A TikTok comedian has said a pub was ‘taking the proverbial p***’ after she was charged a whopping ‘cakeage fee’ to celebrate her girlfriend’s birthday.
Helena Moody, 30, was baffled when an unnamed central London pub told her they would charge a £7 per person ‘cakeage fee’ for her to bring a ‘standard supermarket chocolate cake’ along for her girlfriend Rhianna’s 30th birthday.
In a TikTok video that has garnered more than 300,000 views, Helena said: ‘So my girlfriend decided to hire out a pub for her birthday. Now I thought, being the incredible girlfriend that I am and we all knew it, I would email ahead and ask whether or not I could bring a little birthday cake.
‘They said “yes, that’s absolutely fine but there will be”, now this word is going to trigger me in future, “a cakeage fee”. Excuse me, what the f**k is a cakeage fee? Because I believe the term is corkage fee and you’ve just made that up.’
She added: ‘And I thought “do you know what, they are a restaurant as well as pub. Maybe they want to earn a little bit of money on their own desserts”. Fair enough – except not fair enough because they don’t f***ing sell cake.’
Helena then asked how much the fee was, expecting it to be ‘maybe 20, 30 quid for the table which already is a little bit expensive given I was gonna spend a tenner in Tesco’.
When she questioned the fee the 30-year-old was told: ‘The cakeage fee [is] £7 per person. And I thought “do you know what? Benefit of the doubt that I’m sure they don’t realise there’s 20 of us coming and that would be an insane ask.”‘
‘So I went back to the pub and I said “excuse me ladies and gentlemen, just to clarify, if there are 20 people this will then be £140 to bring in a Sainsbury’s basic cake?”
‘They turned around and had the audacity to reply “I can confirm that is correct.”‘
Helena decided to bring the cake anyway because she refused to let her girlfriend have a birthday party without one.
‘That’s like having heart surgery without a surgeon except more important in my eyes,’ she joked.
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‘The minute that our booking had ended and we went and stood outside of the pub, I got my candles out and I got the whole group to sing happy birthday as we gave the cake to my girlfriend.’
Whilst the group sang Happy Birthday a member of staff came outside and asked them to stand on the other side of road.
What is a cakeage fee?
A play on the BYOB corkage for fee for bringing wine, a cakeage fee is a charge that some restaurants, cafes, or venues apply when you bring your own cake instead of ordering dessert from them.
The fee usually covers:
Loss of potential dessert sales for the venue.
The staff’s time to store, cut, and serve the cake.
Plates, cutlery, and cleaning afterward.
Helena joked: ‘There is no place like living in London and that is because it will bankrupt you and ruin your lungs – and for some reason we’re all going to want to stay in it ’cause, I don’t know, it’s quite fun I guess.’
She told Metro she ‘respected them [the pub] for doing it’ and that it’s ‘fair enough’ if the fee covered additional washing up – but added that she thought it ‘took the proverbial p*ss’.
‘There’s a reason they have to go to such extreme measures to keep themselves afloat and whilst I think this went way overboard, it’s a hard time to be in hospitality so I get it,’ Helena said.
‘Pubs are estimated to close at one a day in the UK due to rising costs and less disposable income.’
One TikToker user said: ‘They’re whinging no one goes out to eat anymore! This is why!’
Is it fair for the hospitality sector to charge for cakeage?
-
Yes
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No
Another said: ‘£7 per person for bringing out a cake is diabolical.’
However, not everyone agreed. One person wrote: ‘From their point of view – that’s 20 people who would have potentially paid upwards of £10 each for a pudding from their menu who are now eating Sainsbury’s cake instead of spending money with them.’
Another responded: ‘As someone who runs a restaurant I would never expect a birthday party to be ordering a dessert per person. They’re definitely going home for cake if you’re not letting them bring it, why would they buy dessert?’
A third wrote: ‘Honestly I don’t think people realise what the last [Treasury] Budget did to an already struggling [hospitality] industry. It crippled it.
‘The number of closures of places has been insane. Business are just trying to survive they’re not money grabbing…’