9 hours ago
Is a pub's service charge on beer at the bar a rip-off?
The pint is ordered. The tap handle is pulled down firmly, from completely closed to completely open. Having pulled several thousand of these things myself, once upon a time, I can see it's a textbook start, and it only improves. The glass is held at 45 degrees and raised high against the tap, limiting, but not entirely restricting the drop height of the liquid. Then, as the level rises, the angle is slowly opened and the glass is lowered, ensuring consistency of drop height all the way through the pour, agitating the carbon dioxide within to the optimum level required for a solid 2cm of foamy head. It's perfect. I mean, it's not very hard. Anyone can master it in about five minutes, as I once did, aged 18. But it's still perfect.
It's only at this point that things get a bit lively. Drinkers at the Well & Boot in London's Waterloo station, with its panoramic view over surely the nation's single ugliest concourse, must now ask themselves a difficult question. Was that short moment of perfection worth an extra 31p? Or does the existing £7.65 for the pint itself adequately cover the act of pouring it out?
The reason they must ask it themselves is because no one else is going to. The pint they've just ordered is about to have a 4 per cent service charge added to it, even though it's been ordered at the bar and paid for at the bar. It won't, in fairness, be drunk at the bar, as there is no bar to speak of, not one with seats anyway, or an actual bar top, and that's the real scandal here, which we'll get on to shortly.
The Well & Boot has hit the headlines over the past 48 hours, for its not-so-obvious 4 per cent service charge on drinks at the bar. Two days of newspaper coverage have not been sufficient to compel the bar staff to mention it. It's in the small print on the bottom of the menu, but who looks at that? It's on the receipt if you happen to ask for one, but who gets a receipt for a pint of beer (apart from journalists, obviously)?
When you see it printed out and written down, it's a bit irksome. If, back in the year 2000, I'd been paid 31p for every pint I'd poured, I'd have ended the Friday night shift with several hundred quid to show for it, not £15.85 and, I realise now, severe PTSD from over-exposure to Dancing In The Moonlight by Toploader.
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The Well & Boot is banking on customers not noticing the difference between £7.65 for a pint of beer and £7.96 for a pint of beer, and it's a safe bet. Once you've paid £7.65 for a pint your subconscious is already doing everything it can to suppress the pain, just to allow you to enjoy it. You can, if you like, ask for it to be removed, and, having done the job myself, I simply couldn't face hassling a bar worker to go through the necessary rigmarole on the till just to do themselves out of 31p.
Is it a rip-off? I don't know. Pint number two — all in the name of research, obviously, was a Guinness — and that one was brought to the table, at which point a 4 per cent charge for table service is quite good value. All the other customers were having a lunchtime meal, ordered and brought to the table, so 4 per cent for that sort of service is extremely cheap.
What really irks is that it is a calculated effort to strip out the entire purpose of tipping culture. Having lived in New York for a bit, I am a passionate believer in tipping culture, which British holidaymakers to the United States rarely understand. There, it is routine to hand over a dollar bill for every drink (an amount which has not gone up in at least 20 years, even while the cost of the drink itself has doubled). But — and here comes the whole point — should you stay for four or five drinks, you are likely to receive a drink on the house in return for your generosity, which has cost you in tips a lot less than the cost of the drink itself.
It is a virtuous circle of conviviality. Decent wages for service workers in return for cheap drinks for loyal punters, the purposeful nurturing of a good atmosphere, and all of it done off the books. A few dollars are handed over in cash, a bit of liquid goes missing, no need to worry about the spreadsheets or the taxman. Proper tipping culture is the same double victory as paying the plumber in cash, except there's also booze involved.
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It doesn't work if it's all done on card (the Well & Boot does not take cash), and it certainly doesn't work if it's done in secret.
Of course, what's actually going on here is yet another case of long pub Covid. Pubs with no discernible bar, where you shout over the taps and then are cajoled into having your drinks brought to a table you haven't even found yet. Where people still order and pay over app, or queue in single file, and no one truly understands what the point of it all is. At least, I think that's what's going on here. I might be wrong. Perhaps if I'd racked up £7.65's worth of 31p tips, my 25th pint would have been on the house. I might, however, have missed my train.
