Tip off: here's how to fix infuriating service charges in restaurants

The AI draws on OpenTable’s extensive database of menus, reviews, and descriptions, as well as APIs from OpenAI and Perplexity,

Faced with high staff costs, restaurants are finding ways around new laws to make sure waiters can keep their tips. There is a better way, says Richard Crampton Platt

“Call it whatever you want, it’s still theft!” I said to my flabbergasted general manager. It was bright and early on a Monday, we were sitting in our restaurant’s shoebox office, and I was being shown how to compile a FLASH report, a weekly financial summary. We’d come to how the tips were distributed amongst the staff, via a method called “fixed deductions”. This sounds very boring, but the result was that a proportion of tips was funnelled away from waiting staff to cover nebulous administrative