Restaurants’ tipping policy ‘forces waiters to pay to work’

Waiters at major restaurant chains say they are being forced to “pay to work” on some shifts because of a tipping policy that means they have to hand over cash to their bosses at the end of the night.

Las Iguanas, a chain serving Latin American food at 41 branches in the UK, and the Caribbean chain Turtle Bay, which has 19 restaurants, operate a policy that requires staff to pay back to their employer 3% of the table sales they generate on each shift. That figure rises to 5.5% in Las Iguanas’s London restaurants.