Say What You Pay: Salary in Restaurant Job Adverts

Picture a 55-cover independent in a market town. The advert in the window says "Waiter wanted, experience preferred, apply within". A candidate who has two other offers on the table reads that line and learns nothing about the hourly rate, the hours, whether tips are shared or how. She comes in anyway and does a trial shift, and during it a colleague mentions the rate. It is lower than the figure she had in her head. She finishes the shift politely and does not answer the follow-up message on Monday.

Nothing in that scene is illegal. It is avoidable loss: an advert, a trial shift, a manager's evening and a rota slot empty again by Wednesday.

The Office for National Statistics counted 70,000 vacancies in accommodation and food services in July to September 2026, using its series JP9O, which is 5,000 fewer than a year earlier.

Pay secrecy is first of all a conversion problem: an advert that withholds the one number every applicant wants filters out the applicants who have choices. This guide sets out what was announced, what is undecided, what already applies to a restaurant's advert, and what to do this week. It also works the pay lines through for a 40-hour waiter and a 16-hour weekend porter.

On 5 November 2026 GOV.UK published a press release headed "New 'say what you pay' law to help young people into work". Its opening line says jobseekers "will no longer have to apply for jobs without knowing what they pay, under new plans announced by the Prime Minister to legally require employers to publish salaries in job adverts."

The core commitment is one sentence long:

Three other things on the page matter to an owner.

First, the evidence the government quotes. The release says "less than half (41%) of employers always publish salary ranges and only 1 in 5 (18%) always publish specific salaries." Its source note identifies that estimate as coming from the CIPD's Pay, performance and transparency report (2024), page 30. The CIPD is the professional body for HR and people development. So the 41% and 18% are a government estimate citing a 2024 CIPD report, not a new survey of restaurants and not a measure of hospitality.

Second, the support the government cites for the idea. The release refers to "early analysis" of the consultation responses showing 94% of respondents backing the requirement, including 93% of businesses. These are early figures, and the page does not give the number of respondents. The Fawcett Society, a campaigning group on women's equality, and the Youth Futures Foundation are quoted in support. Their quotations are positions, not evidence.

Third, the stated aims: helping young people applying for a first job and addressing pay inequalities that can disadvantage women. The release also says the Prime Minister is calling on all businesses "to say what they pay on job ads now, rather than wait for the law to change."

Nothing on the page is specific to hospitality. It contains no rule written for restaurants, and none about tips or service charge.

The release is an announcement of intent. It states that the government "will bring forward legislation as soon as possible", with no bill and no commencement date on the page. It also says that "further details on scope, required information, implementation, and enforcement" are to be "set out in due course". An owner would need to plan around all four, and all four are open.

The nearest thing to a draft is the consultation the announcement grew out of. "Equal pay and pay discrimination" was run by the Office for Equality and Opportunity at the Cabinet Office. It opened on 14 July 2026 and closed on 27 October 2026 after being extended to 15 weeks. Chapter 1 of its consultation document proposes to:

The same chapter proposed that, with no job advert, the employer would give the candidate the pay information in writing before the interview. It proposed a delegated power so that regulations could set exact requirements, "for example, the size of a salary range". It said the government would assess what pay details or conditions, if any, should be included beyond basic salary, recognising that "an expansive scope could be more burdensome for employers".

The consultation asked an open question: "What level of pay information should employers be required to publish in job adverts or disclose before an interview? For example, should a pay range, specific salary or benchmark rate be required?" The 5 November release does not answer it. So the following are all undecided as of 6 November 2026:

• whether an advert must show a single figure, a range or a benchmark rate;
• how wide a permitted range may be;
• whether tips, service charge, bonuses or hours must be stated alongside basic pay;
• which employers and which kinds of advert the rule would reach;
• how it would be enforced and what a breach would cost.

The government's Make Work Pay implementation timeline, updated on 5 November 2026, does not yet list pay transparency in adverts. It does list strengthening tipping law from 1 January 2027. The page also says that "All future dates remain subject to parliamentary processes and may change." The table below keeps one meaning for each status word.

The law announced on 5 November is still to be written, but several rules already shape what a restaurant can write in an advert and what it can pay.

From April 2026 the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over. The rate for those aged 18 to 20 is £10.85, and the rate for those under 18 and for apprentices is £8. GOV.UK lists the April 2027 rates as £13.21, £11.27 and £8.31 for the under 18 and apprentice rates, and states that the rates change on 1 April every year. On 28 October 2026 GOV.UK reported that the government had accepted in full the Low Pay Commission's recommendations: a rise of 50p, or 3.9 per cent, for those aged 21 and over.

An advert that gives a rate must therefore not fall below the legal rate for the person actually hired. The older worker's floor is £1.86 an hour higher (£12.71 minus £10.85), which is £74.40 a week over 40 hours (1.86 multiplied by 40). An advert that says "£11 an hour" for a role that may be filled by a 21-year-old does not meet it.

