Category : Employment Law

Many people dream of opening up their own restaurants, but very few are brave enough to take the plunge. That’s not surprising – any restauranteur will tell you that starting a restaurant isn’t easy. And, while the oft-quoted statistic that 90% of restaurants fail in their first year is not actually true, it is a fact that opening a restaurant is not a business venture for anyone looking to get rich quick.

Still, new restaurants are opening in the UK every day. With the right business idea, a bit of expertise, some start-up funding and a lot of hard work, there’s no reason you can’t make your own restaurant succeed.

To help get you started, here are our top 10 tips to starting a restaurant.

• 1.     Be realistic

Ah, to be a restaurateur. Long lunches over a bottle of wine. Friendly regulars who are always smiling. Escaping the nine-to-five grind. What’s not to love?

If you think running a restaurant is going to be anything like that, think again. That’s the fantasy; the reality is very different. If you already work in the restaurant industry, you’ll know this. If you don’t, go get some experience. If you don’t fancy quitting your day job to wait tables and wash dishes, then the realities of running a restaurant probably aren’t for you.

• 2.     Decide what type of restaurant you want

Ethnic eatery or traditional British fare? Family friendly or more for the millennials? Fine dining or fast food? Before you do anything, you need to have a clear idea of your restaurant concept.

By far the most important thing about your restaurant concept is that it’s something you’re passionate about and can honestly imagine devoting yourself to, day in and day out, for years to come. Be honest with yourself and what your skills and interests are, and don’t try to jump on any food trend bandwagons just because they’re popular at the moment.

• 3.     Do your research

Once you’ve got a restaurant concept in mind, it’s time to research its viability. Where should your restaurant be located? Is there a market for your concept there? What is the competition like? And how much do business rentals in the area cost?

You might have to adjust your initial concept at this stage – in fact, you almost certainly will. Just ensure that you don’t end up wandering too far from your original idea without realising, in the spirit of making compromises. It’s surprisingly easy to do.

• 4.     Learn about the rules and regulations

If you’re not one for paperwork, forget about starting and running your own restaurant. Before starting a restaurant, there are a number of regulatory hoops that have to be jumped through – from registering your business with the local authority to ensuring your staff have the right food hygiene certificates.

Fortunately, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) have a number of useful resources to help get you started, including a guide to starting a food business and a Safer Food, Better Business for Caterers information pack.

• 5.     Write a business plan

A comprehensive business plan is essential to ensuring that you stay on budget and on track. It should include market research and financial information, and provide anyone reading it with an in-depth understanding of your business idea, not to mention the initial start-up costs and long-term financial forecasts involved.

If, at the end of compiling your business plan, you realise your start-up costs are sky high, go back and refine it further until it seems more manageable. A sound financial plan is essential to the next step.

• 6.     Secure start-up capital

Whether you’re launching a Michelin restaurant or a hot dog stand, a restaurant is always going to require significant start-up capital – enough to cover initial costs and at least six months of running costs.

Ideally, you’ll be able to cover these initial costs using your own savings, or with the help of loans from friends or family, but if this isn’t an option then you’re going to need a business partner or bank loan. Whatever the case, this is where having an airtight business plan is of paramount importance – no one is going to invest in someone whose numbers don’t add up.

• 7.     Hire the right people

A restaurant owner can’t do everything at once, so bring a great team on board who are just as passionate and excited about this project as you are.

In particular, take your time when it comes to finding the right chef. Your restaurant is only as good as the food it serves, and if your chef can’t deliver, no amount of marketing or quality service can compensate for that.

• 8.     Get the restaurant ready to launch

Once you’ve signed a lease on a property, it can be tempting to rush preparations and open your doors to the paying public at once. But you only get one chance to make a first impression – so hold fire, and make sure you get it right.

If your restaurant needs any renovations or alterations, get them done now. Use this time to make sure that everything’s up to code. And decorate the interior and exterior to ensure that they accurately reflect your restaurant concept and create an inviting ambience.

• 9.     Make a menu

Work together with your head chef to create the perfect menu. Try to keep it short and sweet – it’ll keep your kitchen running smoothly and food waste to a minimum, and customers generally find long menus overwhelming anyway.

It is advisable to provide at least some options for customers with dietary requirements, or at the very least to clearly mark which dishes can be adapted to accommodate special diets if required.

