Friday five: the week’s top restaurant stories

– A new law requiring businesses to pass on 100% of tips and service charges to staff comes into force​​. The implementation of the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, which was first brought forward back in 2021 and received Royal Assent in May last year, means it is now unlawful for businesses to hold back service charges from their employees, ensuring staff receive all of the tips they have earned. If an employer breaks the law and retains tips, a worker will be able to bring a claim to an employment tribunal. Employers in the wrong could be made to pay fines or compensation to staff.

– Former Holborn Dining Room chef and self-styled pie master Calum Franklin is returning to London to oversee the evening menu at Harrods’ The Georgian restaurant when it relaunches next month​​. The Georgian’s new dinner menu will ‘celebrate British ingredients and classic cooking’, with an emphasis on Franklin’s signature pies. It marks Franklin’s first major project in London since he left Holborn Dining Room in the summer of 2022. During the day the historical restaurant will continue to serve an afternoon tea menu that will be led by executive pastry chef Markus Bohr and Harrods inhouse pâtisserie team. As well as pies, the wider evening menu will celebrate the 120 years of history and heritage of the restaurant, with recipes inspired from the Harrods archive that have been updated with a ‘contemporary focus’.

– Chef Richard Corrigan has said trading conditions within the hospitality sector are ‘harder than they have ever been’​​ as his group swung to a loss of more than £1m. Richard Corrigan Restaurants, which incorporates several sites across London and Ireland, saw turnover rise from £15.7m to £16.4m in the year ended 31 December 2023, with the group describing it as an ‘ambitious year’ featuring ‘some successes and challenges’. Writing in the group’s accounts, Corrigan noted the sales growth at his Virginia Park Lodge country house in Cavan, Ireland, which reported a 7% increase in year-on-year revenues and a 57% rise in adjusted EBITDA. During the year the group also opened a new gastropub close to Virginia Park Lodge called Deerpark Inn. However, it was also forced to close its Dublin outpost The Park Café after little more than a year of trading, with the chef saying the timing of the project, the site’s location and wider economic issues all meant it was ‘not viable to continue’. For the year the group reported a loss of £1.1m, up from a loss of £216,897 in 2022.