Is it possible for Britons to over-order their way to an economic recovery?
That is the largely the thinking behind “Eat out to Help Out”, the chancellor’s gift to the nation in the summer statement, that officially launched this week.
If you haven’t yet cracked how to obtain a £10 discount per meal in tens of thousands of establishments, ranging from the Michelin-starred to neighbourhood restaurants and pubs, then I fear there is little point telling you. Those hideously organised online deal-seekers may have already stolen your fun.
Within hours of the scheme going live, the posher eateries were booked solid for lunch and dinner for every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in August. These are the days when diners can get 50 per cent off food and non-alcoholic drinks (up to a maximum of £10 per person). To get the maximum savings, you will need to spend £20. In the words of Wired’s Amit Katwala, “It’s a golden age for the unnecessary side dish.”
Nevertheless, the scheme is simple. No vouchers are needed — all you need to do is check that your restaurant, café or pub of choice is listed on the government’s Eat out to Help Out website — and if you can’t book online, turn up early to secure a socially distanced table, which has reduced capacity by 30 to 40 per cent in some places.
Colloquially known as “Rishi’s Dishes” in honour of its creator, chancellor Rishi Sunak, the purpose of the scheme is to get tills ringing for the hospitality industry by encouraging dine-in custom. Takeaway food, which has boomed under lockdown, is excluded from the deal.
I have been living at work (sorry, working from home) for nearly six months now, so the thought of escaping to eat food that I hadn’t cooked and getting up to a tenner off was enough to tempt me out.
Not everyone feels so enthusiastic. “Roll up, roll up, £10 to enter the virus raffle,” commented one FT reader who watched our Business Clinic video on the same topic earlier this week. Others suggested the scheme should be renamed “Eat out to help herd immunity”, and the subsidy better spent on a more robust trace and contact system to build consumer confidence.
Restaurant owners I’ve spoken to say that since July’s reopening, older customers have been the least likely to dine in. This is surely one reason why some of the capital’s oldest members’ clubs, including the Reform, the Travellers and the East India Club on Pall Mall, are also signed up to the scheme, as they look to entice their members back over the threshold.
Restaurateurs like Tim Siadatan, the pasta-making entrepreneur behind London’s Trullo and Padella, hope returning customers will be reassured by the huge steps establishments have taken to make eating out as “Covid-safe” as possible.
A vital step, it nevertheless risks putting the “hospital” into the hospitality experience.
Take my local pub, for instance. For over 20 years, its open doors have been tempting me to slip in for “just the one” after work, only to stay there all night. Now, you cannot enter until you have scanned a QR code on the front door with your smartphone in order to register your contact details (all of this does make me wonder how anyone in the future will be able to get away with having an affair).
Once inside, having doused yourself with hand sanitiser, you must follow the one-way system to the perspex-covered ordering points that have replaced the main bar, then retreat to your designated table.
Some places I explored this week had a QR code taped on to the table that you had to scan to read the menu to avoid spreading germs. In some places, you can use a QR code or app to place your order. Other contact-reducing measures include customers being handed items on trays, and of course, paying via contactless, where the limit has been raised from £30 to £45.
Ask anyone who works in a bar or restaurant what they miss about cash, and they will answer: tips. The raised “tap and pay” limit means the option to punch in something extra using the chip and Pin machine is also lost. Bigger chains and swankier establishments will add a service charge to your bill (the discount is not applied to this). But in the local, independent restaurants that you might be more likely to frequent nowadays, the “tip jar” is a relic of the pre-Covid era.
All of the waiting staff I have given a cash tip to this summer have said the same thing: “That’s the first one I’ve had since reopening”. If you have made a saving on your meal, why not pass some of it on?
The same goes for delivery drivers. Why not tip them too? The great majority are self-employed and work long hours for not much pay (if you’re getting “free delivery” on an online order, someone else is paying the price). One of my followers on Twitter says he offers an ice cold can of soft drink and a wet wipe in gratitude to delivery drivers who trudge up the steps to his flat.
As for the scheme, the 50 per cent discount does not apply to alcoholic drinks. This means less “help” for your average boozer, but pubs with large beer gardens have definitely benefited — as have restaurants with outdoor seating. Diners feel less wary when eating al fresco. Yet unless the chancellor announces a VAT holiday for outdoor patio heaters, I cannot see this trend lasting into the autumn and winter.
By then, who knows how many millions could have lost their jobs as the furlough scheme ends — or if a “second wave” causes more localised lockdowns?
This is what really worries business owners, including Trullo’s Mr Siadatan. He says there is no way of knowing how long a second closure could last or what kind of support might be there if it happens.
While the hospitality sector has rushed to embrace the scheme, plenty of people — including the boss of HM Revenue & Customs — have questioned how much help it will really provide.
On the day of its launch, one participant, PizzaExpress, announced dozens of closures and over 1,000 job losses. It is one of at least 15 national chains to put itself up for sale or appoint advisers since the crisis began; an indication of how hard the virus has hit city centre locations.
With so many of us now working from home, local neighbourhoods stand to benefit more. Punch your postcode into the Eat Out to Help Out website and, as I have found, you are bound to discover independent places nearby that you never knew existed. Even if you don’t want to dine in, most have reconfigured their business models to offer takeaway collection or delivery. You won’t save £10, but you will support entrepreneurs providing services and jobs in your area.
My final tip? If you do dine in and find you’ve over-ordered, the government’s official rules say that you can ask for a doggy bag to take home with you. Every little helps.
Claer Barrett is the editor of FT Money, and a financial commentator on Eddie Mair’s LBC drive-time show, on weekdays between 4-6pm: claer.barrett@ft.com; Twitter @Claerb; Instagram @Claerb
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