An advert still showing £12.71 after 31 March 2027 is below the National Living Wage for a worker aged 21 or over, so check every live advert each 1 April.

GOV.UK's tips page states that "If you get tips at work they do not count towards the National Minimum Wage." The statutory code of practice on distributing tips says the same thing in its glossary: since 2009 it has been illegal for tips to count towards minimum wage pay in the UK. GOV.UK also states plainly that:

For an advert, that gives a clear rule of thumb. The hourly rate has to stand without tips. An advert may say "plus tips shared under our written tips policy". It should not add an estimated tip figure to the rate, such as "earn up to £16 an hour with tips". No one can prove that figure at the point the advert goes up, and tips are not pay for minimum wage purposes.

The code of practice also lists the employer duty to "Maintain a written policy on how tips are dealt with at their place of business, and ensure this policy is made available to all their workers." A compulsory service charge is different from a tip. GOV.UK says that if the charge is compulsory it is not a tip, and if the employer passes it to the worker it is treated in the same way as wages. So an advert that mentions a service charge should say whether it is shared and how.

The Journal's Employment Rights Act guide for restaurants covers the tipping measure listed for 1 January 2027.

GOV.UK's guidance for employers on recruitment says:

The same page says this includes saying that you are not able to cater for workers with a disability. It warns that where you advertise can cause indirect discrimination. A line that quotes different rates for different groups of people has to be justified by the legal age bands above, not by preference.

The Equality Act 2010, section 77, makes a term of a person's work unenforceable "in so far as P makes or seeks to make a relevant pay disclosure". A disclosure is relevant if it is made to find out whether or to what extent there is a connection between pay and having, or not having, a particular protected characteristic.

In plain terms, a contract clause that tries to stop workers discussing pay is unenforceable against someone discussing it to check for discrimination. Once a figure is on a window card or a job site, it is public, and the existing team will read it. If the advertised rate for a new commis is higher than what a loyal colleague of two years receives, the owner will have that conversation sooner or later. Setting the advertised rate with the current rota in front of you avoids that. A published number is a reference point inside the kitchen as well as outside it.

An advert's pay line is short, but it hides a calculation. This section works three advert pay lines through for two illustrative roles: a full-time waiter, 40 hours a week and aged 21 or over, and a weekend kitchen porter, 16 hours a week (Saturday 8 hours and Sunday 8 hours). Annual figures are the weekly figure multiplied by 52 paid weeks. All figures are gross pay, before employer National Insurance, pension contributions and holiday effects, which the Journal costs separately in its guides to hiring restaurant staff and to the April 2027 minimum wage. Every rate comes from the GOV.UK table above.

The advert reads "£12.71 an hour (21+)".

• Waiter: £12.71 multiplied by 40 hours is £508.40 a week, and £508.40 multiplied by 52 is £26,436.80 a year.
• Porter: £12.71 multiplied by 16 hours is £203.36 a week, and £203.36 multiplied by 52 is £10,574.72 a year.
• Both roles together: £508.40 plus £203.36 is £711.76 a week, and £26,436.80 plus £10,574.72 is £37,011.52 a year.

The advert reads "£12.71 an hour (21+), plus tips shared under our written tips policy". The base pay is identical to line 1, so the weekly and annual figures are unchanged. The tips sentence adds £0 to the minimum wage calculation.

If the same role is offered to someone aged 18 to 20, the line becomes "£10.85 an hour (18 to 20)". The waiter then earns £10.85 multiplied by 40, which is £434.00 a week, and £434.00 multiplied by 52, which is £22,568.00 a year.

The advert reads "£12.71 to £13.50 an hour depending on experience". The £13.50 top is purely illustrative and is not a recommended rate.

• Waiter at the top: £13.50 multiplied by 40 is £540.00 a week, and £540.00 multiplied by 52 is £28,080.00 a year. The spread over the bottom of the range is £540.00 minus £508.40, which is £31.60 a week, and £28,080.00 minus £26,436.80, which is £1,643.20 a year.
• Porter at the top: £13.50 multiplied by 16 is £216.00 a week, and £216.00 multiplied by 52 is £11,232.00 a year. The spread is £216.00 minus £203.36, which is £12.64 a week, or £657.28 a year (12.64 multiplied by 52).

The bottom of the range must not fall below the legal rate for the age of the person hired. How wide a range may be is undecided: the 5 November release gave no figure.

The announced rate for those aged 21 and over rises from £12.71 to £13.21.

