Pros
It’s busy, like really busy and can be fun. You have to be in top of your game. Some of the staff and managers are amazingly skilled and you can learn a lot from them. It’s a very popular and recognisable company and it’s good to add it to your cv.
Cons
Ridiculous Tronc scheme. Service charge does not go directly to the servers and the team, but also goes to GMs and Head Chefs. It’s not a ‘bonus’ but a fixed rate. So, when a GM negotiates a new contract with the company, in fact they are negotiating a bigger share of service charge. Because of this tronc system, during furlough, hundreds of employees were getting paid around 55% of their average earnings instead of 80%. Tips paid by card are not given to staff. Almost always understaffed so you have to work crazy hours sometimes. And here’s the best part. If you are a manager with a 48 hours per week contract and you work 60 you don’t take a penny more. You are not accruing more holidays either. But if one week it happens to work 46, they will deduct this 2 hours from your pay. Pay gap. There used to be team members with higher pay rates than their managers.