Wahaca has 25 branches across the UK
A customer has claimed a waiter was “made to foot the bill from his wages” by a London restaurant when a table left without paying.
Mexican restaurant chain Wahaca said it only makes servers cover the bill of customers who leave without paying in cases of “total negligence”.
Wahaca said this was “very rare” and not the company’s “standard policy”.
The bill would not be deducted from the waiter and it would be clarifying the policy internally, it added.
Sarah Hayward, a former Labour leader of Camden council, tweeted that she was eating at the company’s Kentish Town branch in north London when she witnessed the eat-and-run incident.
She was told this was “company policy”, she added.
Ms Hayward said she had offered to provide further details to Wahaca’s co-founder, Thomasina Miers, to ensure the waiter was reimbursed, but the company was yet to get in touch.
In response, Ms Miers tweeted: “We are a company that looks after our staff, and I am very proud of this”.
She added that, in this case, the waiter had not understood the policy.
The Wahaca chain was founded by the Ms Miers, the 2005 MasterChef winner, in 2007 and now has 25 branches across the UK.