"Just Bodies to Be Thrown Around": On working for the Scotsman Group Monopoly

Names have been changed for anonymity.

“The Scotsman venues themselves are one of the most mismanaged,” said one student who works for the Scotsman Group. “[They] treat the staff so poorly, and there’s no value for staff.” 

The Scotsman Group seems ubiquitous in the hospitality business in St Andrews. Market Street alone hosts the Vic, Forgan's, and Mitchell's. On South Street, the Group owns the Bothy and SPACE Cafe, as well as No. 1 Apartments — the recently-built SPACE accommodation — and also has plans to build a care facility at St Andrews West. 

Despite owning a disproportionate number of hospitality venues, the company's name is relatively unknown. This obscurity appears to be aided by a frequent cycle of acquisitions, refurbishments, and renamings — with financial reports showing that the group has added and lost at least four major subsidiaries and joint ventures in the past five years.

Even on a local level, this has caused alarm. Councillor Penny Uprichard raised concern during SPACE accommodation’s development in 2021, noting the company's subsidiary Kilrymont Developments had “changed their name three times in a short period.”

Within this hidden monopoly, students feel they have little choice in employers. Another employee and a trade union member, C, explained that, as a student, the hospitality industry is usually the most flexible, providing “the opportunity to work at different times” including on evenings and weekends. “If I left, I wouldn't want to work for this company again,” C said, “but I think in St Andrews it's just impossible [not to].” 

“Where else is there to work? If you own so many of the hospitality venues in St Andrews, the best job security is with Scotsman,” said B. “Constantly, small businesses and family businesses are being pushed out of this town.”

The group’s dominance leaves many with few options but to tolerate poor working conditions.

B recalled being in a group chat with his fellow employees. In response to a lack of training wages, a colleague brought up the Licensing (Training of Staff) (Scotland) Regulations 2007, which requires a minimum of two hours for alcohol licensing training. “[An employee] was bringing up Scottish legislation and going, ‘You have to pay us for the hours that we are working when we’re training,’” B recounted. The Group refused. 

B also detailed an incident where a colleague had to complete training prior to being able to clock in, ensuring those hours were not compensated. “A lot of training is done through online modules,” B explained. It’s usually mandatory and requires several hours. B and C were not paid for their training, and stated that other colleagues did not get paid for training either.  

Employees also noted inadequate training. D, a former employee of Mitchell's, recalled being trained on the job. C added that training was often informal and up to newcomers to “figure [...] out.” This led to a disparity between those who were trained and those who were not, creating what C described as a culture of “nitpicking in the workplace.”

“I've worked in some kitchens with Scotsman and they don't give uniforms at all,” B recalled. “You have to source it yourself, pay for yourself.” They contrasted this with past employers who subsidised the cost or provided supplies, calling the Group’s approach “wrong.” B added that staff members have paid for the uniforms of other colleagues in the kitchen “out of pocket.” 

They also explained that front-of-house staff receive preferential treatment on uniforms, likening it to "cleaning your room just enough so people don't think you're messy, but you're actually just throwing everything into the cupboard.” C, who works front-of-house, stated that “uniforms have been provided, but sparsely.”

The Scotsman Group had previously been the subject of controversy after being listed in the Wage Naming Scheme by the UK government for failing to pay the minimum wage. They underpaid 2,895 employees by £45,124 after deducting the cost of uniforms and training from employee wages. While officially rectified, the group seems to continue this practice by requiring some employees to cover these costs personally.

When approached for comment, the Scotsman group denied claims of unpaid training hours and requiring staff to purchase uniforms. 

B also highlighted that most employees are paid minimum wage. If they were on a fixed salary, “they would be doing far more hours, so they're actually being paid less,” B explained.

While minimum wage is not uncommon in hospitality, this is true across all levels of management for the Scotsman Group in St Andrews. “You can't be paying supervisors a couple of pennies more than the minimum wage. You can't be paying chefs the minimum wage. It's a skilled profession and there's no appreciation of that,” B explained. For comparison, the University of St Andrews, another major employer of students, pays the real living wage across all their age groups. 

Because of this, C suspects that students under 22 working at the Scotsman would feel particularly undervalued: "Someone who's doing the same job is getting paid because of their age when everybody has the same kind of responsibilities.”

During Freshers’ Week, one venue even had its service charge taken off. “I mean, that's a pay cut, basically,” B explained. “Service charge provides a significant portion of our salary, especially when you're on a minimum wage.” Tips in the form of service charge were a key hiring incentive during the application process, C added.

“We believe that our teams should feel the full benefit of rewards given for great service. That's why we ensure that 100% of our venue service charges go straight to the teams, without any processing or admin fees,” the Scotsman Group careers site states. “Our team members earn, on average, 20% of their monthly salary via this scheme.” Yet this gratuity is, in fact, a legal obligation: Under the Tipping Act of 2023, employers must pass 100% of tips to staff without any admin charges. 

A Scotsman spokesperson commented that the removal of the service charge was due to “customer service KPIs” that were not met. This was “in accordance with their policy of alignment between team performance and customer satisfaction.” 

“There was no incentive to really push [good reviews] before [service charge] was taken away,” C explained. “The decision was poorly communicated.” Employees also thought the metric was unfair, since customers were more inclined to leave bad reviews than to leave good ones. 

The Scotsman Group gave no comment on the timing of this removal aligning with Freshers’ Week — when venues experience their highest traffic.

“Getting told that you’re not going to have service charge during the busiest week of the year is completely deliberate,” B said. “We’re just making this abstract company, Scotsman, more and more money — record profits year in, year out. Meanwhile, we don’t see any of that.”

