First of all, we apologise for reaching out like this but we need all the help we can get at this time.
As you are aware, through COVID, hospitality received assistance from the Government and our VAT was reduced to 5%. This allowed us to raise the wages of our staff and maintain the same prices for you, our valued customers. Sadly, we now have no choice but to raise our prices, as many of the ingredients’ costs have increased. Some up to 40%.
On October 1st, VAT was increased to 12.5%. In March 2022, the Government will again increase VAT, this time to 20%.
VAT has always been a burden for the hospitality industry as food doesn’t have VAT and, unlike other industries, we have nothing to claim against VAT. (In Europe VAT for the hospitality industry is between 5 and 9%)
We need your support to help us convince the government that VAT should remain at 12.5% and not be raised to 20%. Help us, please, so that the food prices at your favourite restaurants do not go up and so that our staff can be paid normal wages!
Write to your MP
UK Hospitality, that we are member off have created a template letter for you to send to your MP. This campaigning tool will mean that within 2 minutes you will be able to easily find your MP and edit a letter to personalise it before sending to them. Dead line for this campaign is 30th October.
Have you been to the restaurant and been told we do not have availability, yet you can see half restaurant empty?
That is a new norm. It is happening more and more.
Or have you found out that your favourite restaurant now closed earlier and opens later?
Many restaurants now are closed one day per week and may have reduced opening hours.
Why is this?
Why are restaurants forced to reduce their opening hours? Turn away prospective customers with tables available? Well, there is simply not enough staff.
When this issue was raised to the attention of the government, their response was evasive at best. Pointing to the COVID economic policies in place they said that until the furlough scheme comes to an end. It is difficult for them to know exactly if the UK are short of staff or not. They also suspect that when in September, government help comes to an end there will be many people looking for a job.
But what do we do until September?
Maybe. We do not know. But what do we do until September? This summer is an opportunity for businesses to serve the public once again, after an extraordinarily difficult year. Everyone, hospitality as well as the government is losing money until then. And the current hospitality team that is working is very overwhelmed and tired. The less staff we have available the less customers we can serve.
But I am not completely sure that we will see a rush of staff looking for a job in September. I believe our qualified hospitality workers have left – as unfortunately COVID hit just in time for Brexit and Hospitality, and they are not coming back.
I believe our qualified hospitality workers have left – as unfortunately COVID hit just in the time for the Brexit, and they are not coming back.
Employee’s did not return to the hospitality industry
They are not coming back as they hear horrible stories from their friends who have tried to come into the UK and they had so many complications and so many of them have been returned. It is not a welcoming image, few would be enticed to return to such a stressful experience.
This feels so wrong. It feels as if we have gone back instead of forward.
We do not need to even talk about the impact on our food bills – it is all gone up. Well, use British products! But guess what, British products have also gone up in price as they need to import materials from Europe to grow the products in the first place! It is a vicious cycle where the hospitality industry is squeezed tighter and tighter.
In today’s world, when Google is at your fingertips, we do not want to go back to the UK in the 1980’s, when we had tomatoes that tasted as plastic, and we did not have any European products.
British people travel a lot and we all like to experience at home some of the pleasures that we had on our holidays. Yet the capacity to offer this moment of foreign flavours is being curtailed.
I am really not sure where we are heading, I hope there is a light at the end of this long tunnel. The problem is that we cannot see it at the moment.
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