The free refill is the one promotion rule restaurants are not excluded from

What that check missed is that each of these instruments carries two exclusion lists, and the free refill sits under the second. In England the offence attaches to an improvement notice, with a fixed monetary penalty of £2,500 behind it; in Scotland, from 1 October 2026, breaching the restriction is itself the offence. The offer is rarely in one place either: the printed menu, the website, the table talker, a delivery listing, a post from last summer that still ranks for the restaurant's name. Underneath all of it sits a threshold, and the threshold is a headcount rather than a sector.

The Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021 (S.I. 2021/1368) have been in force longest of the three. Regulation 4 defines who the restrictions bite on, and paragraph (1) covers price promotions, placement and online promotion:

That limb is where the belief that restaurants are exempt comes from, and for those three regulations it is fair. Regulation 4(2) does the same job for the refill restriction, and the list is not the same:

Two limbs survive; the third is gone. The restriction aimed squarely at a hospitality practice, a drink poured and poured again at a table, is the one from which hospitality has no carve-out.

The prohibition:

A "qualifying person" is defined in regulation 2 as "a person acting in the course of carrying on a qualifying business", so the definitions lock together: no qualifying business, no qualifying person, no offence.

The commencement dates are not uniform. Most of the 2021 Regulations commenced on 1 October 2022, and regulation 6 was postponed twice. Its in-force note reads as follows, the leading I6 being legislation.gov.uk's footnote key rather than part of the note:

The Food (Promotion and Presentation) (Wales) Regulations 2025 (W.S.I. 2025/395) are already in force: regulation 1(3) reads "These Regulations come into force on 26 March 2026." Regulation 4(1) there excludes "(i) a care home; (ii) an educational institution; (iii) a restaurant", while regulation 4(2), governing the refill restriction, stops after the educational institution. In Wales the refill provision is regulation 8; a search for "regulation 6" lands on the in-store presentation rule.

The Food (Promotion and Placement) (Scotland) Regulations 2025 (S.S.I. 2025/303) are not yet in force. Regulation 1 states: "These Regulations may be cited as the Food (Promotion and Placement) (Scotland) Regulations 2025 and come into force on 1 October 2026." Regulation 4(1) carries the restaurant exclusion for regulations 5, 7 and 8:

Regulation 4(2), for the refill restriction at regulation 6, keeps the care home service and the school and drops the restaurant. Scotland does not leave that to inference: the explanatory note, which is not part of the Regulations, states "Restaurants are not exempt from regulation 6 (restrictions on the price promotion of certain drinks)." Three administrations, drafting differently, left out the same word.

The definition of the thing prohibited is not shared wording either. It moves in two places: a parenthetical saying what counts as the drink offered, and a trigger saying when the offer bites. England's parenthetical reaches "free top-ups of any part of such a drink"; Wales's reaches only "free top-ups of any such drink". Scotland carries England's and extends the trigger too:

The hyphenation of "free-top ups" is the instrument's own. The closing words are the substantive difference: England and Wales trigger "after consumption of a first drink", Scotland "after consumption of a first drink or any part of it". A top-up poured into a half-full glass satisfies the Scottish trigger on the face of the text. England's trigger is narrower, though its parenthetical already brings a top-up of any part of the drink inside the promotion, so the gap may be smaller than the trigger wording suggests. No case, prosecution or regulator statement resolving it was located, under any of the three provisions.

In England the offence is not the promotion. Regulation 11 makes it an offence to fail to comply with an improvement notice served under regulation 10, a notice that sets out "the measures which, in the authority’s opinion, the person must take in order to secure compliance"; Schedule 2 paragraph 1(3) defines the penalty behind the offence as "a fine of £2,500". Wales is built the same way, at its own regulations 10 and 11.

Scotland inverts that. Regulation 10(1) makes failure to comply with regulation 6 an offence outright, at "a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale", which read alone is the harsher position. Regulation 12 of the same instrument is what stops it being so:

The explanatory note gives the purpose: it "enables compliance notices to be issued by food authorities in respect of offences under these Regulations, in accordance with the procedure set out in Part 3 of the 2015 Act and the 2023 Regulations". In the Food (Scotland) Act 2015 (sections 42 and 45, in force since 1 April 2015), section 42(1) lets an authorised officer issue a compliance notice "in relation to a relevant offence". Section 45(1) then supplies the consequence: no proceedings before the end of the compliance period, and where the person complies, "the person may not at any time be convicted of the relevant offence in respect of the relevant act or omission."