• 10.  Get ready for hard work

Once the restaurant is open, say goodbye to weekends and holidays for the foreseeable future. The hard work doesn’t end here; in fact, it’s only just begun. As the owner, it’ll be your job to keep the hundreds of plates required to keep your restaurant running spinning – from marketing and hiring staff to tapering menus and filing taxes.

But, if you love the restaurant business, it’ll all be worth it.

How can Simply-Docs help?

Starting a business is difficult enough, so why waste time and money drafting complicated documents or paying a solicitor to do it for you? At Simply-Docs, we provide a wide range of fully customisable, ready-to-use documents that are ideal for entrepreneurs.

Restaurateurs may be particularly interested in our employment documents, which include all the policies, forms, letter templates and employment contracts necessary to recruit, manage and dismiss employees. We also offer a variety of health and safety documents, plus food and hygiene documents which include all the H&S documents and templates a restauranteur will need when starting a business,

For more information about our services, contact our friendly team today.

Zero hour contracts continue to be the subject of media attention and this January sees a further move in the direction of strengthening the rights of workers on zero hour contracts.

As you will know from earlier blogs, exclusivity clauses in zero hour contracts were banned in 2015.

New regulations apply from 11 January 2016, giving employees the right to make an employment tribunal claim where they have been dismissed or subject to detriment by an employer following breach of an exclusivity clause in a zero hour contract.

Following the introduction of Shared Parental Leave (SPL) in April 2015, the Government has announced proposals to extend SPL and pay to working grandparents. The proposal stems from the Government’s over-arching aim to increase flexibility and choice in parental leave arrangements and support working parents with the provision of affordable childcare during the first year of their child’s life. In making the proposal to extend SPL, the Government has said that it recognises the crucial role that working grandparents can play in providing childcare and support to their own working children.

SPL was introduced as a means of enabling working mothers to end their maternity leave early in order to share leave and pay with their partner. SPL is currently available only to mothers, fathers, partners and adoptive parents but, by being able to share the SPL with the child’s grandparents, it will provide another option for parents to return to work more quickly. As a helpful by-product, it should also encourage more grandparents to remain in employment, rather than leaving their jobs to help with childcare.

What does this mean for the employer?

Although the extension of SPL has been seen as good news for many working parents, it may be more problematic for employers. With an ageing workforce, the number of working grandparents who may benefit from the proposed extension will be significant: research from the Trade Union Congress indicates that some 7 million grandparents are involved in providing regular childcare to their grandchildren and so allowing their own children to return to work.

If the proposals are implemented, the provisions are likely to be in line with the current statutory SPL scheme and so the entitlement to take SPL will be shared with the child’s eligible grandparents: the grandparents may be able, potentially, to share up to 50 weeks’ SPL. Additionally, eligible grandparents may be able to share up to 37 weeks’ statutory shared parental pay (statutory shared parental pay is currently set at £139.58 a week or 90% of weekly earnings, whichever is the lower). If employers have enhanced provisions for shared parental pay, as they do with, say, maternity pay, they will need to take the same approach with this new entitlement to shared parental pay. This would, of course, add further costs for the employer.

Timescale for new SPL proposal.

As things stand at present, it is intended that the proposal to extend SPL and pay to grandparents will:

• be consulted on during the first half of 2016;
• be brought into effect by 2018; and
• affect working grandparents only.

Employees already have the right to take unpaid emergency leave to care for dependants and to request flexible working provided that they have the required length of service. What do you think the impact of the proposed extension of SPL to grandparents will be for your business?

As of 8 September 2015, employers in England and Wales are able to refer employees to the new Fit for Work occupational health assessment referral service. This is a new Government service that offers a free voluntary occupational health assessment for employees who are off work through illness or injury for at least four weeks.In particular, the service is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses with little or no occupational health support. However, it is also intended to complement existing occupational health provision for larger employers.

Given that 31% of workers are employed by organisations with no occupational health support (YouGov) and around 815,000 working people each year have sickness absence of four weeks or more, the Fit for Work initiative looks to be a useful one.

However, according to the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals, only one in four organisations expect to use the service. So, why the reluctance?

