About
Started by one diner fed up with finding out about a discretionary service charge at the table, after the bill was already in front of them. UK menus don't have to disclose it in advance, so this site tries to fill that gap: a quick way to check before you book, not after you're sat down.
Every restaurant, café and pub listed here comes from the Food Standards Agency's national food hygiene register, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. It's kept in sync automatically, so new registrations appear and closed businesses are marked as no longer listed (never deleted outright, so links people have already shared keep working). The FSA register has no concept of service charges — that part is entirely this site's own research and diner reports, described below.
A listing's service-charge status comes from one of two places, and the page always says which:
Reported by a diner — someone who's actually been submitted what they saw on their bill. These are unverified beyond basic spam checks; take them as one person's recent experience, not a guarantee.
Researched — checked against a restaurant's own published policy (a FAQ, menu, booking terms, or similar), with a link to that source shown on the page. Nothing is ever guessed: if no restaurant ever publishes a policy anywhere findable, or its wording covering conflicting, it's recorded as “unclear” with a note, rather than assigning a status that can't be backed by a link.
Either way, service charges are always optional under UK consumer law — whatever a listing says, you can ask for it to be removed at the table.
If a listing about your business or a business you know is wrong, out of date, or shouldn't be findable via a particular search term, get in touch and it'll be looked at and corrected promptly: hello@discretionary.uk. Please include the restaurant's name and area (or a link to its page) and what's wrong.