The Children's Menu Rate
The government cut VAT on children's meals in restaurants from 25 June. Through to 1 September, the plates coming off the children's menu in a qualifying kitchen attract 5% VAT rather than 20%. The adult dishes next to them attract 20%. Both are on the same table, in the same service.
This is not the campaign the sector has been running. That one asked for a permanent reduction to 10%, across all hospitality food, for everyone. Two hundred and twenty thousand signatures and backing from every major industry body. The ask was structural, permanent, and broad.
What arrived is temporary, narrow, and ending before autumn.
What the scheme covers
The temporary rate applies to meals from a dedicated children's menu, served for consumption on the premises, until 1 September. Takeaway does not qualify. An adult meal, however discounted or simplified, does not qualify. The scheme also covers attraction tickets: theme parks, adventure centres, soft play, cinemas, zoos. For those categories, the 5% rate applies to all ages.
For a restaurant, this means running split VAT within a single service. Most point-of-sale systems have been updated to handle it. The accounting is manageable. The benefit on each qualifying cover is real, and across a busy family table in summer, it is not nothing. It is a genuine improvement on the 20% that applied last month.
What the sector asked for
The #VATsTheProblem campaign is still running. The target is a million signatures, the ask is a permanent 10% rate on all hospitality food, and the case has not changed: most of Europe treats a restaurant meal as a reduced-rate supply. The UK charges the same on dinner as on a flat-screen television.
The temporary scheme acknowledges, implicitly, that 20% is too high. A government that introduces 5% VAT on some plates, even temporarily, has moved. What it has not done is fix the structure.
The season it covers and the one it does not
July and August are when Brighton fills with families. Coastal and destination kitchens, the ones with the family trade that makes the summer season work, are well-placed to feel the benefit. If there was a right moment to test a children's meal rate, a hot summer in a food city is it.
The problem is what happens after September. The rate ends. The fixed costs do not. The April wage floor runs year-round. The business rates revaluation that landed this spring does not pause after August. Energy, food inflation, the VAT rate on everything served to anyone over twelve: none of it has changed.
The sector's cost problem is hardest in February, when summer revenue has run down and the room is trading on thin covers and hope. A 5% rate on children's meals through August does not reach that month.
What the scheme says
The government introduced a temporary VAT cut rather than none at all. That is a choice worth reading.
Twenty percent on a restaurant meal has been described as necessary and unremarkable for years. A government that carves out 5% on children's plates for nine weeks has effectively shown the rate has room to move. The argument that hospitality VAT cannot come down is harder to make after the government came down on it, in a limited way, on a specific category.
The sector's campaign is not asking for a seasonal experiment. It is asking for permanent structural reform: the same kitchen, the same room, the same food, with a rate that reflects what the costs of running it actually require. The campaign has a better answer now to the question of precedent. The government has moved. The question is how far it is prepared to go.
Fill the room this August. The rate is lower on the children's plates. The empty seat between them earns the same regardless: food at half price, drinks at full, a real cut of the booking fee going to the venue. Halfseat does not wait for policy to change before making an empty chair worth something.
The summer scheme is welcome. A permanent one would be better.