Knives out for Wahaca boss after staff fined for ‘dine and dash’ bills

THE founder of Wahaca, an “ethical” restaurant chain, has been criticised after it was revealed its waiters had their pay docked over runaway diners.

Thomasina Miers, a former BBC Masterchef winner, faced an outcry last night over claims that her business routinely punished staff for so-called “dine and dash” customers.

It came after a waiter at a north London branch was told that his wages would be docked because his customers had disappeared.

The incident was witnessed by Sarah Hayward, a former council leader, who told of her disgust on Twitter.

Her post was soon shared widely, and hundreds of customers threatened to boycott Wahaca as the Unite union accused the chain of “wage theft”.

Responding to the row, Ms Miers, who co-founded the business in 2007, complained she had been “hung out” before having a chance to respond.

She admitted the waiter had been asked to pay back £3, but insisted it was “absolutely not standard policy” to deduct wages.

“We like to champion our people, not diddle them,” she wrote. But other former Wahaca staff soon came forward to claim that they too had been docked wages. Others claimed the practice was widespread across the food industry.

Daniel Wheeler, 26, who worked at Wahaca’s flagship branch in Waterloo for 10 months in 2017, said managers warned him about the so-called “dine and dash” rule on his first day. He later claimed to have witnessed a barman being frogmarched to a cashpoint to withdraw his own money after mistakenly accepting a fake £50 note.

“Many of the workers come from abroad, and don’t understand their rights. I think Wahaca sometimes take advantage of that,” he said.

He also criticised Ms Miers, who last year praised her staff as “bright sparks”.

“It’s all very well to tell the world that you love your staff, and you want fair pay for all, but you’ve got to act that way behind the scenes,” he said.

Another former staff member claimed they were forced to cover a full £40 food and drink bill during their first week in the job.

Ms Miers set up Wahaca two years after winning the Masterchef contest in 2005. The chain, which champions Fairtrade products, was hit by an outbreak of norovirus in 2016 when hundreds of people fell ill.

Wahaca said yesterday that the policy would be “clarified” so that staff would never be asked to pay any part of the bill for runaway customers, unless they were somehow “complicit”. The staff handbook would also be updated to make the policy “clearer”.

“We realise that our policy on how to deal with this has not been clear enough and we apologise to our teams for this,” the spokesman said.