The £100 minimum spend is here, but are restaurants taking aim at the wrong people?
The IndependentOnce upon a time, booking a restaurant was simple: you found a place, called up, made a reservation and – crucially – turned up. This, combined with rising food costs and rent, is forcing restaurants to find ways to secure revenue – minimum spends being one of them. “Of course not, it is completely ludicrous and disingenuous to say you accept no minimum spend.” But he also made it clear he wouldn’t be introducing one himself, calling the further monetisation of dining out “deplorable”, adding: “There is a solution to this all – order as if you enjoy eating and drinking!” While restaurants have valid reasons for implementing these policies, the people actually paying for it aren’t the no-shows, the bots or the influencers – it’s the regular customers. If minimum spends are now following in these footsteps, the question remains: will diners simply accept them as a necessary evil, as part of London’s fine dining landscape, or will they push back? The US is doing it too – booking platforms like Tock and Dorsia are already setting minimum spends across high-end restaurants, and now Dorsia has launched in the UK, with leading London restaurants such as Strakers, LPM, Akub, Bouchon Racine, Lita’s and The Barbary already signed up.
History of this topic
Restaurant introduces ‘minimum spend’ that sees solo diners pay double to eat alone
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