Waiting staff at the Italian restaurant chain set up by Jamie Oliver are in dispute with the company after complaining that changes in the company’s tipping policy are exploitative and have left them out of pocket.

Jamie’s Italian, which has been valued at more than £150m and serves Italian food at 42 branches across Britain, requires its waiting staff to pay a 2% levy from table sales they generate on each shift. The money is taken from credit card tips, the company says, to be redistributed among kitchen and door staff.

This means that if waiting staff sell £1,000 of food and drinks in an evening, they have to pay £20 back from their credit card tips to the restaurant regardless of how much they have actually made in tips. Some shifts can bring in as little as £20 in tips, they have claimed.

A number of staff members have told managers that the new tipping system is unfair because it bears no relation to how much they actually earn in tips, and is run without staff input or transparency. On occasion, they claim, waiting staff have to “pay to work”.

Jamie’s Italian, one of Britain’s most successful chains, has rejected claims that their tipping system is unfair and that it has never asked staff to pay more than they earn in gratuities.

Two restaurant chains, Pizza Express and the Latin American food outlet Las Iguanas, have recently changed controversial tipping policies following complaints from staff that they were being exploited.



On Friday, Las Iguanas bowed to pressure from diners and announced plans to change its tipping policy. The chain had been criticised for requiring staff to pay it 3% of the table sales they generate on each shift.

The business secretary, Sajid Javid, launched an investigation into the abuse of tipping in August following articles by the Guardian, the Observer and other newspapers about dubious tipping practices. This inquiry runs until 10 November.

The current dispute at Jamie’s Italian centres on the sales charge used to distribute tips, known as a Tronc payment, which was increased from 1.5% to 2% at the beginning of 2015.

In Oliver’s restaurants the sales charge tends to be overseen by each restaurant’s general manager, who is designated as the manager of the tipping scheme.

Many waiting staff at Jamie’s Italian are paid the minimum wage on short-term contracts and rely on tips to boost their earnings.

Staff involved in the dispute have told managers that they are happy to hand over a percentage of tips to other staff but say this should be calculated from the tips they make and should not be based on the total sales in a waiter’s section.

They have also questioned the company’s decision to put restaurant general managers in charge of the tronc scheme. Guidelines issued by by HMRC say the tronc scheme should be independent of the employer.

A spokeswoman for Jamie’s Italian confirmed that it had received a complaint from staff members and was attempting to solve the dispute, but added that the company used a fair and HMRC-compliant tronc system independent of head office.

“Staff contribute a maximum of 2% to the tronc system and under no circumstance would they ever have to contribute more than they receive in tips.

“Since the implementation of the new system, we have only had one complaint from some staff at one of our restaurants who believe that the front of house staff deserve more of their tips – resulting in less for non-front-of-house staff. This issue is currently being resolved internally at that restaurant.

“Our waiters are some of the highest earning staff in the sector and they are rewarded exceptionally well,” she said in a statement.

Oliver, who the Sunday Times Rich List estimates is worth £180m, was first spotted in 1997 during a documentary about the River Cafe, where he was working.

His BBC cookery programme The Naked Chef first aired in 1999 and he has since fronted campaigns for better quality food in schools, as well as adverts for Sainsbury’s.



The Jamie’s Italian brand has been franchised globally and now includes branches in the UAE, Australia, Ireland, Russia, Turkey, Singapore and Hong Kong. Dozens more are planned over the next four years.

One union official said the dispute within Jamie’s Italian was part of a trend across the restaurant industry of waiting staff wanting more control over their gratuities.



Dave Turnbull, from the union Unite, said: “Our membership is increasingly questioning whether tronc schemes, which are invariably run by members of management rather than elected committees of waiting staff, can truly be genuinely independent of companies and owners.



“In the case of Jamie’s Italian, this 2% levy seems to be more of a company wide policy than an independent decision.”