Probably for two main reasons: firstly, the service is voluntary and employees can simply refuse to be referred; and, secondly, referrals cannot be made until the sickness absence has lasted for four weeks – a long period of absence for any small or medium-sized undertaking to handle.

Still, given that employers and employees alike have expressed a desire for more support in encouraging employees back to work after prolonged sickness absence, this service – described as ‘free, expert and impartial’ – has to be a step in the right direction in controlling long term sickness absence.

To learn more about changes to the government’s Fit to Work scheme, you can read our newsletter that covers the subject in more detail.

Last week, a European Court of Justice (ECJ) decision found that, for workers with no usual place of work, time spent travelling to appointments from home should form part of a worker’s working day. The ruling came about because of an ongoing legal case in Spain involving a company called Tyco, which installs security systems.At present, working time is defined in The Working Time Regulations as:

• Any period during which the worker is working at his or her employer’s disposal and carrying out his or her activity or duties;
• Any period during which he or she is receiving relevant training; and
• Any additional period designated as working time under a relevant agreement.

Working time includes travelling where it is an integral part of the job, e.g. a travelling sales executive or a care worker. This includes travel during normal working hours and travel between sites or clients, since the travelling is an essential part of the work.

The Working Time Directive

The Working Time Directive sets down regulations on matters such as how long employees work, how many breaks they have, and how much holiday they are entitled to. One of its main goals is to ensure that no employee in the EU is obliged to work more than an average of 48 hours a week.

In its ruling, the ECJ said time spent travelling to and from their first and last appointments should be regarded as working time under the European Working Time Directive. The judgment explained that excluding those journeys from working time would be contrary to the objective of protecting the safety and health of workers upheld by EU law.

A groundbreaking decision

This is an important decision for employers with mobile workers, i.e. those without a fixed place of work. Such employers will need to consider how they calculate working time – for example, in relation to the maximum weekly working hours, which could mean that employers will have to ask staff to opt out of the Working Time Directive’s 48-hour working week.

If employers don’t do this, employees could quickly exceed the number of working hours that they are legally allowed to work and employers could find that they are operating illegally and at risk of facing costly claims against them.

Although this case was not concerned with remuneration, there still may be wage implications for employers. For instance, employees may argue that time spent travelling to and from their home for customer visits should count for the calculation of the national minimum wage.

Employers may, therefore, wish to give thought to scheduling the first and last customer visits of the day close to a worker’s home.

What are zero hour contracts?

The exploitation of workers through the use of zero hour contracts was a hot topic in the General Election and it’s easy to see why.  Zero hour contracts are contracts that do not guarantee a minimum number of hours’ employment and, as of August 2014, a staggering 1.8 million workers were employed on these controversial contracts. This figure, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that the number of workers on zero hour contracts has increased by more than a quarter from 2013, when figures were first collected.

Who uses zero hour contracts?

Zero hour contacts are particularly popular in the hotel and catering industries where they are used by more than half of businesses. According to the ONS, most workers on zero hour contracts are students or women, and one-third of these workers would like more hours of work compared with just 10% of other people in employment.

It’s easy to see the appeal of zero hours contracts for employers who are afforded greater flexibility in their work force in order to cater for seasonal or fluctuating demand. However, some employees (especially students) like them too and find that zero hour contracts enable them to pursue other interests or commitments alongside a flexible working pattern.

There is general agreement, however, that some employers do not use zero hours contracts in a fair and equitable way. One of the biggest bugbears in this regard is the use of exclusivity clauses in zero hour contracts and a key part of the Conservative Party’s election campaign was a promise to ban such clauses.

Why the fuss about exclusivity?

An exclusivity clause is a contractual clause that prevents workers on zero hour contracts from being able to take work elsewhere, even though the employer does not guarantee any hours of work. As of 26 May 2015, the government finally took some action, bringing into force the much-trailed ban on exclusivity clauses in zero hour contracts.

According to the government, an estimated 125,000 workers in the UK have exclusivity clauses in their zero hour-contracts and so this change could have far-reaching effects.

A proportionate response?

The government’s thinking in banning such exclusivity clauses is that these clauses undermine choice and flexibility for the employee and could constitute an abusive practice on the part of the employer. Neil Carberry of  Confederationof British Industry (CBI) commented: “Banning exclusivity clauses in zero hours contracts is a proportionate response to tackling examples of poor practice”.