• Waiter: £13.21 multiplied by 40 is £528.40 a week, which is £20.00 more than £508.40. Over 52 weeks that is £27,476.80, which is £1,040.00 more than £26,436.80.
• Porter: £13.21 multiplied by 16 is £211.36 a week, which is £8.00 more than £203.36. Over 52 weeks that is £10,990.72, which is £416.00 more than £10,574.72.
• Both roles together: £20.00 plus £8.00 is £28.00 more a week, and £1,040.00 plus £416.00 is £1,456.00 more a year.
• An 18 to 20 waiter: £11.27 multiplied by 40 is £450.80 a week, and £450.80 multiplied by 52 is £23,441.60 a year. That is £16.80 more a week (£450.80 minus £434.00) and £873.60 more a year (16.80 multiplied by 52).

An hourly figure is a snapshot with a shelf life, and it ends on 31 March 2027. A card that says "National Living Wage or above, currently £12.71 an hour for those aged 21 and over" is a draft of how a line can stay true, but the owner still has to check the rate each April.

The Prime Minister has asked businesses to say what they pay now. In the CIPD figures quoted on GOV.UK, only 18% of employers always publish a specific salary, so a line with a figure gives the applicant what most adverts withhold. State the unit, because "£12.71 an hour" and "£26,436.80 a year" are the same pay for a 40-hour waiter and very different pay for a 16-hour porter, and a candidate with a second job needs the weekly hours as much as the rate. Keep tips as a separate sentence, and put the month on the card.

The government has asked for the first and has not written the second. An owner who publishes now gives applicants the rate before they apply. The risk is the 1 April 2027 problem of a stale figure, which a diary check on 1 April removes.

An owner who waits is not breaking any rule the 5 November announcement describes, because what it describes is a law still to come. If the law arrives, restaurants that already have the habit will change a line, and the rest will build it under a deadline.

An owner who publishes a range should expect the width to matter, because nobody yet knows how wide is too wide. The Journal's judgement, not a rule, is that a narrow range tied to stated criteria is the least likely to need changing.

The pay line in an advert, the hours on the rota, the tips policy and the payroll file all describe the same job, and when they sit in four places they drift. TableSpark lets those records live in one place. The staff rota comes with Growth and Full. Growth is £39 a month and Full is £69 a month, both excluding VAT, with no per-seat charges, and nothing to pay until the restaurant publishes. The same hours drive payroll and the tips split.

What that means for an owner who is writing a pay line:

• Job titles are free text. Titles such as Head Waiter or Runner show on the rota, so the title in the advert and the title on the shift can match.
• Hours come from published shifts. The Hours tab adds the week up per person: shifts, worked time, breaks and a paid total, with a weekly average. It offers Payroll CSV and Export Excel. Paid hours come from published shifts only, breaks are unpaid, and no-shows and declined shifts count zero, so an advertised weekly figure can be checked against what the rota pays.
• A tips policy the team can read. The owner chooses how tips are shared (by hours worked, equally on shift, or directly to the earner), edits the wording and presses Publish the policy. Each edit becomes a numbered version, and an Owner or Admin publishes.
• Tips split by rota hours. Each person's share follows their paid hours on the published rota, and the shares download as CSV. TableSpark calculates; the restaurant pays through payroll or its troncmaster.

The pay rate, the policy wording and the advert remain the restaurant's decisions, and the records sit in the restaurant's own account so that the advertised rate, the rota hours and the tips sentence say the same thing.

The restaurant's own website is the other place an advert lives. The website builder shows the pages on the left, the sections on each page and an inspector for the one clicked, with sixty-eight content modules, drag-and-drop ordering and inline text editing on the page itself. An owner can edit the wording of a page between services, in words the owner controls.

This section is judgement, labelled as such. The announcement matters less for what it requires than for what it signals: the government has put a date on its intent (5 November 2026) and none on the law. A restaurant with three different rates for the same job, set by whoever hired each person, will find a published advert exposes the difference. The consultation document says most employers already publish pay ranges voluntarily, while the CIPD figures quoted on GOV.UK put the share that always publish ranges at 41% and specific salaries at 18%. How much to require beyond basic salary is already a visible question, given that "an expansive scope could be more burdensome for employers". Everything about scope, content, range width, enforcement and timing remains uncertain, and a restaurant should not plan around a date the government has not given.

The 5 November announcement gives owners no date to wait for. The practical course is to publish a clear pay line now, keep tips in a separate sentence, check every advert against the 1 April rates, and keep the advertised rate, the rota hours and the tips policy where one person can read all three.

For an independent UK restaurant, TableSpark Growth or Full is the best-value way to do that, and the best overall choice for an owner who wants the rota, the hours export and the tips policy in one account. TableSpark starts at £19 a month excluding VAT. Staff rota comes with Growth at £39 a month excluding VAT and Full at £69 a month excluding VAT, which is £468 and £828 a year excluding VAT (39 multiplied by 12, and 69 multiplied by 12), with no per-seat charges however many people join. TableSpark takes 0% TableSpark commission on the bookings and orders your plan includes; Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments. Compare every plan on the pricing page.

The Journal's guide to the careers page and right to work checks covers the website side of recruiting.