“Most people who are at a minimum wage job do not care about the benefits,” said C. “That's not going to affect them [..] they're not going to see a pay rise when the company exceeds how much money it makes for the year.” Yet, “receiving money from the service charge was a way [..] of employees seeing a part of how well the business is doing.” 

This approach aligned with the general climate of disinterest from the Head Office towards the staff. C stated that their interactions with the Head Office created the impression that their focus was only on “numbers and money.” 

B also pointed to the pressures of being understaffed. “I also think they deliberately don’t try to hire as many people as possible, so they don’t have to worry about wage bills,” said B. “You can’t prove that [...] but it definitely feels like that. ”

Describing his experience working at Mitchell's, D stated that there was only one person doing dishes for the restaurant, a venue that often ran at full capacity with around 75 seated customers at a time. “There's just one person on the dishwasher,” D recalled. This was “a lot of pressure” and “one of the worst things” about the job, they said. When the restaurant was busy, there were times when “there was one chef and one sous chef [...] so I had to do dishes while making salads and sandwiches at the same time.”

While the job of Kitchen Porter was advertised as preparing meals and dishwashing, D was assigned to dishwashing only. “It was [a] false advertisement,” they said. Being continuously assigned to do dishes for his six-hour shifts for three months until they left “was not in the job description.” 

This added pressure led to accidents. “There was one incident where someone dropped a block of broken glass in the dishwasher sink,” D said. They were “doing hundreds of dishes when this happened,” and had to manage the aftermath whilst continuing to wash dishes in a hectic environment. “There should at least be two people on the dishwasher,” they explained. 

When relaying his issues to Human Resources, D said the glass incident was ignored. The reply stated that dishwashing was what D's job entailed, despite the fact that “other people who were working under the same title were never on the dishes.”

“The scrubbers were out-of-date” and the “disposer was s***,” said D. “There was one tray at a time and one disposer. This correlates to [the company] not caring about the person who's doing the dishes.” 

Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, employers must assess risks, provide safe equipment, and ensure safe staffing levels.

Despite having the means to purchase and dispatch supplies, the company refuses to do so, B said. “There is a singular stick blender right now being used by three different hospitality vendors.” The group "[doesn’t] want to spend the twenty f***ing pounds it takes to buy the stick blender.” C also noted that during cleaning, basic equipment, such as gloves, was rarely provided.

In their annual report, the Scotsman Group stated, “our people are our biggest asset, and we strive to treat colleagues like family.” 

B described feeling like “a body thrown around” within the Scotsman’s “collaboration-based system.” “When you're the body being thrown around, [it] means you don't feel valued in any way whatsoever,” he said.

“Say a kitchen doesn’t have a head chef for their kitchen. Oh, [the Scotsman venue] next door has a head chef. [They’re] going to bring the head chef over,” B explained. “If you have five other venues, you’re going to send one in […] that idea goes for the entirety of the company.” 

“It’s a mentality that you could only get when you have a complete monopoly,” B said. “They don’t actually have to worry about maintaining a team on a location basis.” 

C, an employee who has been relocated under this system, explained that there was little notice before being moved: “Sometimes it could be that you show up and you're told you need to go somewhere else, and sometimes other colleagues know that you're going to be moved for the day but you don't.” This contrasts with employee contracts, which state that “the Company will endeavour to give reasonable notice of any change in location of your normal place of work.” Several employees said they received little or no training, even when moved to venues with different service requirements.

Another employee described a cycle of sacking and rehiring. “Our current manager was sacked before he was replaced with another man who was then sacked for ‘incompetence,’” the employee said. “Then our first manager was hired again, just on a very long probation period.” 

B echoed a similar sentiment: “They churn through their managers.” He remembered one manager being on probation for over a year. Typically, probation periods last three to six months at most, a period with less protection for employees. 

At Mitchell's, the pattern was the same. D stated that within a few months, the head chef left, the manager left, and some of the waitresses left.

A Scotsman Group spokesperson attributed this “higher level of staff movement” to St Andrews being a student town and tourist hub. They made no comment on the high turnover and probation periods of full-time managerial staff.

“They can get away with it in St Andrews completely because we gain [...] people every year from all the students that come in,” B said. The “company relies on student labour [..] to go through their business without raising any big problems” because “students will always be in need of a job,” C added.

“The fast turnover of staff means that issues that are raised are never dealt with quickly because people leave,” C explained. “People can just push them to the edge, and then you can get somebody else.” They added that, for employees, this can create a culture of apathy towards workplace problems, due to the nature of part-time work being temporary. “Students [are left] working without their dignity sometimes,” C said.

This exploitation involves “working over your contracted hours,” C explained. “It's not really taken into account that you're a student with a busy schedule.” While C was initially contracted for fifteen hours per week, they usually end up working more. While workers can try to refuse working more than their contracted hours, it is “made out, on part of the management, that it's a hassle to fix, or a problem.” D relayed that several of his colleagues “had left because of the pressure, because management told them to work extra hours during exams.” 

High turnover, chronic understaffing, and excessive workloads leave student employees with low morale and high stress. D, who left Mitchell's due to the stressful work culture, stated that as a student, “you don't want any stress out of the part-time job to affect your everyday life,” describing the venue as a “terrible environment” for stress. 

“The whole day, you're running on a very high level of stress when you leave the door. That's not just going to go away,” C added.

Behind the Scotsman Group stands founder Stefan King, who has a personal tie to St Andrews: His wife graduated from the University, and the couple owns a second home on The Scores worth over £1 million. 

Despite the Group's statement that “open and honest communication is encouraged throughout the estate,” several workers and ex-workers declined to speak on the record, fearing they could lose their jobs or be blacklisted. 

Illustration by Isabelle Holloway