The sneaky charge that London restaurants are allegedly using to dodge sharing tips with staff

By now, Londoners are used to seeing the 12.5 percent service charge tacked on to the end of most restaurant bills. But what about an ‘admin fee’?

There’s been a reported rise in restaurants in the capital switching out their service charge for an admin fee – still 12.5 percent – that allows the eateries to circumvent new laws that require 100 percent of tips to be given to staff. 

Reported by London Centric, restaurants including L’Antica Pizzeria – which has branches in Hampstead and High Barnet – have introduced the new charge, the wording of which suggests they won’t have to give tips to staff. According to London Centric, a waiter at the pizza joint said the admin fee was to ‘cover the cost of the card machine and general restaurant costs’.

‘No matter what senior management call it, customers will assume that this charge is a tip that should go to workers but it won’t’ Bryan Simpson, hospitality lead at Unite union, told London Centric. ‘That is completely disingenuous and almost certainly a breach of the Fair Tips Act, at least in spirit if not the letter of the law.’

The admin fee isn’t the first example of a restaurant trying to squeeze extra money from its customers. The now closed dim sum chain Ping Pong started charging diners a ‘brand charge’ in 2024 just as the new tipping laws came in, while high-end eateries including the Wolseley, Sexy Fish and J Sheekey all have a £2 per person cover charge. One London resto – Bacchanalia in Mayfair – even charges an ‘ambience fee’. 

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