A message from Tom and Frank – 16th February 2023

Over the last couple of days there’s been a lot of interest in media coverage based around the removal of paid breaks to make way for higher wages. We want to try and straighten a few things out as we don’t think the coverage is a fair representation of our intentions or frankly, the facts. Our business wouldn’t be what it is without our people and we wouldn’t have had the success we’ve achieved over the past 11 years if we didn’t truly believe that.

Paid breaks were a temporary covid measure put in to help our teams during an incredibly difficult period for them and our industry as a whole. But they were always a temporary solution to a temporary problem. Now the worst of covid is behind us we have taken the difficult, but needed, decision to remove paid breaks but introduce higher wages to the effected team members. We’ve built this business on trust and transparency and this has been no different. Paid breaks were a massive expense to our business and with the widely reported, significant increases to our costs we had to make some changes.

The fairly provocative headline focused on the absolute last resort in the consultation process, rather than reflecting the reality that nearly all of our teams will be financially better off as a result of this change (we really mean that, so feel free to ask them).  Having said that we’ve clearly angered and upset some of our people and some our loyal customer base, which was never our intention. But the feedback we have had from our people in general really has been very positive. This whole process has given us a lot to think about and this decision was not one that we have taken lightly. If you feel there’s still more information you’d like on this then please feel free to email us at [email protected] and either Tom (Co-Founder) or Frank (CEO) will get back to you. Thanks for reading.