Tips, service charge and tronc: what actually reaches you

Two jobs advertise £34,000. One is £34,000. The other is £30,000 plus an estimate of what tronc might add. They are not the same job, and the difference is roughly a month's rent.

Hospitality pay is unusual in how much of it can arrive through a route that is not your salary. Understanding the routes is the difference between comparing two offers and guessing between them.

The three things people mean

A tip

Money a customer chooses to give, on top of the bill, because they want to. It can be cash into a hand or added to a card payment. Who it belongs to afterwards depends entirely on the arrangement the venue operates — which is the part most people never see written down.

A service charge

An amount the venue adds to the bill itself, usually a percentage, usually described as discretionary. Because the venue adds it rather than the customer choosing it, it arrives as the venue's money first. Where it goes next is, again, an arrangement.

A tronc

An arrangement for sharing tips and service charge out among staff, run by a person usually called the troncmaster. The point of a tronc is that it is controlled independently of the employer, which affects how it is taxed. A properly run tronc distributes money to a rota of shares — by role, by hours, or by some mix the troncmaster decides.

What the rules now require

The law on this changed, and in the direction of staff. Employers are now required to pass on tips, gratuities and service charges to workers fairly and without deductions, to have a written policy where tips are paid more than occasionally, and to keep records that workers can ask to see. There is a statutory code of practice setting out what fairness means in this context.

The practical upshot is that “we keep a percentage to cover card fees” and “tips go into the till and we decide later” are no longer safe answers for a venue to give you. So it is worth asking.

The rules themselves, rather than a summary of them: the statutory code of practice on distributing tips (gov.uk)

The questions worth asking

• Is the figure in the advert my salary, or my salary with tronc estimated into it?
• If tronc is included, what was the actual average over the last three months — not a good week?
• How are shares worked out? By hours, by role, by section?
• Does a kitchen share exist, or does tronc go to front of house only?
• Am I in the tronc from day one, or after a probation period?
• Can I see the written tips policy?

The last one is the most useful and the least asked. A venue with a written policy will hand it over. A venue that has to go and write one has told you what you needed to know.

Why an estimate is not a salary

Tronc moves with trade. It falls in January, it falls when a section is short and covers are cut, and it falls when the weather is bad for three weeks. A salary does not. Two offers that look identical on paper can be several thousand pounds apart across a year, and the one carrying the estimate is the one carrying the risk.

None of which makes tronc bad — a strong tronc at a busy site is real money and often the difference between a job being worth taking and not. It just is not the same kind of money as salary, and an advert that blends the two is asking you to price something it has not shown you.

This is general information about how these arrangements work, not legal or financial advice. If you think tips are being withheld from you, the gov.uk guidance above sets out where the actual obligations sit and Acas can advise on a specific situation.