As of 26 May, therefore, exclusivity clauses in existing and new contracts will be unenforceable and employers will not be able to rely upon them.

Anti-avoidance measures

The new legislation has, in addition, a section giving the government power to take additional steps to prevent workers on zero hour contracts from being stopped from working for other employers. The law, however, does not give protection from detriment to workers on zero hour contracts and so there are no anti-avoidance measures in place as yet. Watch this space!

New shared parental leave and pay rights apply to the parents of babies due, or children matched for adoption, on or after 5 April 2015.  As of that date, eligible parents of children due to be born or adopted on or after this date, are entitled to a maximum of 52 weeks’ leave and 39 weeks’ statutory pay upon the birth or adoption of the child, which can be shared between both parents.What are the new rights for adopters?

 As a result of this, employees who adopt now benefit from increased rights.

These are:

• Removal of the requirement for 26 weeks’ service before employees become entitled to adoption leave – it becomes instead a ‘day one’ right for which there is no qualifying period

• Both single and joint adopters have the right to attend adoption appointments (paid time off for up to five adoption appointments for the main adopter and unpaid time off for up to two appointments for the secondary adopter) and will be protected from suffering a detriment or being dismissed in relation to exercising that right

• Statutory adoption pay will be brought into line with statutory maternity pay –  the first six weeks will be paid at 90% of the employee’s normal earnings

• Some surrogate parents will become eligible for adoption leave

• Current adoption rights will be extended to couples adopting a child from outside the UK and couples fostering children as part of a Fostering for Adoption placement.

What does this mean for employers?

The changes in respect of legislation relating to adoptions are likely to have a significant impact on employers, who will be required to allow adoption leave in a greater range of circumstances and will also be required to pay their employees more during any period of adoption leave. It is, therefore, particularly important for employers to have detailed policies and procedures in place to deal with these situations fairly and consistently.

For Simply-Docs’ full range of documents for managing the adoption process please click here.

Changes to unpaid parental leave

At the same time as the introduction of Shared Parental Leave and enhanced adoption rights, legislation regarding unpaid parental leave was also changed in favour of the employee.

From 5 April, the right to unpaid parental leave was extended to the parents of any child under the age of 18 years (this was previously available up to the age of five; 18 years in respect of disabled children).

Again, this is likely to have an impact on employers who are now required to allow their employees to take unpaid parental leave for a longer period of time. For the employer, this can be managed more effectively through the use of comprehensive policies that outline the requirements and obligations for unpaid parental leave.

Click here for Simply-Docs’ range of documents on unpaid parental leave.

The new Shared Parental Leave system is now up and running.  Although it will only apply in respect of babies due on or after 5 April 2015 or due to be adopted on or after 5 April 2015 it represents a big change in the way that people are able to care for their children in the first year, and will take some getting used to. Intended to mark a move away from a gender-based and inflexible approach to childcare, the motivation behind the introduction of SPL and pay is giving working parents more choice as to how they care for their child in the first year after the child’s birth.

In brief, if she wishes, an eligible mother will be able to end her maternity leave early and, along with her partner or the child’s father, will be able to take Shared Parental Leave (SPL) instead of maternity leave. If they both meet the qualifying requirements and decide to take SPL, they will need to decide how to divide their SPL and Shared Parental Pay between them.

Even though employees cannot take SPL until April 2015, employers could start to receive notices of eligibility and the intention to take SPL from January onwards and so employers need to be up to date with these changes.  On the Simply–Docs website, we have a Shared Parental Leave Policy and Guidance Notes on Shared Parental Leave as well as a variety of notices, letters and declarations to help employers and employees manage the whole SPL process as efficiently as possible.

Looking at SPL in more detail throws up some interesting scenarios, here are two that we have thought of:

– Statistically, up to 20% of couples meet at work. This means that with the introduction of SPL and employees’ ability to share SPL at the same time, an employer potentially could have two employees off at the same time rather than one;

– You may have an employee whose partner is self-employed and due to their self-employed status they can’t take the SPL themselves. However, if the self-employed partner meets the employment and earnings requirements, your employee may still qualify for SPL.