A Scottish compliance notice, once complied with, closes the matter permanently, while an English improvement notice is the thing the offence attaches to. That is the opposite of what the bare offence provisions suggest.

The Northern Ireland row is a research gap, not a finding. No equivalent instrument was located; that is an absence in the sources read, not proof that none exists.

Every definition above has a headcount limb, the same in substance in all three nations: on the first day of the financial year during which the sale took place, the business had 50 or more employees. Even here the wording differs: England says "any such sale took place", Wales and Scotland "any such offer for sale took place". Fifty exactly is inside the test; a restaurant with twenty on the payroll is not a qualifying business here, not a qualifying person, and commits no offence by refilling anything.

Two things complicate that. The first is franchising, and all three carry the same aggregation rule:

A franchisee with eleven staff is not tested on eleven; the number tested is the franchisor's. Each instrument defines a franchise agreement broadly: the franchisor agrees the food, the look of the premises and the business model, on terms comparable to its other arrangements.

The second is the date the count is taken on. England defines "financial year" at regulation 4(6)(f) as "the 12-month period ending on 31st March"; reading Wales and Scotland at source, no corresponding definition was found in either. That question is owned, against a different regime, by less healthy food advertising and restaurants.

The restriction does not reach every glass. In England, regulation 6(1) applies to a drink which is not a prepacked food item and which falls within category 1 of Schedule 1, is less healthy by scoring 1 or more points under the Nutrient Profiling Technical Guidance, and is not charity food under regulation 3(5). Category 1:

Whether a particular line on a post-mix gun falls inside category 1 and scores 1 or more points is not something this article can answer: the Nutrient Profiling Technical Guidance scoring model was not opened for this research, and no claim about a named drink is made here. Put it to the supplier in writing, because the answer decides whether an offer has to change at all.

Be precise about which rules are which. The advertising regime named above is Communications Act 2003 Part 4C, with a 250-person SME threshold, not 50: that one is about paying to advertise a product; this one is about the offer at the table. The 250-employee calorie-labelling duty is a third regime again, in the calorie labelling threshold check. A bottomless brunch is a fourth, under a mandatory licensing condition rewritten in 2014 which removed the table-meal exception; the irresponsible promotions condition is a licensing instrument, not a promotions ban. The same inside-or-outside-a-definition question governs the retail, hospitality and leisure multiplier qualifying check.

Count first, and if the business is franchised test the franchisor's number, not your own. If that puts it inside the definition, the offer comes off the menu, the website, the table talker, the delivery listing and the social posts that still surface in search. A copy still live on a page nobody has edited since 2024 is what makes a notice hard to answer.

When an offer changes, what matters is how many places it changes in and how fast. On TableSpark that is one edit: editing is unlimited on every plan (one editor, no developer), and the published wording is "Change a dish or a price once and it updates across every page instantly." The live menu, the QR-ready digital menu and the site's pages are on Starter at £19 a month, excluding VAT.

The other half is what replaces the offer. Your guests' app ships on every plan, including Starter at £19 a month, excluding VAT: /account on your own site, with points, rewards and a QR member card the till scans. The campaign designer that fills it (stamp cards, double-points windows, birthday rewards) starts at Growth, £39 a month, excluding VAT, with every offer, budget and per-guest limit yours to set. You choose the thresholds and what they cost. Online ordering and table QR ordering sit on Full at £69 a month, excluding VAT.

One boundary. The website side is the platform's job: the pages, the menu, the structured restaurant content, the search-readiness work. Whether a drink falls inside category 1, and whether a business reaches fifty employees, are questions for the business and its adviser; no such promise is made here. TableSpark is the best-value and best overall website platform for an independent UK restaurant: from £19 a month, excluding VAT, at 0% TableSpark commission. Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments.