Waiters employed by one of the UK’s biggest restaurant chains face the sack if they encourage customers to leave tips in cash.

Employees of Tragus – which owns Strada, Café Rouge and Bella Italia – are forbidden to tell diners that the optional service charge is used to subsidise the national minimum wage paid to waiters. Cash tips go directly to staff, but those paid by card go to the company. The company sent a memo last month to all restaurant managers telling them to crack down on staff who appeared to be encouraging customers to leave cash instead of putting the service charge on their card.

The memo, received on 22 May, told them to check the percentage of service charge collected by individual waiters each week. “If you find certain employees have low service charge, you must organise a meeting with the employee to discuss the reports. This may indicate they are fraudulently having the service removed when it was actually paid for by the customer,” the memo stated.

The Strada restaurant manager who showed the Observer the memo claims that, of the £6.50 hourly rate that waiters receive, only £2.50 comes from the company, with the rest paid out of tips left by customers. Jamie Elliott, The Observer.

Still I don’t expect Tragus is the only company with this policy – yet another reason not to eat at the big chains – you’ll find better quality and better prices and a more enlightened employment policy at your local independent restaurants.