichfield have also joined the lineup.
For more of this week's headlines, click here.