At Simply-docs we are great fans of flexible working. Core to our business is our Content Team, who draft and update our document portfolio and related information. Our flexible working patterns combine part-time work and homeworking, allowing for the employees’ home locations, their childcare needs and their other interests. This has enabled us to recruit and retain a talented team of experienced solicitors and other professionals. By offering flexible working, small businesses can attract high quality employees in a cost effective manner, where the affordabilty of such a rich resource of talent becomes apparent not only through their efficiency, knowledge and experience but also the improved levels of productivity associated with such work patterns.

Reduction in travel time and costs, and reduction of office and infrastructure  costs also contribute, but the main winner for us is productivity and the security of knowing that we can sustain our workflow of new and updated documents. The Content Team, all of whom are employed applying a flexible working profile to suit each individual, each have responsibility for different parts of the document portfolio, but work together to check each others’ work and share intellectual input.  Trust levels between employer and employees are extremely high and, accordingly, generate great staff morale. They are able to maintain an improved life/work balance and make better use of their time with less stress. They are focused and motivated, responding favourably to the additional responsibilities that derive from working away from the office or having flexible working hours in the office.

BT, for instance, have found that home workers are 20% more productive than their office based colleagues, and that, though absenteeism could be expected to be higher for homeworkers than office based workers , absenteeism amongst home workers is 63% lower than  office based colleagues.  Their return to work figures for flexible workers post maternity leave are 93% compared to a UK averagge of 47%. Whilst we cannot be so specific with our productivity statistics, it is clear that our workflow and content targets are consistently maintained and improved, and that our support services and response time to customers’ queries are enhanced by our flexible working patterns.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) 2012 Survey found that the top 5 benefits of flexible working were:

– improved employee retention,
– greater staff motivation,
– improved employee engagement,
– better recruitment,
– and increased productivity.

These 5 benefits are inter-related and their contribution will differ for each business.  For some businesses part-time work may be possible but homeworking non-applicable. At Simply-docs the mix is simple – Flexible working first enabled us to improve our selection for recruitment, and then improve retention with greater staff motivation and employee engagement, all of which has delivered increased productivity.

Can or has flexible working benefited your business? Please add your comment below. Click here for more information.

As of 30th June 2014, any employees who have worked at a company for at least 26 weeks of continuous service will be covered by the legal right to request flexible working arrangements. Previously the legislation only extended to parents or those with caring responsibilities. The new rules, which are being implemented by The Children and Families Act 2014, mean that employers will need to consider flexible working requests made by any of their employees who meet the 26 week threshold in a “reasonable manner” and notify them of their decision within three months.

How will the changes affect employers in practice?

A YouGov survey commissioned by Croner suggested that over a quarter of employees plan to make requests for flexible working arrangements, potentially leading to a deluge of work for employers in keeping on top of their duties to deal with this surge in the volume of requests. However, the grounds on which an employer can reject any such requests remain the same (under the Employment Rights Act 1996), namely: the burden of additional costs; detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand; inability to re-organise work among existing staff; inability to recruit additional staff; detrimental impact on quality; detrimental impact on performance; insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work and planned structural change

The wide ambit of these grounds means that the right to request flexible working by employees is very much a right to “request” – not a right to demand. Although employers may have more red tape to deal with as a result of the extension of this right, and will need to update their Flexible Working Policy accordingly, they will still be able to determine their company policy with regards to flexible working. Furthermore, under the changes, employers will no longer be required to follow a statutory procedure when considering such requests. Instead, they will simply need to consider each request in a reasonable manner (objectively and fairly) and to notify each employee of their decision within three months of the request being made (subject to any agreed extension).

How are employment contracts affected by flexible working?

If you agree to an employee’s request for flexible working, it will often be necessary to make changes to their contract of employment to take account of their new working pattern. A variation of employment deed or alteration letter for employment Ts and Cs can be used for this purpose. Where the changes are more extensive, you may need to form a new employment contract altogether, possibly adopting a part time, compressed hours, zero hours or other more suitable contract.

Is your business prepared for the flexible working changes – and do you think it’s a move in the right direction?

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For more information on your responsibilities regarding flexible working, take a look at some of these pages:

• Current regulations

• Types of flexible working (eg. part time, job sharing, zero hours)

• How to deal with flexible working requests

• Implementing agreed changes (eg. varying contract terms or setting up a new contract)

• Pros and cons of flexible working for your business

• Legal issues to watch out for (eg. discrimination, working time regs)